'Bone-deep dread': Yah Yah Scholfield talks Afro-gothic film & their debut novel
The Black, trans, autistic author discusses formative horror movie experiences and the scope of their debut novel, set to release in Spring 2026.
Welcome to the weekly dispatch, SENSUAL TERRORS: musings on creativity, movie culture, and some strange bits of life.
I have a short list of Substack writers I discovered in January who made me feel like this endeavor of SENSUAL TERRORS was possible. One of the people on that list is
.I’m glad God put Scholfield in my path, so early on in my ST journey. I needed to see that carving out a niche on Substack as a Black, trans, autistic horror-lover (!!!) was possible.
Scholfield is currently working on their debut novel, On Sundays, She Picked Flowers; where their protagonist deals with inter-generational trauma, all while “being haunted and preyed upon” by a shapeshifter.
“I think that's the cleanest way I can describe it without spoiling everything,” they said.
Once the brainchild of a NaNoWriMo 2016 session, On Sundays was acquired by Saga Press with a 2026 release date. (The press is a newer imprint of Simon & Schuster that specializes in horror, as well as fantasy and speculative fiction.)
When announcing the acquisition, Saga called Scholfield’s debut novel “arresting.”
Pouring over Scholfield’s Substack, To Be Young, Gory & Black,1 that assessment is completely unsurprising. Their passion for the craft — especially their intentionality in how they put together scenes — oozes through the screen.
And based on what Scholfield told me, it seems like an arresting debut novel in this genre was always in the cards for them.
A fan since the beginning
“I really have loved horror since I was little,” Scholfield told me. Despite what you may think about formative horror media for people of a certain age (28), Scholfield was never a Goosebumps kid.
“I kinda thought they were corny,” they said of the books. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was more their speed.
Their very first foray into horror, however, was film-related. It was “a tiny clip of Nightmare on Elm Street that scared the bejeezus out of me,” Scholfield said.
One of my favorite philosophical questions is: Why do we like horror?
I look to one deep-dive by Haiyang Yang, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, and Kuangjie Zhang, an assistant professor at Nanyang Business School. Putting their behavioral psych minds together, they shared the following about why we love or hate horror for Harvard Business Review:
One reason we consume horror is to experience stimulation. Exposure to terrifying acts, or even the anticipation of those acts, can stimulate us — both mentally and physically — in opposing ways: negatively (in the form of fear or anxiety) or positively (in the form of excitement or joy).
For instance, watching a horror video simultaneously activates both types of stimulation, with the most pleasure experienced at the most fearful moment. The biochemical inside our bodies also changes when we consume horror. Fright can trigger the release of adrenaline, resulting in heightened sensations and surging energy.
Scholfield described something similar to me in recalling their first childhood taste of horror.
“I saw a little bit of Nightmare of Elm Street and it terrified me,” they said. “But then I found that I really liked the feeling of fear, and how it differed from my feelings of dread and anxiety.”
As someone with undiagnosed autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder — and what they called “a very tumultuous upbringing” — Scholfield benefitted greatly from having this kind of outlet.
“Having books and movies where the horror could end once I turned away was so cool to me,” they said.
Getting to write what scares them “is even cooler,” they added.
Crafting their own authentic horrors
How does Yah Yah Scholfield describe their work?
“I write Black gothic and Afro-gothic horror in the vein of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Tananarive Due's The Between, and [Julie Dash’s] Daughters of the Dust,” they told me.
The latter is definitely on my watchlist, as someone enamored with Eve’s Bayou. Witchiness and Southernness are integral to my identity. A story about three generations of Gullah-Geechee women from South Carolina (one of my ancestral homes) is right in my wheelhouse.
In an interview with Kasi Lemmons, director of Eve’s Bayou, writer Maori Karmael Holmes described it as “tonally in kinship with other favorites of that era,” including Daughters of the Dust.2
“I love a gothic moment,” Scholfield said. “I love a moment of tension and bone-deep dread. I love letting the past haunt the present.”
A year out from their novel’s release, I can’t help but be excited for Scholfield’s when I see a list of their inspirations — especially the film ones. Any book that cites Interview with a Vampire (1994), Pariah (2011), The Color Purple (1985), Disobedience (2017), Precious (2009) and The VVitch (2015) among its inspirations will be on my TBR list.
YAH YAH SCHOLFIELD: Required reading
As a Substack veteran, Scholfield has plenty of cool posts to check out in their archive. Their vocab word posts are fab: Internecine! Insalubrious! Saturnine!
But I think Scholfield’s behind-the-scenes looks at their creative process is invaluable for aspiring novelists. My recommendations:
“Do you have any advice in writing horror?” (Dec. 2021)
“Notes from On Sundays, She Picked Flowers's First Draft” (Nov. 2024)
“Second Draft Diaries” (Jan. 2025)
Check out their liner notes for their Sweeney Todd retelling, too.
Something I have been working for SENSUAL TERRORS readers is curating the Cinephile’s Bookshelf. One day, I intend to share my research dumps behind a paywall, but until then, enjoy the curated reading list for this article for free.
For the uninitiated: To Be Young, Gory & Black is a riff on To Be Young, Gifted & Black, written by iconic African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. This is also the name of a song by iconic African-American singer Nina Simone.
Another beautiful read: “Daughters of the Dust Is a Rare Beauty of a Film” by Charles Mudede for The Stranger (2017)