A. Rushby (also writing as Allison Rushby and A.J. Rushby) has published more than thirty books. Whether writing for junior and middle grade readers or adults, Rushby is known for her love of all things dark and peculiar. Sometimes she writes about Victorian death photography and installation art. Sometimes it’s haunted houses or kittens who have midnight tea parties.
In Slashed Beauties, Rushby’s adult body and feminist horror novel, she writes about bewitched anatomical wax models, cursed lockets, and women’s never-ending fight for autonomy.
Rushby sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss, Slashed Beauties, Anatomical Venuses, her favorite feminist/body horror books, and her next release, All Her Beautiful Deaths.
You can connect with her on Instagram @allisonrushbyauthor and at allisonrushby.com
(Interview conducted by Haley Newlin)
CEMETERY DANCE: So much research went into Slashed Beauties. What did you find the most unsettling or fascinating throughout this process?
A. RUSHBY: The research into the Anatomical Venus was the most unsettling. Joanna Ebenstein’s The Anatomical Venus is the ultimate resource, and I quite literally sickened myself staring at the photographic plates in the book. One in particular stands out – a wax model of a woman clothed in a beautiful, white lace nightgown. Four ghostly male hands hover above her sponges and glinting metal retractor at the ready – clean white shirt cuffs visible as if they might run off to an evening at the opera … after. But for now, they are busy performing a cesarean section on their patient, who has an expression of absolute horror on her face. As well she might, considering she is undergoing major surgery whilst wide awake, her hands and legs tied, her white nightgown ripped open. It is, honestly, the stuff of nightmares.
As for fascinating, I adored making up the museum of my dreams – one based around the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. There used to be something a little similar in the Museum of London at their old site. I’m a bit devastated that it’s gone as I adored spending time in that exhibition and pretending I was at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. I contacted the museum and ended up corresponding with someone who had been instrumental in the exhibition’s development and it was so interesting to get some behind-the-scenes information.
You mention in the Author’s Note in Slashed Beauties that the idea for the book came when you saw an Anatomical Venus in Vienna. You called the figurine an “uncanny collision of art and science, violence and beauty,” which is a perfect description of your book but also speaks to generations of feminist horror, all the way back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. How do you think gothic and body horror achieved this tension between past and present so effectively in Slashed Beauties?
One of the most interesting aspects of writing Slashed Beauties was what ended up on the page when it came to the body horror elements. I had envisaged a lot more stabbing of male characters (and some reviewers have most definitely been disappointed that there wasn’t more). But as I wrote, I very quickly began to see that this was not where the true horror lay in this tale. The real tension resides in how little has changed for women in all those years between 1769 and the present day. As I wrote, it was galling to think that our bodily autonomy is, yet again, on the line. For me, looking at power and control in the past and present was where the true tension was. It was this that I wanted to focus on rather than just a quick stabbing or two for the sake of personal revenge.
What inspired or convinced you to pair the Anatomical Venuses with a modern feminist horror narrative?
I’ve always been fascinated by the passage of time and the concept of something (human or not) being long-lived (for example, I’ve published a children’s book before about a sentient village tree that has a curse upon it). When I first stumbled across an Anatomical Venus in a museum and noticed the other women around me having the same reaction to her that I did, I knew there was something in this – that if I created a story around it, it wasn’t one that belonged only in the past. So much of that reaction seemed current and topical and that feeling of being perceived is universal and timeless. I personally love reading dual narratives and so it didn’t take me long to realize a dual narrative would be a perfect fit.
Eleanor, Emily, and Elizabeth speak to the complexities of women supporting one another while making ends meet and fighting for autonomy in a patriarchal world. Do you think there’s a lesson or message to be taken away from each of their stories?
When I was developing the characters of Eleanor, Emily and Elizabeth, I did a deep dive into Georgian London and the Covent Garden sex trade reading issue after issue of Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies (these can be found for free on Project Gutenberg). These pamphlets need to be taken with a grain of salt, but are essentially listings of Covent Garden sex workers that include their name, where they can be found and their … talents. What struck me on reading was how much personality there was to be found in these listings. How much complexity. And how times may change, but at heart people are really not all that different despite the years that divide them. Eleanor, Emily and Elizabeth are all fighting for autonomy in their own way. For me it was very important to look at them individually and collectively (within pairs and as a threesome). Elizabeth was most definitely the most fascinating character to write (villains are always entertaining) because she was such a chameleon depending on who she was spending time with and lashing out against.
What are some of your favorite feminist/body horror books?
We could be here all day!
I’ll have to start with an absolute classic – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s just so dark and wonderful and truthful and haunting. I’ve read it multiple times and still cry every single time.
Something modern next – Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings. This book comes with so many trigger warnings they practically comprise a whole novel in themselves. I delight in the cover, which is super-cute and gloriously misleading. If you rail against society’s expectations and want to take things to a very strange place indeed, Murata is always the author for you.
And then maybe a text that isn’t classic body horror as such, but to me it’s a quiet tale of body horror. It’s a book I’ve re-read many times and think about often – Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. I find it absolutely chilling, full of existential dread and I thought about it a lot as I wrote Slashed Beauties, not only because it has an unreliable narrator, but because of the themes of medical trauma, bodily autonomy, power and control.
Can readers expect more horror writing from you?
Perhaps I was far too cruel to all my characters in Slashed Beauties, because my next release – All Her Beautiful Deaths – is far kinder. It’s still gothic and lush, however. The dual narrative shifts between 1865 London and present-day Sydney and London and has a focus on Victorian death photography and modern installation art and much of it is set within Highgate Cemetery in London, one of my favourite places ever (this is the third book I’ve set within Highgate Cemetery and I’m already attempting to come up with creative ways to write a fourth). Out of the thirty-three books I’ve published, I have to admit this might just be my favourite and the one I would most happily move into if I could. Everyone is desperately in love, there’s a whole lot of yearning and also a sentient house (I now long for a sentient house). All Her Beautiful Deaths will be released in September 2026 and I’ve now started writing another novel which is darker – set in an alternate London and which does have some body horror elements.
