{"id":21484,"date":"2026-10-15T16:08:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/?p=21484"},"modified":"2026-10-15T16:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:12:16","slug":"interview-kelly-mcwilliams-on-american-nightmare-hidden-figures-and-historical-horrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/interview-kelly-mcwilliams-on-american-nightmare-hidden-figures-and-historical-horrors\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Kelly McWilliams on American Nightmare, Hidden Figures and Historical Horrors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kelly McWilliams <\/b>is a mixed-race novelist whose work examines white passing, American history, and the uncanny. She is also the author of several acclaimed novels for young adults, including <\/span>Mirror Girls<\/span><\/i>, a Junior Library Guild Selection. <\/span>American Nightmare<\/span><\/i><\/a> is her adult fiction debut. She lives in Seattle with her family. You can connect with her on Instagram – <\/span>@kellymmcwilliams.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Kelly McWilliams (photo credit: Bill Mullen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McWilliams sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss American Nightmare, hidden figure, Walter F. White, and historical horrors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Interview conducted by Haley Newlin<\/a>)<\/b><\/p>\n

CEMETERY DANCE: <\/b>American Nightmare<\/i><\/b> is your adult fiction debut. Did any part of the creative or research process feel different than writing YA fiction like your previous release, <\/b>Mirror Girls<\/i><\/b>?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"Creatively, my work on <\/span>American Nightmare<\/span><\/i> felt very different. While <\/span>Mirror Girls <\/span><\/i><\/a>focused on one murder and its impact on one town, <\/span>Nightmare<\/span><\/i> criss-crosses the nation, and I needed to land my beats at key historical moments. I knew I had to get my hero from Atlanta in 1906 to New York ten years later, and to Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919\u2014and finally, to Tulsa in 1921. Creatively, this required scope and scale\u2014as any book with <\/span>American<\/span><\/i> in the title must. That was the great craft challenge of the book, and Clark White rose to it. The day I believed that he\u2019d seen and understood the whole country\u2014or a vast portion of it, anyhow\u2014was the day I knew my work was complete. This was especially necessary because that\u2019s true of <\/span>Walter F. White<\/span><\/a>, the man the story is based on. He understood something crucial about this country. I wanted to honor that understanding and transmit his discoveries in my fiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

For <\/span>Mirror Girls<\/span><\/i>, I read primarily oral histories, collected by the WPA, so I could better portray what Jim Crow <\/span>felt <\/span><\/i>like to parents and to children. I\u2019m still haunted by these human stories today. For <\/span>Nightmare<\/span><\/i>, I carried this powerful research with me into the political world of the 1900s\u2014and this time my question wasn\u2019t just \u201chow does it feel,\u201d but also, \u201cwhat does it mean\u201d for the nation, for history, for our reality today. I read many issues of <\/span>The Crisis<\/span><\/i>, the NAACP\u2019s publication at the time. I read correspondence between Walter F. White and James Weldon Johnson. I scoured Ida B. Wells\u2019 work, and I would like to see her on every syllabus everywhere, all the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If <\/span>Mirror Girls<\/span><\/i> were an essay, <\/span>American Nightmare<\/span><\/i> felt like my dissertation. And then, in addition to the gothic mode I write in naturally, I added a new genre: <\/span>spy thriller<\/span><\/i>. The historical spy thriller is a wonderful way to take on a nation\u2019s deepest conflicts. When you combine it with horror? Well, then you\u2019re way below the surface of the nation\u2019s crust. You are getting to the heart of things.<\/span><\/p>\n

American Nightmare is inspired by Walter White, a white-passing Black man of the NAACP who infiltrated violent groups and investigated lynchings in the South. What was it like shaping your protagonist, Clark Wendell White, from this historical figure?<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a lifelong dream, for me, to write a character inspired by Walter\u2019s true history. Personally, I think of Walter F. White as one of history\u2019s hidden figures. The real man has a complex biography, but he truly did investigate 41 lynchings and eight race massacres. He was a mentee of James Weldon Johnson, and subsequently the mentor, himself, of Thurgood Marshall. And yet his name doesn\u2019t ring through history the way one might expect, and this comes down to his complex racial positioning. He saw himself as Black, as a soldier for the Cause. And yet, his obituary called him \u201cA Negro by Choice.\u201d When I set out to write this novel, I knew I wanted to demonstrate that in fact, a man like him\u2014a survivor of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot\u2014had no choice in his identity at all, and nor would he have wanted one. He was proud to be a Black man working against apartheid.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this feeling, I know quite personally. I\u2019m a very light-skinned, mixed-race woman. Walter F. White didn\u2019t often write about his own emotions surrounding what he called the \u201cenigma\u201d of his presentation. This is where, as a novelist, I began to imaginatively fill in the gaps. Bringing the personal to life inside the political\u2014I see that as my essential work. And because of my own situation in life, as a Black writer who isn\u2019t always seen as Black, I couldn\u2019t wait to run with Walter White\u2019s story. I hope the novel both increases interest in the real man and provides a window into the experience of any person who must keep their true heart alive while they are forced, for whatever reason, to wear a public-facing mask.<\/span><\/p>\n

I quote from Dunbar\u2019s poem, <\/span>We Wear the Mask<\/span><\/i>, in the front pages of the novel\u2014and I use the second stanza. But when I wanted to remind myself how the novel ought to feel, I\u2019d re-read the first: \u201cWe wear the mask that grins and lies, \/ It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,– \/ This debt we pay to human guile; \/ With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, \/ And mouth with myriad subtleties.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Where the personal and the political meet, that\u2019s <\/span>American Nightmare<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Nightmare in <\/b>American Nightmare<\/i><\/b> is described as a supernatural entity that lurks in the shadows and creeps from place to place. What was the initial inspiration or spark for the idea to write about race issues and violent groups from a supernatural\/psychological horror perspective?<\/b><\/p>\n

When the real Walter F. White defended his home against the Atlanta Race Riot in 1906, when white folks were swarming the streets looking to harm anyone they found outside, burning down homes and businesses and destroying families, Walter was only thirteen. So, too, is my Clark. How, I asked myself, is that child supposed to carry that trauma into the long fight of his life? He\u2019d investigate 41 lynchings and eight race massacres\u2014all different, and yet all threaded together by one awful thing: determined, enduring systemic racism. That, too, seems to creep from place to place, to shape shift and yet never really change. How do we understand that? How do we grapple with it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I went as deep into the child Clark\/Walter as I could, and what I found was the Nightmare. He needed to name the enemy in order to survive it, and I find that so human. Our need for the supernatural\u2026it\u2019s deeply human, too. It often represents our inability to hold onto the banality of evil. And in this case, I also think it was my way of transmitting to all types of readers how systemic racism can feel: like it\u2019s the hunter, and you\u2019re the prey. Clark thinks of himself as a rabbit, always running after, or running away from, a terrifying force. But that force follows him everywhere, even into dreams. It follows us all.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spoken to a few historical horror authors, including Clay Cane, author of <\/b>Burn Down Master\u2019s House<\/i><\/b>, and Markus Redmond, author of<\/b> Blood Slaves,<\/i><\/b> who didn\u2019t initially realize that they were writing horror. Did you always know that you were creating a horror story with books like <\/b>American Nightmare <\/i><\/b>and <\/b>Mirror Girls? <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

I think horror is how I make sense of the world, and novels are, at heart, meaning-making machines, so the horror is always on tap for me. That said, I never know exactly what type of horror story I\u2019m about to tell. <\/span><\/p>\n

No One Leaves the Manor<\/span><\/i> is Lovecraftian, <\/span>Mirror Girls<\/span><\/i> is gothic, and <\/span>American Nightmare<\/span><\/i> is\u2026well, I\u2019ll leave the genre designation up to the experts at Cemetery Dance! <\/span><\/p>\n

The shape of the Nightmare did surprise me a little. Its physicality, its connection to the color red, the way it would appear to Clark in racist documents from the time. But the history of the Red Summer of 1919 is a horror story to begin with. The question for me was always: how will my character metabolize it? And I do think Cane and Redmond are getting at something real. When the history is the horror, why do we need classic horror conventions, or the supernatural, at all? And I think the answer is in part that so much of our history has been purposefully erased. We are in a moment of reclamation, rediscovery, even exhumation of horrors past. We deal with hidden figures and histories trapped under lock and key. Horror has always brought the invisible forces of the world to light. The work of historical fiction and the work of horror run on parallel underground trains. It doesn\u2019t surprise me in the least that so many of us telling Black stories today are riding the same third rail, though it may lead us to different stops, different stations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are you a fan of the horror genre? What are some historical horror books you\u2019d recommend and why?<\/b><\/p>\n

Am I!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Baby Kelly fell in love with <\/span>The X-Files<\/span><\/i>. Then <\/span>Jurassic Park<\/span><\/i>. All of Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Ellison, the great 20<\/span>th<\/span> century horror story writers\u2026and I studied Victorian literature in college, which is of course highly haunted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d even describe myself as a horror superfan, and I\u2019m so excited for the Black horror renaissance we\u2019re seeing now, which is dovetailing so beautifully with feminist horror. After I saw the movie <\/span>Get Out<\/span><\/i>, I knew we were going mainstream. I turned to my husband and said, I\u2019m so glad I get to be the writer I am <\/span>right now.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Horror is in a very exciting place!<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of recommendations, I would love for the whole world to read <\/span>Conjure Women <\/span><\/i>by Afia Atakora if they haven\u2019t yet. <\/span>Ring Shout <\/span><\/i>is essential reading, too. Anything by Victor LaValle (like, really, anything). I love <\/span>The Buffalo Hunter Hunter<\/span><\/i> by Stephen Graham Jones, too. And for more recent history, with a dash of humor, Grady Hendrix\u2019s books set in the 80s and 90s are a thrill\u2014<\/span>My Best Friend\u2019s Exorcism <\/span><\/i>captures the vibe of the 80s in such a unique way. Also, I\u2019d love for people to return to Tayari Jones\u2019s first novel,<\/span> Leaving Atlanta<\/span><\/i>. And <\/span>Our Sister\u2019s Keeper<\/span><\/i> by Jasmine Holmes. It\u2019s a fantastic mix of historical fiction and gothic psychological horror.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recommend these books because history and horror intertwine in such a way that the horror is almost like the soundtrack, the mood\u2014and the history is what takes center stage. My favorite reads hit that sweet spot where the horror tones amplify the history, instead of overpowering it\u2014and horror\u2019s conventions allow human truths to ring out, clear as a bell.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

American Nightmare is available now<\/i><\/b>. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelly McWilliams is a mixed-race novelist whose work examines white passing, American history, and the uncanny. She is also the author of several acclaimed novels for young adults, including Mirror Girls, a Junior Library Guild Selection. American Nightmare is her adult fiction debut. She lives in Seattle with her family. You can connect with her … Continue Reading! “Interview: Kelly McWilliams on American Nightmare, Hidden Figures and Historical Horrors”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[80],"tags":[2299,3715],"class_list":["post-21484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-haley-newlin","tag-kelly-mcwilliams"],"yoast_head":"\nInterview: Kelly McWilliams on American Nightmare, Hidden Figures and Historical Horrors - 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