Pride in Horror Queer Horror Icon: W.H. Pugmire
W.H. Pugmire (3 May 1951 – 26 March 2019) was born William Henry Pugmire, and changed his name to Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire (Hopfrog after an Edgar Allan Poe character). Pugmire was a well-known queer punk Lovecraftian writer, whose last novel came out in 2018, the year before his death.
While he is remembered affectionately and has many fans in the US, there are many outside the US who still haven’t really heard of him, so this is a brief introduction for those looking for unashamedly queer Weird and Horror fiction of the 1970s-2010s.
Pugmire was a devout Mormon who insisted on living as his authentic queer self within the Church, and spoke about his faith and its impact on him and his writing in several interviews, including ‘Latter-Day Saint, Latter-Day Lovecraft’ in 2010.
Horror writer W. H. Pugmire signing books at World Horror Convention 2008 in Salt Lake City,
Pugmire was a devout Mormon who insisted on living as his authentic queer self within the Church, and spoke about his faith and its impact on him and his writing in several interviews, including ‘Latter-Day Saint, Latter-Day Lovecraft’ in 2010.
I first discovered Pugmire’s work via Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, and I managed to get hold of his collection Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts (2003). I can see why people enjoy his work; he really tried to avoid the racism of Lovecraft, and his work embraces punk ethos and queer experiences. I loved the fully supernatural setting of Sesqua Valley, which is more on the Weird Fantasy end of the scale than the contemporary ambiguity of other modern Weird settings.
His work, for all his fans, can be hard to get hold of, especially outside of the United States; he was mostly published with fanzines, small press magazines, and smaller indie presses, such as Centipede Press, Mythos LLC, and Delirium Books, but only a few titles are available from mainstream retail giants like Amazon UK, for example.
His collaborative works are similarly both acclaimed and not so easy to get; he appeared in anthologies edited by S.T. Joshi, one of his heroes, and worked with other writers like Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Lambda Literary Award Winner for Lesbian Science Fiction), Maryanne K. Snyder, and Chad Hensley, to name but a few.
Illustrated cover of Sasqua Valley and Other Haunts by W. H. Pugmire
Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts remains my favourite collection, probably because it was my introduction, and I’ll always have a soft spot for those stories. I think one of my favourite things about his work is that he would write his exes or guys he’d had a bad experience with as an antagonist or have something terrible happen to them. One story is about finding out your lover has his dead mother in the basement, trying to reanimate her, and his physical description is based on aspects of someone Pugmire dated. I love that for him, honestly.
Another story, “Totem Pole”, is best described in Pugmire’s own words:
““Totem Pole” is autobiographical, but not in the manner you imagine. I invited a gay punk freak home with me to make the guy I was living with jealous, but the dude I brought home was so stupid and obnoxious that he drove me crazy. So I wrote “Totem Pole” and cast this annoying fellow as the character who gets murdered. Writing can be SO therapeutic!” – W.H. Pugmire (2010), A Motley Vision interview
I think for a new generation looking for more queer, punk eldritch horror, Lovecraftian horror, cosmic horror, and thinking that this kind of stuff was only published in the last 10 years or so… Pugmire’s work is definitely somewhere to start.
In the UK, Sasqua Valley & Other Haunts is available from Amazon (UK), and Abe Books (UK) only, as far as I can see. Blackwells still stocks several other titles, including the Black Wings anthologies ed. S. T. Joshi. It’s worth trying to look for his short fiction online, and below are some places you can start deep-diving.
For more on W.H. Pugmire, try:
W.H. Pugmire’s Wikipedia Page – there are links to zines from his first published story in 1973 (as ‘Bill Pugmire’) in the ‘Selected anthology and magazine appearances’ section of his page.
W.H. Pugmire’s entry in the ISFDb – a bibliography of his work is provided.
Editor Spotlight on W.H. Pugmire – Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein (search this blog for more Pugmire articles).
Feature By C. M. Rosens
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