265 – Yah Yah Schofield & Pretty Words for Ugly Things

We're Southbound for monster-loving this week on Talking Scared.

 Georgia writer, Yah Yah Schofield comes to discuss her Southern Gothic debut, On Sundays She Picked Flowers – a story of monsters, spirits, swamps, and generational trauma. There’s a very bad mama and a very haunted house.

Yah Yah and I talk about mother-daughter relationships, the difference between ghosts and haints, the influence of elders, and why the rules are different for Black ‘weird girls.’

Plus, in Yah Yah’s own words – we discuss tongue-kissing monsters.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson
• Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions and Contemporary Gothic Fictions (2011), by Arthur Redding
• The Colour Purple (1982), by Alice Walker
• Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
• Sula (1978), by Toni Morrison
• In the Dream House: A Memoir (2019), by Carmen Maria Machado
• The Lamb (2025), by Lucy Rose
• We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (2022), by Paula D. Ashe
• Between Two Fires (2012), by Christopher Buehlman

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