Review: 'Howl: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-in-Horror', edited by Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich
Pub. Date: 04/11/2025
Publisher: Black Spot Books
The synchronicity of woman and wolf has long been buried. Ruled by the moon and her cycles of blood, rage, and transformation, the desire and pull to shapeshift and transmute runs deep beneath her skin. She is a beacon of duality, the divine and the monstrous, the deep glow of wolfsbane and the indent of fresh bite marks on skin. We fear her because we are her: the feral, the wild, the mad.
From Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves” to Rachel Harrison’s Such Sharp Teeth, women have been dancing with the wolf and teasing it out of the woods for centuries. We feed the untamed, hoping to release the beast inside, giving us strength, sisterhood, and the confidence to howl. The animal releases us from shame and permits us to seek out and accept our truth. With the wolf, we are free; with freedom, we are empowered.
In a world where silver is the least of our worries, HOWL seeks to give voice to the wolves and women of contemporary horror as they shed their skin, unhinge their jaws, and bare their teeth for all to see.
From award-winning editors Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich comes HOWL, a brand-new anthology of original stories and poems from women of contemporary horror who give voices to wolves as they shed their skin, unhinge their jaws, and bare their teeth for all to see. Featuring Delilah S. Dawson, Christina Henry, Gwendolyn Kiste, Ai Jiang, and many more, with an introduction by Rachel Harrison.
Werewolves are a fascinating cultural monster. They exhibit all the traits true monsters require: the category-defying body, the guarding of social mores, and the embodiment of both desire and taboo. I also think it is fascinating that most werewolves in popular culture are male. Lycaon in Greek myth is a man, so is Bisclavret in Marie de France's medieval lai, or the lycanthropes in Teen Wolf (film and TV) or An American Werewolf in London. There are, of course, exceptions. Ginger in Ginger Snaps (2000) is a prime example, of what being a werewolf means for a woman or female character. Just as her period starts, she is violently attacked by a male werewolf and then begins exhibiting a certain wildness considered inappropriate for young women. For female characters and women, lycanthropy becomes tied to the already Othered physicality of the female body and with the tight strictures placed upon their behaviour in a way that doesn't resonate as tightly for male characters/men. Perhaps it is because "woman" is already such a contentious thing, both natural and cultural, that most pop culture leans towards depicting male werewolves, where safer conversations about male violence can be had. In Howl, a set of female authors highlight all the fruitful ways in which werewolves can be used as a way of talking about womanhood.
There is a physicality to the idea of the werewolf we don't really find in other monsters. Sure, a zombie is also a very physical thing, but it is also dead. A vampire is a physical creature, but they too are, in a way, dead and removed from other physical needs aside from feeding. The werewolf is a human but also an animal, a being with competing needs and instincts, a person that needs to function within society but also within the natural world. In this way, the werewolf speaks to the experience of many women who find themselves torn between gratifying the expectations placed on them and following their own desires and instincts. This issue is at the heart of every story in Howl and each story highlights different aspects of the struggle. The collection is also very diverse in how it approaches lycanthropy and I imagine this freedom was explicitly given by the editors. How the change comes about differs in almost every story and what its effects are does too. In almost all stories, however, there is freedom and strength to be found in the change. The stories are also delightfully bloody and gory, as you'd expect from a horror anthology. Limbs will be ripped, skin will be torn, and blood will be drunk.
Howl is split into four sections, 'I. New Moon', 'II. Waning', 'III. Full Moon', and 'IV. Waning'. I think there is some thematic relevance to these sections. In 'New Moon' we find various stories in which young girls grow into womanhood and, perchance, into wolfhood. In 'Waning', the stories seem to centre on the shared aspect of woman- and wolfhood, on sisters and friends and mothers. In 'Full Moon' we find women stepping fully into their power, frequently to protect themselves and other women. Here, woman- and wolfhood signify strength. In the final 'Waning' section, the stories engage more actively with the current political climate in America, especially how it restricts women's access to and autonomy over their own bodies. I had favourite stories in each section. 'The Devil has no Dogs' by Kailey Tedesco in the first section is a Puritan delight while Ai Jiang's 'All the Men Who Cried Wolf' packs a punch. In Section II, 'Origin Story' by Shannon Robinson is a fascinating look at motherhood while 'Werewolf Girl Swallows the Moon' by A.C. Wise provides some lovely teenage angst. 'Our Howls Liek Dirges, Our Eyes Like the Moon' by Gwendolyn Kiste also hit me in a very specific way. Meanwhile 'Hunger' by Polly Hall, 'When We Run We Are Free' by Christina Henry, and 'The Clearing' by Christa Carmen are standouts of the third section. The final section is a little darker in tone, but 'Super Moon' by Katrina Monroe and '13 Times I Swallowed a Full Moon' by Stephanie M. Wytovich were really good. I will definitely be looking for more work by most of these authors. A full list of the stories and poems is below.
One thing I did appreciate about this anthology is that it largely manages to avoid the "feminine divine" trap when it comes to addressing the nature of womanhood. There is nothing wrong with identifying something divine and natural in yourself as a woman, of course. It can in fact be a very revelatory and joyful experience to discover how you are connected to the wider world. However, there is a tendency in this kind of talk to limit women to natural knowledge and thereby, explicitly or implicitly, bar them from intellectual pursuits. Ursula K. Le Guin explained the issue with this, as was her wont, very nicely: "But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?” (Source). Throughout Howl, the stories play with this problematic around instinctive knowledge versus the learned, intellectual knowledge of the world, and I think the collection strikes the right tone in this. The Introduction by Rachel Harrison kind of slid into this territory a little for me, but I think everyone's threshold for this will be different. Overall, Howl is a lovely anthology of werewolf stories that centre the female experience. I'd recommend reading a story or two at a time so you don't overdose on the moonlight.
I give this anthology...
4 Universes!
While not every story will hit equally, I loved the approach of this anthology and the variety of stories collected here.
Full list:
- 'Introduction' by Rachel Harrison
- Part one: New Moon
- 'Wolf Bite' by Stephanie Valente (poem)
- 'The Devil Has No Dogs' by Kailey Tedesco
- 'Silver Boots' by Donna Lynch
- 'All the Men Who Cried Wolf' by Ai Jiang
- 'We Women Speak of Wolves' by Cynthia Pelayo
- Part two: Waning
- 'When He Could Have Me' by Erika T. Wurth
- 'Origin Story' by Shannon Robinson
- 'Werewolf Girl Swallows the Moon' by A.C. Wise
- 'A Town with Too Many Girls' by Jessica McHugh
- 'Our Howls like Dirges, Our Eyes Like the Moon' by Gwendolyn Kiste
- 'Waxing Moon' by Shannon Marzella (poem)
- Part three: Full Moon
- 'Vestigial' by Kristi DeMeester
- 'Hunger' by Polly Hall
- 'When We Run We Are Free' by Christina Henry
- 'The Clearing' by Christa Carmen
- 'Bone Marrow' by Lindy Ryan
- Part four: Waning
- 'Dark Justice' by Alexandrea Weis
- 'Wolf Like Me' by Zin E. Rocklyn
- 'The Wolf Line' by Wendy N. Wagner
- 'It's Only Natural' by Delilah S. Dawson
- 'Super Moon' by Katrina Monroe
- '13 Times I Swallowed a Full Moon' by Stephanie M. Wytovich
- 'Mad Woman' by Shannon Marzella (poem)
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