I’m Josh Sutphin, and I write speculative fiction that explores the space between horror and hope.

I’m fascinated by the beliefs and superstitions that emerge from our oldest collective memories, rooted in a time when the world was vast and unknowable. Humanity is all about how we face that unknown, explore its darkest corners, and learn to thrive alongside it, or in spite of it.

In addition to writing, I’m also co-founder and principal designer for hopepunk publisher Shiraki Press, and a veteran video game developer.

Horror × Hope

We can’t survive horror without hope, and hope is unnecessary without horror.

For me, horror as a genre is primarily about empathy. Yes, it also explores trauma and transgression, but horror without empathy is just sadism, which I’m wholly uninterested in. My tastes run toward the occult—supernatural, folk, cosmic, even Biblical—and I’m always looking for the emotional, humanist core of the story.

Here, you’ll find my original fiction—horror, hopepunk, and everything in between—as well as non-fiction pieces pairing horror and hope in current events, book and media recommendations along the same lines, and occasional behind-the-scenes looks at my craft and how I work.

When you subscribe, you’ll get access to the full archive of everything I’ve published before and everything that’s still to come, and you’ll join a community that stands in solidarity against the dark.

We face the darkness together

These days, I feel like we're all see-sawing between horror at what’s happening and hope for a better future.

It’s easy to slip into denialism on the one hand, or nihilism on the other, but we need to acknowledge the horrors while also propagating the hope. And that requires community, each of us reminding the other of our collective power while defending each other from the lies, the terror, and the manufactured hopelessness.

We face the darkness together, always.