INTERVIEWS:
Q&A: Atlanta writer Anya Martin on her debut horror collection “Sleeping with the Monster.” By Curt Holman. ARTSATL.com. Nov. 8, 2018.
Retro Talent: An Interview with Anya Martin. By Gwendolyn Kiste. August 24, 2016.
An Interview with Anya Martin. By Sean M. Thompson. Word Horde. Nov. 18, 2015.
An Interview with Anya Martin, Author of “Sensoria” (GIALLO FANTASTIQUE). My BookishWays.com. April 6, 2015.
The Avengers, Legoland and Anya Martin, Interview about Womanthology, Free Comic Book Day and ATLRetro.com, Pop Culture King Radio Show, WMLB 1690.
REVIEWS
“a strong collection with a good balance of politically charged and straight-up strange storytelling.”
Review: Sleeping with the Monster. Publisher’s Weekly, October, 2018
“Potent, memorable stories that will fluster some readers and terrify others.”
Review: Sleeping with the Monster. Kirkus Reviews, January 11, 2019.
While each story in Sleeping with the Monster is enjoyable on its own, together they document a necessary grappling with the Weirdness of our world and the roles that women are expected to play. Throughout these twelve stories, Anya Martin faces this challenge with hard-won insight and grace again and again, securing her place as an important voice in contemporary Weird fiction.
Gordon B. White, Review: Sleeping with the Monster, HellNotes, October 15, 2018
“[Anya Martin’s] stories are marked by their sensuality and, as is appropriate for the genre, their narrative ruthlessness…[The Un-Bride] is audacious, clever, and while possessed of its own deliberate camp value, strangely powerful.”
Adam Troy-Castro, “Books,” Review: Sleeping with the Monster, SciFi, April 2019
“Freely allowing her fiction to travel in time and around the globe offers up more narrative possibilities than Martin can explore in a single eleven story and one play collection, but that’s not a bad thing because it leaves us hungry to discover what strange lamp-lit streets she’ll send us down next. Martin’s darkness is a gripping sort: descriptive, heady, cloying, monstrous and always enticing.”
Alex Kendle, Review: Sleeping with the Monster, Rue Morgue, February 2019
“Martin has penned a tale of exceptionally unique vision and style, a darkly poignant story riddled with undercurrents of achingly seductive eroticism and temptation tempered by the threads of terror that permeate the book.”
Shane Douglas Keene, Review: Grass, This Is Horror, October 6, 2016
Blending Horror, Erotica, Science Fiction, and referencing such films as Swamp Thing, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and more, along with themes of abuse, post traumatic stress, tragedy, anxiety, and pleasure, Anya Martin crafted a tale that is on the level of being discussed in a college literature course. Anya expertly navigates these themes that many do not understand, nor, to some extent, want to acknowledge. I was only left with one question: when are we going to see an Anya Martin collection?
Joseph Zanetti, Review: Grass, Musings from the Outer Worlds, May 28, 2017
Grass is a swampy love story and a string of memories that need to sink deep into the murky waters that it came from…an excellent read from Anya Martin.
Beauty in Ruins, Review: Grass, February 22, 2018
“…Anya Martin’s ‘Old Tsah-Hov’ is clipped and almost biting in its terseness on the way to a gut punch of an ending that is everything the Yellow King promises, and worse.”
Laird Barron, Review: Cassilda’s Song, Locus, February 2016
“Until then you never knew that you could cry…A story you keep thinking about, because you are still in it.”
D.F. Lewis, Review: Cassilda’s Song, The Dreamcatcher of Books: Gestalt Real-Time Reviews, December 2015
“Or Anya Martin’s creepy piece of unhinged domestic abuse, “The Prince of Lyghes”…If tales such as those are anything to go by, then Old Slobbery has plenty of life left him in yet.”
Paul St. John Mackintosh, Review: Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Teleread, Aug. 28, 2015
“‘The Prince of Lyghes’ has enough goo and gore to satisfy the most jaded Hugh B. Cave or Brian Lumley fan. The real strength of the story though lies in the way it depicts the mundane horrors of an abusive relationship. It’s exactly the sort of subject matter that most horror writers shy away from and it packs a punch.”
Dimitris Kontogiannis, Review: Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Crows N Bones, Jan. 14, 2016
Sensoria by Anya Martin: “One of the best, this story of a rockstar, his girlfriend and their dalliance with hallucinogenic scarabs channels Argento when he was actually good (especially Suspiria and Phenomena). Bonus points for actually being a great rock ‘n; roll story. In fact, I’d go as far as to suggest that Sensoria is worthy of John Skipp and Poppy Z. Brite in its portrayal of a specific musical subculture.
Dimitris Kontogiannis, Review: Giallo Fantastique, Crows N Bones, Oct. 25, 2015
“The result is a book of thirteen stories that hit all the right notes of the uncanny, executed with the effortless-seeming skill of creative talents who aren’t afraid to let their minds wander down mysterious paths and take yours along for the ride. I mean, come on, here; it’s got stories by…Anya Martin delving into a world of more-than-musical transcendance.”
Christine Morgan, Review: Giallo Fantastique, The Horror Fiction Review, March 16, 2015
“‘Sensoria,’ another in a collection of great titles, from Anya Martin, is one of the longest and most involved offerings in the collection. Unlike previous stories, this one explores the more fantastic and supernatural side of the subgenre. It’s a story driven by great characterization of Sasha and Dorian Cain, from their first meeting through the duration of their relationship. Rock and roll and psychoactive beetles collide with the afterlife in this compelling story. The description of a women plummeting through a stained glass window into a rock concert is vivid and a perfect touch.”
Tim Potter, Review: Giallo Fantastique, HellNotes, May 15, 2o15,
“’Sensoria’ by Anya Martin is full-on industrial gothic. A love affair between a struggling journalist and a haunted punk singer moves into the realms where lines between life and death are nonexistent. We get hallucinatory scarabs, a zombie survivalist funhouse and a crashing ode to Dario Argento’s aforementioned masterpiece, ‘Suspiria.'”
Douglas Graham Purdy, Between the Procedural and the Surreal (Review: Giallo Fantastique. The Life Sentence
“This slim anthology, compiled by the capable Lockhart (The Children of Old Leech), brings together very short, gem-quality stories filled with blood, guts, sex, and especially death. Lockhart translates giallo fantastique as weird crime, and each story, while very different in style and tone, melds crime and supernatural horror with panache and verve…Scarabs have psychotropic properties in Anya Martin’s “Sensoria”…Lockhart has done a magnificent job of discovering and delivering a baker’s dozen of wonderfully creative, macabre vignettes.”
Publishers Weekly, Review: Giallo Fantastique, March 21, 2015.
“Mado Peña’s macabre illustrations and muted colors give way to a frenzied red as events reach their climax in Anya Martin’s wonderfully weird “Stuffed Bunny in Doll Land” (so I was not the only girl who found dolls frightening!).”
Lynda Rucker, Review: Womanthology: Heroic, ComicBuzz, April 17, 2012
“‘Stuffed Bunny in Doll Land,’ written by Anya Martin, had a very eerie and creepy start. I was unsure what direction it was going to take, but it soon was a smart adventure, following our hero, the Stuffed Bunny who was on a mission to rescue the stuffed envelope from mocking captivity. It’s a lovely story, and the washes of colour are really nice, adding a particular atmosphere. Brave Bunny.”
James Bacon, Review: Womanthology: Heroic, ComicBuzz, March 5, 2012
“Mado Peña shows off her big-time-ready artistic capabilities by creating a delightfully fanciful milieu for Anya Martin’s story.”
Poet Mase, Womanthology: Heroic Review: The Kickstarter Sensation offers charm and value, IGN, March 20, 2012
“ATL Retro is the cat’s pajamas in blog form, self-described as a comprehensive guide to 20th-century happ’nins in the 21st century. From roller derby to cult flicks at the Plaza; from meeting Atlanta’s kool kats to sipping on mai tais in a retro tiki wonderland, ATL Retro is giving us our fix of old-timey fun. Who needs jetpacks and Skype when you’ve got pin-up girls and ’80s splatter cinema at the same time? We’re diggin’ you, ATL Retro, for letting us live in the past and have a nifty time doing it.”
Scoutmob, June 23, 2011