Flowers from the Void (PB) (2024)

In this debut story collection, Gianni Washington opens portals bridging the strange and the lonely to the gruesome and the intimate.

Thirteen dark tales are told through the lenses of Black, female, and queer narrators, among others, which burrow deep into the heart of the gothic to challenge the conventional nightmare. Flowers from the Void unburies a haunted labyrinth of chilling alternate realities eerily similar to our own.

A high school freshman is lured into a sinister pact with a classmate that will cost him more than he could ever imagine. A grieving African witch prepares for initiation into a 17th century Salem coven of white women. A girl with no shadow befriends one.

Empathy and horrors collide to create a grimy discomfort that will never quite wash off. Otherworldly creatures, malevolent acts, and devastation consume these pages as Gianni Washington resurrects the skeletons in our closets and commands them to run amuck with a new zest for the macabre.