Poppy Z. British
Poppy Z. Brite is the name under which the American writer Billy Martin (born May 25, 1967 as Melissa Ann Brite in New Orleans , Louisiana ) became known through his horror stories.
Life
Billy Martin was born in New Orleans , Louisiana in 1967 . He learned to read at the age of three and began to write his stories at the age of five. When he was six, his parents separated and he moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his mother .
At the age of 18 he published the short story Optional Music for Voice and Piano in The Horror Show magazine under the name Poppy Z. Brite. He continued to sell short stories on The Horror Show until he received a letter from writer Douglas E. Winter asking him about novels.
Brite left college and devoted himself to his first novel Lost Souls , published in 1992 by the US-American Dell publisher. In 1993 Billy Martin moved back to New Orleans and continued to publish his books with increasing success.
Today he lives with his partner and various pets in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
plant
Only Shallows of Lust and Courtney Love are now available in stores. The printing of the other two books was partly discontinued due to gross translation errors. Billy Martin advises against "Lost Souls" on his official homepage, as whole passages and the epilogue are missing.
What is striking about Billy Martin's novels and most of his short stories are the homosexual characters. When asked about them, Martins replied in an interview that nobody would be surprised if they were all straight.
Initially, Martin only claimed the horror genre, with his novels depicting character studies from unusual to psychopathic people. His third novel Exquisite Corpse is about two serial killers who are based on the legendary serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen . Martin tells the story that could have happened had the two ever met.
In his later novels The Value Of X , Liquor , Prime and Soul Kitchen , Billy Martin devotes himself more to fiction by telling the story of two friends Rickey and G-Man.
In 1994 he received the Icarus as best newcomer.
Works
- Novels
- Lost Souls (1992)
- Drawing Blood (1993)
- Exquisite Corpse (1996)
- The Lazarus Heart (1998)
- The Value Of X (2002)
- Liquor (2004)
- Triads (with Christa Faust 2004)
- Prime (2005)
- Soul Kitchen (2006)
- Short stories
- Swamp Fetus (aka "Wormwood" 1993)
- His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood (1995)
- Are You Loathsome Tonight? (aka "Self-made Man" 1998)
- RIP (1998)
- Stay Awake (2000)
- Guilty But Insane (2001)
- Pansu (2001)
- Wrong Things (2001)
- Conparty At Hotel California (2002)
- The Feast Of St. Rosalie (2003)
- The Devil You Know (2003)
- Used Stories (2004)
- Further
- Courtney Love: The Real Story (1997), biography
- The Seed Of Lost Souls (1999), novella
- Plastic Jesus (2000), novella
- Would you? (2000), essay
German translations
- Lost Souls 1992 ("Lost Souls")
- Where Evil Awakens 1995 ("Drawing Blood")
- Shallows of Lust 1998 ("Exquisite Corpse")
- Courtney Love 1998 ("Courtney Love: The Real Story")
- The Crow: The Heart of Lazarus 2000 ("The Lazarus Heart")
- Triads 2011 ("Triads")
In addition, the short story "Freiraum" ("Enough Rope") appeared in "The Secret Mirror" ("Crossing The Border"), edited by Lisa Tuttle.
Web links
- Literature by and about Poppy Z. Brite in the catalog of the German National Library
- Poppy Z. Brite in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
- Web presence
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aalya Ahmad: Gender, Goth and Gore: Evil in the horror fiction of Poppy Z. Brite . In: Sharon Packer, Jody W Pennington (Eds.): A History of Evil in Popular Culture. What Hannibal Lecter, Stephen King, and Vampires Reveal about America. 2, Evil in words, imagery, the news, trials, myths, and religion . ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2014, pp. 3 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Brit, Poppy Z. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Briton, Melissa Ann (maiden name); Martin, Billy |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 25, 1967 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New Orleans |