“Oh, the Horror Stories: Afro-Gothic and Sci-Fi Writing Workshop”. The PRPL welcomes Bird Jackson. Bird Jackson (she / they) is an Afro-gothic writer based in Newark, New Jersey. Their writing blends horror, folklore, and the celebration of Black femmes as they battle gods, monsters, and generational curses. Bird is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark, where she currently teaches, and a returning Anaphora Literary Arts Fellow. They acted as Editorial Director of Lampblack literary magazine in 2023 for the third volume, a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Award in Magazines for General Excellence. Bird’s work appears in the forthcoming volume of Lampblack, which focuses on Community.