Michele Tracy Berger Mixes Racial Conspiracy with Psychological Horror in “Reenu – You”
Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:28 — 31.7MB)
In this episode 153, we visit with Michele Tracy Berger, author of “Reenu – You,” a novella that explores the politics of beauty, corporate conspiracy and unlikely female heroes battling a horrific virus that appears to be targeted against their race.
What if a visit to the salon could kill you? What if a product billed as a “natural hair relaxer” harbored a deadly virus? Reenu-You is about that virus. One reviewer says that in telling this story, Michele uses “the language of horror, of alienation from one’s own body, not the language of joy,” and that “the novella never leaves horror and alienation entirely behind.”
Much of Michele’s work explores psychological horror, especially through issues of race and gender.
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About the Author:
Michele Tracy Berger is a women’s and gender studies professor, an award-winning creative writer, a creativity coach and a pug-lover.
She is currently a trustee on board of the North Carolina Writers Network (NCWN) and President-Elect of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
Her main love is writing speculative fiction, though she also is known to write poetry and creative nonfiction, too. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Concrete Dreams: Witches, Warriors and Wise Women, Afromyth: A Fantasy Collection Volume 2, Stories We Tell After Midnight #2, UnCommon Origins: A Collection of Gods, Monsters, Nature and Science, Flying South: A Literary Journal; 100 Word Story; Thing Magazine; Blood and Bourbon, FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and The Red Clay Review.
Her nonfiction writing and poetry have appeared in The Chapel Hill News, Glint Literary Journal, Oracle: Fine Arts Review, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, The Feminist Wire, Ms. Magazine, Carolina Woman Magazine, Western North Carolina Woman, A Letter to My Mom (Crown Press), Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (Twelfth Planet Press) and various zines.
She runs an award-winning blog called ‘The Practice of Creativity’. Michele is currently a columnist for The Chatham County Line.
Her science fiction novella, “Reenu You” was recently published by Falstaff Books. Much of her work explores psychological horror, especially through issues of race and gender.
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