How ‘The Bog Wife’ by Kay Chronister Got Made

In this week's edition of Endnotes, we take a look at Kay Chronister's The Bog Wife (Counterpoint, Oct.), a work of gothic horror set in a boreal peat bog in West Virginia.

Here's how the book came together.

KAY CHRONISTER, Author

“I wanted to write a book engaging with the Gothic tradition, its themes of ancestral trauma and inheritance and identity. My immediate question was, how do I want to do this in an American context? I considered a few different settings before landing on a boreal peat bog in West Virginia, and everything flowed out of that—the characters and their dynamics, the plot, the atmosphere, even the themes.”

DAN LÓPEZ, Assistant Editor, Counterpoint

“From the beginning, Kay and I were aligned behind a shared vision, and that built a lot of trust. We had a natural rapport—the kind of thing you always wish for with your authors. As we worked through our edits and shaped the mythology, we would vibe off of one another. The Bog Wife captivated me from the first page.”

LAURA CAMERON, Agent, Transatlantic Agency

“I reached out to Kay when my husband gave me Thin Places, Kay’s stunning debut collection of horror stories. We met and she mentioned a weird western she’d been working on for years. I disappeared into that book only to emerge hours later, parched and dizzy, with the conviction I needed to find a home for it.”

AMANDA OROZCO, Agent, Transatlantic Agency

“Laura and I are both huge fans of horror, and Kay has such a fantastic, evocative style that lends itself perfectly to this kind of modern Gothic story of family dysfunction amidst an incredibly moody environment. The central question of what we owe the land we live on, and what we think it owes us in return, was such a brilliant way into this eco-horror novel.”

NICOLE CAPUTO, VP and Creative Director, Catapult, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull

“The Gothic style of the typographic treatment was inspired by some historical elements in the text along with the power and aggressiveness of the bog. The plant life and soil atop the woman combined with the title indicates a transformation may take place while also feeling foreboding, claustrophobic, and provocative to readers.”