Johanna van Veen’s work lives in the shadows, where the eerie and the emotional dance together in a space both beautiful and unsettling. A fresh voice in contemporary gothic fiction, she is reshaping what it means to blend horror with queer narratives, challenging conventions while still embracing the tradition of slow-burning dread. In her debut novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing, she pulls readers into a world of possession and psychological terror, where the haunting is as much internal as it is supernatural. It's a book that lingers, where the heartbeats of its characters echo long after the final page.
Born in the Netherlands, van Veen's early life set the stage for her unique perspective on identity and the uncanny. Raised alongside two sisters, her world was always one of contrasts: between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between the seen and the unseen. Her childhood fascination with the darker aspects of life led her to explore not just the supernatural, but also how deeply fear and love intertwine, often becoming indistinguishable from one another.
Her academic journey took her through the halls of Leiden University, where she earned degrees in English Literature and Book and Digital Media, specializing in early modern book history. It was here that her passion for the written word transformed into something more: a deep understanding of how stories are told, how they resonate, and how they have the power to unsettle. The themes of possession and psychological decay that run through her work today are as much a result of her academic exploration as they are of her personal experiences.
With My Darling Dreadful Thing, van Veen didn’t just write a gothic novel; she crafted an experience—a dark, atmospheric tale that questions the boundaries of the self and the other. Her follow-up, Blood on Her Tongue, cemented her as a rising star in the genre, expanding her exploration of the eerie and the uncanny while deepening her focus on the complexities of queer identity.
Away from her writing, Johanna van Veen lives in Amsterdam with her wife and their dog, where she works as an editor, balancing her literary pursuits with the demands of the editorial world. When she’s not writing, she’s indulging in her love of gothic films and literature, always seeking new ways to weave the strange and the beautiful into her work. In a genre that often feels constrained by tradition, van Veen’s voice stands out for its emotional depth, its ability to haunt not just with ghosts, but with the quiet, persistent fears that live within us all.
