Logan-Ashley Kisner
About Author
Old Wounds takes us to a sleepy backwater town to explore identity and questions around transness. It is Logan Ashley-Kisner's debut YA horror novel.
Logan-Ashley is a trans and queer author, born, raised and still living in Las Vegas, Nevada. He studied Creative Writing and Film Studies at university. As well as an author, he is a transgender horror historian, cat dad and horror addict (his favourites include Ginger Snaps, the Evil Dead series and Sleepaway Camp).
Interview
Old Wounds (Usborne)
September 2024
Logan-Ashley Kisner's debut YA horror, Old Wounds, takes us to a small town in Kentucky, USA, where trans teenagers Erin and Max find themselves stranded for the night, with a hungry beast on the prowl. Old Wounds explores questions around gender and identity while delivering a gripping horror read.
Review: "This is a thoughtful and entertaining read and a gently subversive addition to the YA horror canon."
Read a Chapter from Old Wounds
Q&A with Logan-Ashley Kisner: Identity and Gender explored in Old Wounds
ReadingZone spoke with author Logan-Ashley about his own experiences as a trans, queer teenager and his love of horror, and how these helped inspire his debut novel, Old Wounds.
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself, where you're based, your loves and loathings, and what brought you into writing for young people?
My name is Logan-Ashley, I'm still based in my hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada. I love horror and sour candy, and I loathe long waits and laziness.
I got into writing for young people because reading and writing was such an integral part of my childhood, and I want to be a part of making fiction a better and more interesting place for trans/queer kids.
2. What happens in your debut YA novel, Old Wounds?
Old Wounds follows Max and Erin, two trans kids who attempt to journey from Columbus, Ohio, to Berkeley, California, only to be interrupted by car troubles in northwestern Kentucky. There, they discover the locals and tales of a monster- a cryptid - which supposedly feeds upon women. In order to survive the night, Max and Erin must face not only these monsters, but their own complicated relationships and pasts.
"Transness isn't a bad word nor is it something that puts Max or Erin beyond reproach, it's
just a lens of storytelling I'd not seen used previously."
3. What was your initial inspiration for this story and why did you decide to explore the issues around gender and transgender people through a horror story?
In short, this story stemmed from nothing. By that, I mean that I was consuming all of these stories that dealt with gender, but only in ways that considered cisgender men terrorizing cisgender women. No consideration for transness at all. Or, in some more recent stories, there would be some acknowledgement that trans people, like, exist, but that'd be it. The stories still exclude us in all the ways that matter.
When trans characters do pop up in horror, 95% of the time it's in one of two ways: either the transness of the character is a negative caricature, or it's a positive portrayal, but the transness "doesn't matter".
So, Old Wounds is my response to both problems. The book naturally has to deal with both trans and cis genders, but the actual story is focused on Max and Erin and the way their transness informs their situation and their actions. Transness isn't a bad word nor is it something that puts Max or Erin beyond reproach, it's just a lens of storytelling I'd not seen used previously.
4. Why did you did you decide that the challenges transgender people face should be so embedded within the story?
In part, because I'm paranoid and loathed the idea of people talking about this story without talking about the trans elements. I don't think it's wrong for trans stories to be "about transness", so long as your characters and stories aren't solely defined by transness.
And also because I just think that playing with gender and expectations leads to great horror! It's only been in recent years that you've started to see stories that really interrogate what gender horror implies (Manhunt, Hell Followed With Us), but they're still not yet the norm.
Your general audience isn't used to reading about trans people, and so Old Wounds exists, in part, to force them to use that lens. I don't want my readers to just blindly go along with their own preconceived notions of gender; I want them to be asking the same questions that the characters are.
5. Can you tell us about Erin and Max, your main characters, and how they developed?
Erin and Max came pretty fully-formed from the start: Erin was always a soft-spoken, passive sweetheart, and Max was always a sarcastic little spark plug. Neither characters are based upon anybody in particular, but their personalities and struggles were defined by my own experiences, first as a closeted teenager and then as a transitioning, but insecure, young adult.
Both realities come with different struggles. It sucks being in the closet, and it sucks to be the only person you know transitioning. Isolation is at the core of both of those states of being. I wanted to validate both struggles while also acknowledging that they're not really all that different.
Max and Erin live extremely different lives, but they're inseparable. Even when they're at each other's throats, they're inseparable. They're two halves of one whole, and much of the tension between them is whether or not they can find a way back together.
"The Beast has truly touched against every possible symbol and metaphor I could throw at
something like 'a monster that eats women'."
6. What about the monster in the book, which also has a mystical element to it. Why did you decide to focus people's fears and prejudices within this creature, and how did it develop?
The Beast has truly touched against every possible symbol and metaphor I could throw at something like "a monster that eats women". In earlier drafts, that symbolism was more tied to anger and violence and death, but eventually that softened into just wanting to answer the question: who does it kill, and why?
Without going into spoilers, the answers are directly tied to Max and Erin's struggles prior to this particularly terrible night. The monster reflects what I believe to be the reality of gendered violence, including its perpetrators, true victims, and its inevitability. I hope the readers go into the book with an expectation of how the events of the story are going to play out, regardless of whether or not they're right or wrong, because I want people to think about what these kinds of stories imply about gender!
7. How did you research the everyday issues, challenges and prejudices that transgender people face?
I wouldn't necessarily call it research, but I have a number of friends and family members who
live in the midwest/southern parts of the United States. Transphobia exists in all 50 states, but the way transphobia manifests does vary upon your region. I certainly don't experience transphobia in Nevada the same way someone in Kentucky or Ohio might, so the biggest challenge was trying to be accurate to that regionality and to reflect what a more hostile regional government does to trans kids.
" It sucks to be 17 and be totally convinced that you're not gonna live past 25."
8. Are there stories from real life that you drew on for the book? What do they bring to the story?
In terms of my own life, I drew more from the emotions of my experience as a closeted teen. Nothing that happens to Max or Erin happened to me necessarily, but those feelings of isolation and frustration ring true to me as I think they do to a lot of trans teens and adults.
I also drew upon the trans figures that impacted me as a kid: I was active on Tumblr when Leelah Alcorn died, and as a trans person, it was impossible to exist without being aware of Brandon Teena and Boys Don't Cry.
Those were the names and deaths that formed my early understanding of what it meant to be trans, and I wanted to sit down and examine what that did to me and my peers of a similar age. It sucks to be 17 and be totally convinced that you're not gonna live past 25. You live differently when you're aware of your mortality like that. And even though there's a lot of fantasy and fiction in Old Wounds, we’re grounded by invoking memories like Leelah and Brandon.
9. Can you tell us about the small town setting for the book, too, and how that developed? Is it based on a place you know?
Lebanon Junction is a real place in Kentucky with a population of around 1700 people. I found it just by clicking through Google Maps (I find a lot of story locations like this), and it just worked perfectly for what I wanted. Their local police is made up of a whole four dudes, the little highway junction with the truck stop and diner is real, and so is the fact that the town used to have a major flooding problem that just suddenly stopped in the 1980s! I had to add/embellish very little. It was exactly what I wanted and needed for a small, condensed area to trap these characters in for a couple of hours.
"I hope people are willing and able to start asking more of the stories they read
and question the tropes they use."
10. Other than a great read, what do you hope readers will take from Erin and Max's story?
I think I want readers to see the wide range of experiences that trans people can have. I wanted Max and Erin to be as detailed and textured as I could conceivably make them, because I'm hoping that if nothing else, their personalities and struggles stick with you. I hope that even if you guess the twists in the story, that you'll still look at old horror tropes through a different lens.
I hope people are willing and able to start asking more of the stories they read and question the tropes they use. That's how I started writing again! Question the stories that exist and don't be afraid to push back against them!
Logan-Ashley Kisner recommendations for further reading and films around perceptions and experiences of transgender people:
In terms of fiction, anything by Andrew Joseph White (especially 'The Spirit Bares Its Teeth'), 'Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body' by Megan Milks, 'Cemetery Boys' by Aiden Thomas, and Imogen Binnie's 'Nevada' is a classic for a reason (though more adult than anything previously listed).
For nonfiction, I'd recommend 'We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan', 'Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender' (by Bonnie and Vern Bullough; a dated but informative read), and if you can manage to get your hands on a copy of 'Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits', that is one of my most prized possessions.
And for films, I will limit myself to six: I Saw the TV Glow (2024), Southern Comfort (2001), Cowboys (2020), T Blockers (2023), No Ordinary Man (2020), and What Sex Am I? (1985).
Old Wounds
