Asian American and Pacific Islander Horror Authors

The Eyes Are the Best Part had the horror world abuzz in 2024, especially with that chilling cover design. Described as Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, The Serial Killer, this novel follows Ji-Won, a Korean-American girl who is fed up with sexism, racist micro-aggressions, and feeling like a victim. Then, a strange hunger overtakes her.

Molka, released in April, is a horror-thriller set in Korea that centers on spy cameras. In summer 2027, Kim will release What Hungers in the Dark, a novel the author describes as “Crazy Rich Asians with vampires.”

This Vietnamese-American horror author says, “I write books about big feelings in small moments, people making bad decisions, and ghosts—real and imagined.” Tran has written two YA horror novels. She is a Haunting, published in 2023, follows a young girl who travels to Vietnam to help her father renovate a home, only to discover that it is haunted. Her 2025 follow-up, They Bloom at Night, is inspired by Tran’s childhood home in Louisiana and is set in a near-future in which a southern town is submerged and consumed by red algae.

Kylie Lee Baker’s first foray into adult horror was 2025’s Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, and she knocked it out of the park. This horror novel confronts anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic while also examining grief, loss, and complicated familial relationships. A year later, Baker has published another favorite among horror readers. Japanese Gothic is a dual-timeline story set in a haunted house in (you guessed it) Japan. It follows a New York University student in 2026 and a female Samurai from 1877.

Here’s a new horror author you should keep an eye on. Last year, Catherine Dang released What Hunger, a coming-of-age horror story about a Vietnamese-American high schooler, Ronny Nguyen. After the death of her brother and an extremely traumatic event at her first high school party, Ronny finds herself feeling a constant, insatiable hunger for raw meat. Ronny’s story expertly tackles difficult subjects like grief and generational trauma. If you’ve already read this one and are looking for more from this author, Dang also wrote a thriller in 2021 called Nice Girls.

Nadia Bulkin is an Indonesian American horror short story author. Her first collection, She Said Destroy, was published in 2017. It features an introduction by Paul Tremblay, calling Balkin’s collection “one of the best collections of this or any other year.” She Said Destroy was also nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award and a This is Horror Award. Bulkin’s second collection, Issues With Authority, was published in 2025 and includes three longer works of horror fiction: “Cop Car,” “You Next Best American Girl,” and “Red Skies in the Morning.”

Hawaiian author Keala Kendall just released her YA horror novel That Which Feeds Us earlier this month. Described as a “Hawaiian Gothic,” That Which Feeds Us is the story of a native Hawaiian teen girl who travels to Kōpaʻa Island Resort, a luxury vacation spot for the world’s wealthiest travelers. But she’s not there for a relaxing holiday; she’s looking for her missing sister. For all my fellow Moana fans out there, Kendall also wrote How Far I’ll Go, a twisted retelling of the Disney favorite in which Moana breaks the heart of Te Fiti.