We are greatly honored
to announce our 2025 keynote speaker, Tananarive Due.

In addition to speaking on opening night, she will be a guest on the live podcast recording with Girl, That’s Scary! on Friday, May 2nd and will be participating in our book talk panel on Saturday, May 3rd. This will include a reading, Q&A and book signing.

Tickets for Salem Horror Fest
go on sale in early March.

The Educator

Professor Due is a film historian & teaches Black horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA.

She developed a course at UCLA called, "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic," after the release of the 2017 film Get Out. The first course went viral and included a visit from Jordan Peele.

Due earned a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an M.A. in English literature, with an emphasis on Nigerian literature, from the University of Leeds.

The Filmmaker

Tananarive is a regular horror commentator, including Shudder’s recent series Horror’s Greatest, and was an executive producer of their documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.

She and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote "A Small Town" for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus, and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. They also co-wrote their Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, "Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!" 

The Author

A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won several awards including an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory, The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House.

She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.