Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite
Billy Martin, known professionally as Poppy Z. Brite, is an American author. He is a trans man and prefers that male pronouns and terms be used when referring to him. Martin initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s by publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections. His later work moved into the related genre of dark comedy, with many stories set in the New Orleans restaurant world. Martin's novels are...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth25 May 1967
CountryUnited States of America
It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.
Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.
If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it.
All at once it hit him: this was power too, just as surely as smashing your fist into someone’s face, just as surely as putting a hammer through someone’s skull. The power to make another person crazy with pleasure instead of fear and pain, to have every cell in another person’s body at your thrall.
The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enough to drink Chartreuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green.
I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.
In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.
I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.
Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.
New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.
My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.
Ive tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.
Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction.
You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser.