Langara grad brings zombie fiction home

Former Langara College graduate Silvia Moreno-Garcia is cashing in on the popularity of zombies with Dead North, a collection of short stories which includes a tale about B.C. being invaded by marijuana grow-op zombies.

The 20-story anthology, edited by Moreno-Garcia, encompasses many different themes associated with Canadian issues.

“It’s not your standard-fair zombie tale, ” said Michael Callaghan, president of Exile Editions and the publisher of Dead North, which came out Oct. 1.  “[There’s a] nice dynamic going on within the anthology itself, in that you’re really taking all these different areas of Canada and using peoples different backgrounds and heritages to have a perspective on zombies.  I don’t think that’s really been done in that sense before, certainly not with Canadian literature.”

Moreno-Garcia said the attraction to zombies was not because she was “particularly interested in zombies,” but rather “we thought it had good market value and good potential for sales.”

Moreno-Garcia said the recent rise in zombie popularity might have something to do with the economy.

“We like zombie stories because there’s a survivalist element and there’s also this notion of the collapse of society, so it expresses our fears of how we are afraid of government and the economy is going to go down the drain,” Moreno-Garcia said.  “The zombie embodies that.”

Kevin Cockle, who had one of his stories bought for the anthology, said in an online post that zombies are a metaphor for the free-market and decentralization. “They’re the perfect consumer – simply going after what they want, when they want it, with no need for a state, and no ability to form one.”

Shimmer Magazine‘s publisher Beth Wodzinski, who has worked with Garcia in the past, told The Voice in an email “Part of the appeal [of zombies] is just juvenile: freedom to slaughter people once their humanity is removed.”

Reported by Tyler Hooper