Jessica Peter

@jessicapeter.bsky.social

1150 Followers 843 Following

Horror writer, Poetry Editor of Haven Spec, editor of Howls from the Scene of the Crime. Social worker, health researcher (under a slightly different name), health policy PhD student. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada http://www.jessicapeter.net

A cicada with translucent blue-green wings sits in the brush
The first page of two journals - one is titled Garden 2014 and the other says 2026 Garden
Covers of 9 books: All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes, King of Ashes by SA Cosby, Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis, To Desire a Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt, Rick Steves’ Italy for Food Lovers by Rick Steves & Fred Plotkin, Fog and Fury by Rachel Howzell Hall, Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington, Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains by Alexa Hagerty
Screenshots of 2 movies, both named Silent Night, from 2021 and 2023
Screenshot from The Hamilton Spectator. Man painting a mural of the back of Shai-Gilgeous Alexander as he gets a basket in a net (text says "Updated May 12, 2025; Work continued on a mural of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the north wall of Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School Friday)
Jessica Peter sits in a conference room at GritLit
Here are some of the worst things Doug Ford has done as our premier: - Promising that he would continue to protect the Greenbelt lands, and then turning over and selling off rights to his developer friends. Yes, we need housing, but this is not the only way! He did this even in cities like Hamilton where we’d just held a referendum with a strong winning vote to build UP, not OUT. He’s being investigating by the RCMP, but called this election before the investigation results are out. - Starving our public healthcare system of funds while trying to convince the public that a private healthcare system is the way to go. This includes passing Bill 124 which suppressed wages of nurses, the backbone of our healthcare system. - Closed supervised injection sites that were “too close to schools” without another option until some future time. Hamilton, for example, only had one supervised injection site. Now it has none. This is going to cause more drug use all over the city (including even in school parking lots) instead of in one place, and it will cause more deaths from overdose. - Spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to get the private European company Therme Spa to set up on the old Ontario Place grounds, and at the same time let the Ontario Science Centre conveniently (again) crumble (did you know it had to suddenly closed?) as they worked on its new location on the Ontario Place grounds Doug Ford has a pattern of using public money – our taxpayer money – to pour into private industry, especially to his friends, to the detriment of the actual public. He has a pattern of promising one thing and doing another. He called this expensive election in the middle of winter because he’s relying on voter apathy, and the confusion between federal and provincial elections, and maybe some that hope he’s can fight Trump (but don’t be fooled – he’s also been caught on a hot mike saying he was happy Trump won). Show him he does not deserve a majority government!
The 2024 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot - Superior Achievement in an Anthology Ajram Sofia - Bury Your Gays Coleborn, Petetr and Chinn, Mike - Shadowplays Costello, Rob - We Mostly Come Out At Night Grassmann, Preston and Kelso, Chris - The Mad Butterfly's Ball Gyzander, Carol and Taborska, Anna - Discontinue if Death Ensues Murano, Doug and Bailey, Michael - Long Division Peter, Jessica and Bloom, Timaeus - Howls from the Scene of the Crime Ryan, Lindy - Mother Knows Best Ryan, Lindy - The Darkest Night Yates, April and Knowles, Rae - Scissor Sisters
Covers of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, Waiting for First Light by Romeo Dallaire, Fire Weather by John Vaillant, Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, The September House by Carissa Orlando, The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Screenshot of a tweet from Merriam-Webster that says "Take a screenshot of this GIF, and whichever new word you land on is YOUR word for 2025." - My word is mythical
Jessica Peter: Award Eligibility 2024. Short Stories: Horror - "Pink Smoke" - Cosmic Horror Monthly, Feb. "The Ritual" - Calliope Interactive, May. Selected Poetry: Speculative - "Epitaph of a World on Fire: An Abecedarian" - Haven Speculative, Sept. "In the Urban Darkness, Something" - Apparition Lit, Jan. Anthology (Editor) - Howls from the Scene of the Crime: A Crime Horror Anthology, ed. Jessica Peter and Timaeus Bloom, Howl Society Press, May 2024.
3 golden raspberries on a plant
My hand, full of ripe cherry tomatoes
Flyer for “Justice for Erixon Kabera” with photos and description of an even at Hamilton City Hall, Thursday Nov 14 starting at 6pm
Pulp art style Cover of Mexican Gothic “directed by” Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Cover of Howls from the Scene of the Crime: A Crime Horror Anthology, Edited by Jessica Peter & Timaeus Bloom, with a Foreword by Cynthia Pelayo
It reads “HWA panel at Fan Expo: I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost Story! Sunday, August 25th at 1:30pm, Theatre #7 (Room 715B), South Building. Moderator: Jessica Peter. Panellists: Ai Jiang, Tim McGregor, C.C. Adams, and Sephera Giron.” Picture of dancing skeletons!
Covers of: - After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang - A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea James - Razorblade Tears by SA Cosby - Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice - The Marigold by Andrew F Sullivan - Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas - Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert - Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann - The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman
Cover for The Darkness Beyond the Stars: An Anthology of Space Horror
Books: The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemison, The Fifth Season by NK Jemison, The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker, The Enigma of Room 622 by Joel Dicker
A portrait of an opossum that says “I’m not like other girls… I’m worse”