As part of The Pixel Project’s Read For Pixels campaign, we interview authors from genres as diverse as Science Fiction and Fantasy to Romance to Horror about why they support the movement to end violence against women and girls.
For Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2024, we present an interview with Read For Pixels author Dana Cameron who contributed her original story The Kindly Sea to our 1st charity anthology, GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE. Dana writes across many genres, but especially crime and speculative fiction. Her award-winning work is inspired by her career in archaeology, and her Emma Fielding archaeology mysteries appear on Hallmark’s Movies & Mysteries Channel. Her latest book is ANNA HOYT: A NOVEL OF COLONIAL CRIME (October 2024).
Inspired to support The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Make a donation to us today OR buy the audiobook edition of our 1st charity anthology, GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE OR buy our 1st poetry collection, UNDER HER EYE. All donations and net proceeds from book sales go towards supporting our campaigns, programmes, and initiatives.
- Why did you decide to contribute a story to The Pixel Project’s GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE charity anthology and what is your story about?
The Kindly Sea tells the story of a woman who is sexually harassed and assaulted by her graduate advisor. In an eerie encounter—or was it a hallucination?—Lucy is asked what she wants to happen to him. She replies “I want him to know how it feels.” I wanted to contribute to the anthology because the immense power that academics can hold over a student’s future career can truly be the stuff of horror when that power is abused.
- Why do you think book lovers should read or listen to GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE?
Apart from a table of contents filled with stories by some of the best writers in the horror and speculative fiction genre, the collection tackles a complicated issue. Each of the writers takes a different look at violence against women and how it happens—and how it can be stopped. The abusers themselves are to blame, but so are the people who say nothing and the social norms that mandate the victim’s silence or encourage the notion that “boys will be boys.” By dismantling small parts of society—by acknowledging women’s bodily autonomy, for example—we can erode the elements that enable violence against women.
- Any final thoughts about why everyone should support stopping violence against women?
Even if it were only a few people experiencing this violence, it should be a priority to stop it. It’s a hell of a thing to realise that half the world’s population experiences some form of gender-based aggression and violence. How much pain and suffering would end if everyone could find a way to stop just one instance before it happened? Education is the first thing and legislation goes hand and hand with that. If you want to look at it in purely economic terms, how much productivity would be added, and how much money would be saved from losing work, having to move, just to escape an abuser? How much emotional and physical energy would be saved without the lifelong need to constantly be on guard, even in the most innocuous of situations? It’s not just a woman who suffers, it’s her family and community. That’s why everyone should work to stop it.