Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, we’re speaking with Agatha Andrews, the wonderful host of one of my favorite podcasts, She Wore Black.

If She Wore Black has a mood board, it surely features women running away from looming Gothic houses, their hair streaming as they flee into windswept moors. There are billowing white nightgowns trimmed with ribbon and lace. Enchanted plants that whisper secrets. Small towns nestled into the woods, windows glowing with warm light. The fleeting glimpse of a ghost bride as she glides just out of view.

For nearly five years, across almost 200 episodes, host Agatha Andrews has welcomed listeners into these spooky and romantic worlds. Her podcast features fascinating conversations with authors, ranging from Johnny Compton’s heart-pounding horror to Anne Bishop’s legendary genre-bending novels.

She charts a unique course that’s guided by her love for stories that exist at the intersection of scary and swoony.

To me, the show feels like a safe and comforting world. Between Agatha’s warmth and her guests’ brilliance, I always come away feeling renewed. And even though I’ve been a lifelong reader (as we discuss in today’s interview), Agatha somehow manages to make me fall in love with literature a little bit more each time I tune in.

Case in point: While editing this newsletter, I was so intrigued by one of the books Agatha mentioned that I tracked down and bought a vintage copy on eBay.

And speaking of books—Agatha is writing one! It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but she shared a little sneak peek with me off the record, and it’s going to be very, very wonderful. If you enjoy today’s conversation, be sure to follow Agatha on Instagram and Threads so you can keep an eye out for the announcement that should be coming soon!

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Michelle Delgado: I'm going to start by gushing about your podcast, if that's all right with you. To me, She Wore Black is consistently the warmest hug of a podcast. I was trying to think of the way it makes me feel, because it's very specific, and I realized it's the same feeling I used to get as a kid going into the library.

I hope that warms your heart, because it warms mine every time I listen.

Agatha Andrews: It absolutely warms my heart. I wanted to continue my work as a librarian, with respect to connecting people to books. That was the whole point. And so I love and appreciate that you said that. Thank you.

Is that atmosphere something you set out to create? Or is it just the natural outcome of your genuine, authentic love for books and writers and writing?

I didn't set out for that particular vibe. I've been interviewing authors and artists since the ‘90s for newspapers and magazines, and I also had a local public access show about books at one point. I was interviewing people like Susanna Clarke and Reza Aslan and Melissa Bank.

Because I had been a bookseller in the Austin area, I was sort of spoiled with access to people coming through on tour. With this show, I did what I always have since the ‘90s, and it thrills me that you feel like you're in a library, because that was always my objective. Particularly when I was a high school librarian—you get morose teenagers, and I just love that they found a home in the library.

It was always meant to be an inviting space, and so I'm very pleased that that's how you feel when you listen.

The library was always a really safe place for me when I was growing up. There's just nothing like it.

Could you share more about the chronology of your career? Did you begin as a librarian, or as a journalist?

I went to the University of Texas and got my art history degree there. Austin had a very big local newspaper, local magazine, and zine culture, so I would write and interview artists. The longtime boyfriend I had was a very serious writer, who's gone on to be a very serious writer, so I was always around either art or books. In all those years, I was a volunteer for the Texas Book Festival. I'm always just immersed in all of this.

I remember waffling quite a bit on whether or not to do Radio, Television, Film instead of Art History, because everyone was always like, “You would be really good on radio!” I had big Pump Up the Volume dreams after that movie came out, so having a podcast was great because it’s an extension of that whole dream.

I became an art teacher and taught for a few years, because in Texas, you are required to teach for a minimum of two years before you can apply for the Master’s that is required to be a librarian.

I was working in a bookstore between all of that, but mostly while I was in library school. After that, when I was working as a librarian, you get summers off, and so I would be in the bookstore. I just never let books go—it was just always something I was very comfortable doing.

The show happened when I had to stop being a librarian, because my child's needs required more time. I just missed that work. I had a Texas history podcast for a while before I did She Wore Black. All of this culminates in She Wore Black.

I still write nonfiction. I have a book coming out that's not formally announced yet. Everyone just needs to watch my author social media spaces!

Do you think becoming a librarian changed your relationship to books and reading in any way?

When I was little, I liked books—but because my mother grew up very poor, and Latinos were not allowed access to some of the same things, she really cherished books when she could get them. She and her siblings would seek them out and do everything they could to get ahold of [books], because people didn't want them reading.

She wanted to make sure that I had access—but part of her overcompensating was giving me assigned readings. A lot of times, I was forced to read things I didn't want to, because she thought I should be reading those things. Like biographies—I didn't care.

I mean, she still let me have all the Judy Blume and whatever else I wanted. I actually really liked Dickens when I was a kid, so I used to try to read him a lot. I really loved getting lost in all of that. But I had a love/hate relationship with reading when I was little.

It was just one of those things where schools make you read certain things, and so I would go in and out of being interested. The other thing I remember growing up—and this is no shade to librarians in general, it was probably just my personal experience—librarians didn't really help me. Had I had the opportunity to ask, “Hey, do you have anything with a unicorn in it?” I might have been a bigger fantasy reader. But I didn't even know there were books with unicorns in them.

I really just wanted to make sure that I tapped into kids, especially reluctant readers, to make sure they understood that it wasn't reading so much as they just hadn't found the right book for them.

I never wanted to make them feel like they had to like everything either, because that was the other thing Gen X had to deal with: “You're going to read this, and you're going to like it!” So we hated everything, because that's who we were. I just didn't want anyone to feel that way.

And then also, it's really empowering when people have information, which is why libraries are under attack.

When I listen to your show, there’s definitely a through line in the books you select. If you're going to a bookstore or looking at upcoming releases, what stands out as an Agatha Andrews book, or a She Wore Black book? What is immediately going to hook you?

I don't want to say a specific aesthetic, but I do like to swoon. And I like spooky things. But gosh, that's a tough question! I was trying to explain and describe my show to somebody the other day. Basically, it's Gothic, Gothic romance, and cozy fantasy.

I really am just intrigued by anything that offers and validates introspection. That can be the question of madness, [or] it could be forming small communities. I was an only child, and I was always lost in my head—that's one of the things that ghosts offer to me. There's this fantasy element to it, but it's not big dragons. It’s more like introspective, speculative things. And I love a good swoon.

I'm an only child, too! I didn't relate to other kids super easily, because I grew up around adults. It was just easier and more rewarding, in some ways, to get lost in a book, you know?

That's why stories that always intrigued me were things like The Secret Garden. It's kind of Gothic, but it's also pretty. [The main character] was a child, but she had the run of the entire estate, just getting lost and introspective while having a lot of independence, a lot of isolation. I guess that’s the other appeal of Gothic—isolation is a heavy theme.

That's one of the things that's interesting about the cozy fantasy I select—it’s small worlds or small communities.

I offered an opportunity for somebody to come on the show, which—I don't often reach out to folks. I usually have publicists reach out to me, and I pick from there because they know my taste and it's reliable. And so, I had never heard of this person, and I reached out to them, and they were like, “I saw that you had witches. No!” I was just like “Okay, well, just so you know, witches are almost always about female agency.”

The female voice is real important to me, and that's the other thing I try to highlight on the show. That's just my personal taste anyway. We've seen enough of the other perspective. What do we have to say? Those kinds of stories have always appealed to me.

I think horror has some of the loveliest men around—and also, there are times when I I feel like I get something different from your show, in the questions you ask or the things you pick up on. I think your lived experience poises you to see things from a different lens.

I think it's why I like to listen to so many different shows. Even if it's the same author talking about the same book, everyone picks up on something different.

The next guest I have is Heather Fawcett, and we're going to be talking about Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter. It may not make sense to other people, to have Johnny Compton talking about his horror noir, Dead First, and then to have Heather Fawcett talking about her cozy fantasy. But anyone who listens to the kinds of conversations that we have will recognize the through line.

One of my best friends just self-published her first romance novel, and she would never in a million years read the horror novels that I read. But we like a lot of the same things—they’re both genres of the body, and just being part of genre communities gives us so much common ground.

I feel like I have a romance era in my future. Maybe I just haven't found quite the right niche yet.

That's one of the things that appeals to me about Gothic romance and old school romantic suspense—you have both worlds in the same book. That's real exciting.

It's always funny to me when people say that they don't like romance within their horror, but then they'll talk about things like Crimson Peak. And I'm like, “You were still interested, even though that is a messed up storyline.” There are stakes whenever love is involved.

To talk about swooning, I just read Jamaica Inn for the first time recently. That scene where Jem comes up to Mary’s window? Such a swoony moment!

Isn't it great?

It's just wonderful.

I've explained this recently to a few people, but the thing about Gothic romance, and Gothic in general, is that it’s written for the id. It's written for the writer and for the reader to just tap into whatever parts of our brains we might not be allowed to [access]. We might not be allowed to be interested in this kind of thing, or we might not be allowed to react emotionally.

When it comes to social norms, Gothic doesn't care. Gothic does whatever it wants.

I was just talking about this with Neil McRobert, from Talking Scared. [Episode 267: Wuthering Heights with Agatha Andrews]

This is very off the wall, but I'm interested in knowing: Are you by chance a fan of Dark Shadows?

Oh my gosh, YES!

I thought you might be!

Let's back up. Dark Shadows—the black and white, Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows—I used to watch that at my grandma's house after school, because they would show reruns when I was in elementary school. My mom loved it at growing up, so I was able to say, “Hey mom, I watched this!” I loved it.

And then when I was sixteen, there was one season of Dark Shadows that was on TV, and it won an Emmy and everything. I think it was on Sundays, because I feel like I watched 120 Minutes after. (For anybody who's Gen X, you'll know that was the alternative scene on MTV.) Anyway, it was a night where there was competition for ratings. It didn't get high ratings, but it was critically recognized anyway.

I was glued. I was hooked. Like, “Nobody bother me.” It was a whole vibe. I did not watch the Tim Burton movie. It did not look like anything that I would like, and so I just didn't watch it. But anyway, they're all on Prime right now.

My husband and I started watching Dark Shadows the first week of the pandemic, right at the beginning. For the past six years now, we'll dip in, watch thirty or forty episodes, take a break for a while, come back. We've just been making our way through.

I just love it so much. And I never meet anyone who watches it! I keep trying to tell my friends they're missing out. It is so good.

Over there on my bookshelves, I have some copies of the original vintage books. They’re midcentury and definitely Gothic and swoony.

What's interesting, though, is that Barnabas Collins didn't come on the scene until season two or three. The first season is just [Victoria Winters] going to a remote house and doing all the Gothic-y things there.

And then they introduce Barnabas Collins, who's the vampire, and he becomes an incredibly popular character. Then they just start throwing all kinds of werewolves and every Universal monster at her and it’s fantastic.

It's so great. I just had a feeling this was probably my best opportunity to meet another Dark Shadows fan.

But have you seen the ‘90s show?

No, I never have!

It is like, swoony, billowy white nightgowns, in the fog. It is all the things.

I will definitely be watching that.

I’ll conclude with the same question that you ask on the podcast: For people in Austin or visiting Austin, what's your go-to indie bookstore?

Well, it's difficult because I could name fifteen spectacular bookstores off the top of my head. But the one that will always have my heart, of course, is the biggest independent bookstore in the country: BookPeople.

That one means a lot to me. When I first came to UT, as an only child who'd never lived away from her parents, the first night I went straight to BookPeople. I knew that bookstore already, because my friends and I would come to Austin all the time, and it was just a home away from home for me.

That was in the ‘90s, and it has never stopped being a home away from home. I've always loved that bookstore, and in fact, I'm going to be there next week with Johnny Compton! I'm in conversation with him. It's just a very special place.

You will find some great bookstores in the most random places. I don't know if this bookstore is still there, but one of the times I went to Vegas, many moons ago, I came across a used bookstore there that was all used, hardcover first editions. It was this wonderful, super stocked bookstore in the middle of Las Vegas, that was all hardcover first editions, and they were all 50% off the cover price. I found the best things there.

You never know what you’ll find! Always look for a bookstore when you go out of town.

I’m delighted to share that I’ll be speaking with Yah Yah Scholfield on Friday! Their debut novel, On Sundays She Picked Flowers, really wowed me earlier this year, and I’m curious to learn more about the novel’s gore, gender exploration, and the uniquely tragic horror of twisted family legacies. We’ll delve into the Georgia swamp together in next week’s newsletter.

In the meantime: My Macabre Daily debut is live! I reviewed Catriona Ward’s Nowhere Burning in a bit more detail than I’ve previously shared. I’m currently working on a review of You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado, and that should be on the site soon.

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.