From Corporate Cubicles to Haunted Streets: How Cynthia Pelayo Became Chicago’s Queen of Horror Literature

Cynthia Pelayo doesn’t just write horror — she lives it. From the flicker of streetlights on a foggy Chicago night to the ghosts that whisper through the city’s alleys, Pelayo turns the soul of her hometown into stories that linger long after you’ve turned the last page.

Before the awards, before the literary acclaim, and before Stephen King himself took notice, Pelayo was climbing the corporate ladder — trapped in a world that felt more frightening than any fiction. But Chicago, with its grit, its ghosts, and its pulse, refused to let her go. So, she walked away from the boardroom and into the shadows, emerging as one of the most powerful new voices in modern horror.

Pelayo’s journey is a testament to resilience and reinvention. As the first Latina in history to win a Bram Stoker Award, her name has become synonymous with boundary-breaking storytelling. Her books — from Children of Chicago to The Shoemaker’s Magician — blend fairy-tale structure with real-world grief, violence, and the haunting beauty of urban life. “I write about the things we don’t want to see,” she’s said. “But they’re there — in every story, every neighborhood, every legend.”

Her early work, Lotería — written as her MFA thesis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — reemerged in 2023 to critical acclaim, with Esquire naming it one of the Best Horror Books of the Year. Each title since has solidified her place as a voice that refuses to be ignored: Santa Muerte, The Missing, and the award-winning poetry collection Crime Scene, which earned her a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry.

But Pelayo’s stories are more than monsters and murder. They’re Chicago’s reflection — a city that survives, rebuilds, and believes in the strange and the sacred. Through her novels and poems, she captures the resilience of communities that find hope in the dark. “Chicagoans are built different,” she says. “We’ve all seen ghosts. Some are real. Some just live inside us.”

Her newest novel, Vanishing Daughters (Thomas & Mercer), draws inspiration from Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, twisting the familiar fairy tale into something raw and chilling — a modern gothic echoing the anxieties of our time.

With degrees in journalism, writing, and literature — and now working toward a PhD — Pelayo isn’t just creating horror; she’s defining it for a new generation. Her works have been featured in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The LA Review of Books, while her teaching roles at StoryStudio Chicago and residencies like Ragdale keep her connected to the next wave of storytellers ready to haunt the page.

For Cynthia Pelayo, the real horror isn’t what’s hiding under the bed — it’s what we bury inside ourselves. And in a city built on stories, she’s making sure none of them stay buried for long.

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