Zombie Writers' Conference, or How to Get a Book Deal
Author’s Note: this story was originally written for and shared at Bread Loaf’s ad hoc horror reading, Dead Loaf, to riotous response.
In the center of campus of the Upper Crust School of Writing, in a circular theater nestled into the side of Sweetbread Mountain in rural New England, Poppy Brioche, Director of Writers Programing, approaches the spotlit podium. As she speaks, groans from the surrounding woods are growing louder.
“Welcome to Upper Crust 2025,” she says, “the centennial of the most prestigious and selective writer’s conference in the country!”
The crowd of writers claps and stomps their feet—loud, but not too loud.
“A little bit of housekeeping as we get started,” she continues, “there are zombies in the woods again this year.”
Murmurs roll through the crowd.
“Oh great!”
“Not again!”
“They were really bad last year!”
Another groan, louder, maybe offended, echoes from outside the theater.
“But don’t worry,” she says resolutely. “The conference is going to continue on schedule and as planned. Be zombie wise. But even more important—be on time!”
Candy Dammit, a fiction writer, peaks nervously out the rickety doors of the theater, swung open to let in the cool New England evening breeze. She sees a man, wearing a tweed jacket with patches on it, aiming a rifle at a point behind the theater, outside her line of sight. He shoots, but over the groans of the crowd and the groans in the woods, the sound is lost. The man hops on a hunter green ATV and disappears silently into the woods. Candy elbows Dominic Okay, the chubby poet sitting next to her, and juts her chin toward the door.
“I think that guy just shot someone… or something,” she says.
Dominic puts a finger over his mouth to silence her.
“Poppy is talking,” he says.
At the podium, Poppy continues, “Before I release you to make your way to The Barn for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s lecture on Mary Gaitskill’s short story Secretary, here are two poems by Czesław Miłosz about potatoes…”
Dominic and Candy walk shoulder to shoulder through the thick, damp woods toward The Barn, picking their knees up high to avoid ticks in the grass. Candy’s eyes dart around nervously.
“I don’t feel so good about Upper Crust this year, do you Dominic? I mean, is being a writer worth death by zombies?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not missing the chance to meet Maggie Gyllenhaal,” he says.
“There’s a zombie right there!” screams Candy, pointing at a shadowy, inhuman figure, shooting hostile looks and lunging awkwardly at the writers walking by, then bunching his body up unnaturally against a 600-year-old hemlock tree.
“That’s not a zombie,” says Dominic, “That’s Craig. He’s in my workshop.” He scrunches his nose up as if he smells something sour, “He writes in iambic pentameter.”
He puts a hand on Candy’s shoulder.
“Look,” he tells her with a grounding gaze. “With my half-finished poetry manuscript, I’m bound to get a book deal this year. I need to talk to as many faculty as possible, zombies or—”
But before he can say “no zombies,” he sees Colson Whitehead walking back to the faculty housing. Candy is compulsively clipping and unclipping the barrettes in her hair.
“I’ll catch up with you,” he tells her, running towards Colson.
In The Barn, as night is falling, Maggie Gyllenhaal stands at the podium, about to give her anticipated talk on Mary Gaitskill. Candy, in the audience, is taking deep breaths, clipping and reclipping her barrettes.
“It’s so good to be back at Upper Crust!” Maggie says. “I’ve missed everything about it.” She frowns a little and clears her throat, “… except the treeline.”
There’s a hush in the crowd as Maggie smiles again and begins. “Now, the character Debby in Mary Gaitskill’s Secretary is …”
But she doesn’t even finish her first sentence when through the Barn doors lumber in two zombies with unnaturally steely blue eyes.
Candy stands up amidst the screams, clutching her hair. “Is that Danez Smith, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award?” but her voice is lost in the commotion as zombie Danez drags Maggie Gyllenhaal out of the theater, followed by a zombie that looks oddly like Carmen Maria Machado. As Maggie is ripped in two, the crowd erupts into chaos. Without thinking, Candy runs towards Fig Tree, the faculty housing on the edge of campus.
On the wraparound porch of Fig, Dominic is watching Colson Whitehead, winner of two Pulitzer prizes in poetry, take a pull of a cherry vape. Dominic hands him his own vape with a dramatic bow.
“Try this, Mr. Whitehead. It’s ju ju jelly.”
Colson takes a pull, and Dominic sits down next to him, smiling expectantly.
“Dominic!”
Dominic swivels his neck around to see Candy, disheveled, running across the grass waving her arms at him, her thick curls now free of all barrettes and bouncing wildly across her eyes. Dominic turns his back to her, hoping she’ll take the hint.
“Dominic!” she yells again. With an apologetic groan, Dominic asks Colson to hold that thought and gets up to meet Candy, his face set in a disapproving look.
“I just saw Maggie Gyllenhaal get eaten by a zombie that kind of looked like Carmen Maria Machado!” Candy yells. She is out of breath, searching frantically in her pockets for more barrettes.
“I’m trying to have a conversation here,” Dominic says between gritted teeth.
“Dominic, this is death we’re talking about!”
He nods, bites his lip, looks back at Colson, who is taking puffs of ju ju jelly and looking bored. “Candy, this is Colson fucking Whitehead. I’ll see you at the campfire later, okay?”
Candy drops her arms helplessly, scans around for someplace to hide until morning, when she would call a $100 Uber to take her into the nearest town and figure out how to get home from there. But something catches her eye — out towards the back of campus, where the ATVs are always coming and going, she sees it: the treeline, and suddenly she remembers Maggie’s cryptic comment before she was torn apart by zombie Danez. Through one of the open paths into the woods, she sees the same guy from outside the theater, with the tweed blazer and the shotgun. On his ATV, he disappears into the trees.
She’d always assumed they were groundskeepers, but now that she looked closer, she realized they never had any landscaping equipment with them. Pushing back her shoulders, she follows the ATV’s tracks. In the dark woods, it’s silent. Not even the crickets are out. It’s only a few hundred yards she walks before she comes upon a clearing with a large stone platform in the middle. She covers her mouth to keep from screaming and hides behind a hemlock.
In the clearing, strapped to the platform, is Ocean Vuong, the recipient of the 2014 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and author of The Emperor of Gladness. Tracy K. Smith, former poet Laureate and author of Life on Mars, is reluctantly strapping wires to Ocean’s head while the ATV guy, a literary agent from Viking, stands over Ocean reading him a book contract. Ocean tries to read it for himself, but the agent snatches it away. Ocean closes his eyes and begins reciting Brigit Pegeen Kelly poems from memory.
The agent raises his voice over Ocean’s recitation, “Author agrees that any future work based on the same universe or characters shall be offered first to Publisher…Author grants Publisher all rights in and to the Work, including but not limited to print, digital, audio, film, television, translation, merchandising, and future technologies…This agreement shall remain in effect in perpetuity and cover all media now known or hereafter devised in the known universe...”
Sweating and shifting on her feet, Tracy yells, “Just do it, Ocean! It only hurts for a second!”
Able to resist no longer, Ocean’s head does that Jacob’s Ladder kind of exorcist spin before he rises from the platform groaning, his eyes the same steely blue as Danez Smith’s, and signs on the dotted line.
Candy can no longer contain the scream that’s been rising in her throat. Throwing all restraint aside she yells, “Ocean – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous changed my life!”
Ocean, Tracy and the agent turn toward her. A moment of quiet confusion hangs between them. Then, dropping all her barrettes, Candy runs towards the agent’s ATV, hops on and drives off like a madwoman down the same path she came in on, trying desperately to reach the main road. She sees the glow of the campfire and pulls up to it. Beside it, Dominic is waxing poetic to Colson Whitehead about how iambic pentameter can actually work in certain modern contexts.
“The ATV workers are agents!” screams Candy. “They’re making zombies out of writers so they’ll sign commercially viable but artistically questionable book contracts!”
Dominic’s eyes widen in shock, “What about book contracts?”
Candy catches her breath, speaks slowly. “Contracts! Zombifying writers!”
Dominic’s face glistens under the full moon. Candy hears yelling behind her. Ocean Vuong, Olzmann, and a zombie that looks like Chen Chen have broken through the treeline and are running toward her, yelling and carrying copies of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities.
“Hop on, Dom!” She screams, but Dominic is already running towards Ocean and Olzmann, pulling his half-finished manuscript from his messenger bag and screaming something about movie options. Ocean tackles Dominic and they tussle in the damp clover.
“Oh Dom,” Candy cries. She tries to restart her car, but it’s too late. Colson Whitehead, tired of sitting by the fire alone, has come to examine what all the yelling is about. Seeing Candy trying to flee a group of faculty and agents, he pulls the keys from the ignition, pulls Candy off her motorcar, pins her arms to her sides, and bear hugs her while simultaneously trying not to touch her or breathe on her or make her uncomfortable in any way.
“I can see how awkward this is for you, Mr. Whitehead,” Candy says. Colson, with a huge sigh of relief, drops his hold on her and asks if she’ll just go peacefully to spare him any more social contact. She nods, and they walk towards Poppy’s office together.
Candy stares down at the worn gray carpet of the Upper Crust Inn, where Poppy has set up her office. She shakes her head solemnly at Candy.
“I’m sorry, Candy,” she says. “We just don’t allow students to ride the ATV’s. For health and safety reasons. You understand” She waves her hand to a staff member. “Get your things. We’ll arrange a car to take you to the airport.”
In the car, Candy leans her head against the window, exhausted. As the driver pulls away, out by the tree line, she sees Dominic, eyes a steely blue, stepping and groaning alone in the mist, a freshly signed book deal in his hands, and she can’t help but wonder if one day, if she asked really nicely, he would agree to blurb her book.