Research and pedagogical interest in Grand-Guignol and popular horror performance at the University of South Wales has led to the commissioned creation of an annual public Halloween event for a council in Wales. In 2015, the event took place at a Nature Reserve with the theme of ‘Werewolves’. This article gives an account of this Practice-as-Research project, in which a large ensemble developed skills in various areas: writers investigated the lycanthropic folklore and culture of Wales and beyond; performers trained in storytelling and physical performance; and a technical and stage management team facilitated the overall experience. This article gives a detailed account of the cultural context, creative process and final production of the 2015 ‘Werewolves’ event. In so doing, it demonstrates how an ensemble working intensively on a focused project with a willing audience can present an example of a negotiated horror world through which the seeming oxymoron of a ‘brand new ancient legend’ can be inaugurated.

Read ‘Brand New Ancient Legends’: Creating Werewolves for a Welsh Halloween

This article examines LGBTQ fans’ on-going frustration with the appropriation of queer narratives, or ‘queer-coding’, in contemporary depictions of werewolves in popular media and fans’ attempts to reclaim the werewolf as an explicitly queer figure through the medium of same-sex fanfiction. Focusing on two of the most popular fandoms featuring lycanthropic characters, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and MTV’s Teen Wolf, this article explores both fan reactions to canonical developments within these texts and statements from the texts’ author(s) pertaining to queerness, as well as pieces of slash fiction from both fandoms featuring werewolves. In hopes of better articulating and unveiling fans’ frustrated desire not only for better queer representation in fantasy texts, but also for more complex re-articulations of queer monstrosity, this article will interrogate the interplay between fan and author and look at the cultural work lycanthropic slash fiction performs.

Read Becoming The Monster: Queer Monstrosity and the Reclamation of the Werewolf in Slash Fandom