In the Mountain’s Shadow follows an old woman who ventures into the unforgiving wilderness, where she navigates starvation, isolation, trauma, and violence, encountering both animalistic kindness in a wolf and horrifying brutality in other humans. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration for In the Mountain’s Shadow came from many places. I was influenced by Japanese tales of ubasute, in which the elderly were allegedly left to die in the mountains; a haunting mythos that speaks to how societies often discard those they no longer find useful.

Most importantly, though, Park’s story is rooted, for me, in the image of the old witch in the woods – not as a villain, but as someone forged by abandonment, survival, and memory.

This blend of ritual, horror, and grief felt like something that needed to be written.

What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?

Humans are endlessly fascinating…because of our capacity for reason, belief, and perseverance; because of how often those things contradict each other. We can convince ourselves of almost anything, sometimes to survive, sometimes to justify, sometimes just because we need meaning.

But what I find most remarkable is our need to tell stories. Sometimes we do it to connect, sometimes to escape, and sometimes for no real reason at all…the endlessly complex impulse to create. That instinct, that emotional transmission through narrative, is what makes fiction so powerful. The written word allows us to explore what it means to be alive in a way that’s both intimate and limitless.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

I was drawn to the absence of older women as central figures in fiction—especially as active agents of violence, resilience, or transformation. I wanted to explore the idea of the “female monster” and how societal neglect often shapes that archetype.

What is the next story that you’re writing, and when will it be published?

I’ve got two in the works right now, and I’m hoping to publish sometime next year. One is a story about invading aliens and the way we experience otherness—how we react to what doesn’t belong, and what that says about us. The other is a story that explores the dangers of falling in love when identity, memory, and desire are unstable.

I tend to write more than one at a time, it helps give me a much-needed break from some of the darker material I tend to gravitate toward; it also allows me the freedom to break through genre and write whatever I feel like, whether that’s sci-fi, horror, or something quieter.

My other two published works include Razorblade, a dystopian western about the consequences of taking what doesn’t belong to you, and Fragmentations, a short story collection that plays with form and iterates on the puzzle of the human condition.

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