Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers

"Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" is a 2015 urban fantasy/horror story by Alyssa Wong. It was first published in Nightmare magazine.

Synopsis

Jenny is a magical being living in New York City, where she feeds on the negative emotions and thoughts of the people she meets on dating sites. When her latest date's negativity is much stronger than she had anticipated, she finds that lesser negativity no longer satisfies her, and she begins seeking out worse and worse situations.

Reception

"Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story of 2015[1] and the 2016 World Fantasy Award—Short Fiction,[2] and was a finalist for the 2015 Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction.[3] Kirkus Reviews described it as "an innovative twist on the vampire mythos."[4] Tangent Online commended the story's "premise and (...) narrative voice", as well as its prose, but overall faulted it for being "watered down" and "longer than (...) it needed to be."[5]

References

  1. ^ Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved October 17, 2017
  2. ^ 2016 World Fantasy Awards Winners, at Locus; published October 30, 2016; retrieved October 17, 2017
  3. ^ Past Bram Stoker Nominees & Winners Archived 2017-02-02 at the Wayback Machine, at the Horror Writers Association; retrieved October 17, 2017
  4. ^ THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman, reviewed at Kirkus Reviews; published June 15, 2017; retrieved October 17, 2017
  5. ^ Nightmare #37, October 2015, reviewed by Nicky Magas, at Tangent Online; published November 5, 2015; retrieved October 17, 2017