Evangelia Kindinger: Reading Supernatural Fiction as Regional Fiction: Of “Vamps,” “Supes” and Places that “Suck”

Evangelia Kindinger: Reading Supernatural Fiction as Regional Fiction: Of “Vamps,” “Supes” and Places that “Suck”

Bon Temps, Forks, Tulsa: recent vampire fiction has transformed these apparently “off-the-map” and rural places to sites of supernatural adventures and exotic characters. If “the monster exists only to be read,” if it is “an embodiment of a certain cultural moment – of a time, a feeling, and a place” (Cohen, Monster Culture 4), then we need to read the places in which vampires are narrated. In this paper, I argue that authors such as Stephenie Meyer, Charlaine Harris and P.C. and Kristin Cast tell regional vampire tales, rooting the cultural figure “vampire” in specific regional settings that result in the vampires‘ domestication and Americanization.