Gilbert Cruz

And so is Whale Fall, you know, and so in its own way.

And I'm curious about how you, when's the like the push and pull when you're like more viscera, less viscera, squishier, less squishy, you know, like how do you, how do you, how do you hold that line?

How do you make that balance?

I went down this little haunted path because...

You know, you just won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Pulitzer Prize is not necessarily a space or most literary prizes, to be honest, in my opinion, where speculative fiction, certainly not horror, is often found.

And I'm curious what that means, what a prize like this means for the type of work that you do and others do in this space, which means a lot to a lot of people.

Without asking you to totally talk about a different book, you just published a book this year about the director George Romero, about his breakthrough horror film, Night of the Living Dead.

And part of the title is this phrase that you just said, How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life.

You just said horror saved your life.

What do you mean by that?

I wanted to ask you about someone who's also been on the Book Review podcast.

He was on here talking about Frankenstein, which is one of your collaborators, Guillermo del Toro, who in his own way, he talked about, you know, horror in the movie space.

Like this is a guy whose movies have been nominated for Best Picture.

This is an artist who has brought this formerly disreputable genre to the heights of the Academy.

I wonder how you think about your work with him and what the two of you are doing in your own sort of different spaces.

Well, he is a Best Picture winner.

You have won the Pulitzer Prize, Daniel, for your novel, Angel Down.

Incredible work.

Congratulations.