Eliza Clark on True Crime, Female Rage, and Writing the Uncomfortable Truth

Jen Eastwood

30 Oct 2025 — 1 min read

Exploring how literature, media, and morality collide in stories that dare to empathise with the monstrous.

In this episode of Sick Sad Lit, I sit down with one of the most provocative and fearless voices in contemporary fiction: Eliza Clark. Author of Boy Parts, Penance, and She’s Always Hungry, Clark writes with scalpel-like precision about modern alienation.

Nobody captures the digital grotesque quite like her.

We talk about the ethics of obsession, the cultural hunger for true crime, and how fiction can humanise—or implicate—those we call monstrous. Eliza shares her thoughts on revenge narratives, power fantasies, and the moral tension at the heart of storytelling. We also discuss how fan fiction and digital spaces shaped her creative evolution, the blurred line between empathy and horror, and what it means to write characters who do unspeakable things.

If you love unhinged narrators, moral ambiguity, literary horror, or stories that leave you slightly unnerved, then this episode is for you. 🖤

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

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Exploring how literature, media, and morality collide in stories that dare to empathise with the monstrous.

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R. O. Kwon on Writing What Terrifies You