Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite on May 25, 1967) is an American author born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Early in Brite's career, she was best known for writing gothic and horror novels and short stories. Her trademarks have included using gay men as main characters, graphic sexual descriptions in the works, and an often wry treatment of gruesome events. Some of her better known novels include Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (1993), and Exquisite Corpse (1996); she has also released short fiction collections: Swamp Foetus (also published as Wormwood, 1993), Are You Loathsome Tonight? (also published as Self-Made Man, 1998), Wrong Things (with Caitlin R. Kiernan, 2001), and The Devil You Know (2003). She has also written a biography about singer Courtney Love (1996), which was officially "unauthorized" but is widely known to have been done at Love's suggestion and with her cooperation.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s Brite has moved away from horror fiction and gothic themes while still writing about gay (but more realistic) characters. Her critically acclaimed Liquor novels -- Liquor (2004), Prime (2005), and Soul Kitchen (2006) -- are dark comedies set in the New Orleans restaurant world. (Brite has been in a committed relationship for 17 years with Chris DeBarr, chef of The Delachaise in New Orleans.) The Value of X (2002) depicts the beginning of the careers of the protagonists of the Liquor series--Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John "Rickey" Rickey; other stories, including several in her most recent collection The Devil You Know and the forthcoming novella D*U*C*K, chronicle events in the lives of the extended Stubbs family, a Catholic clan whose roots are sunk deep in the traditional culture of New Orleans. Brite plans to write at least three more novels in the Liquor series, tentatively titled Dead Shrimp Blues, Hurricane Stew, and Double Shot. In November 2006 Brite signed a deal with Subterranean Press to release a fourth short story collection titled Antediluvian Tales.
One interesting and popular aspect of Brite's work is her use of recurring characters in works that are not necessarily "series" or "sequels": friends/bandmates Steve and Ghost (Lost Souls, "Angels," "How to Get Ahead in New York," "America"); her fluidly gendered alter ego Dr. Brite, the coroner of New Orleans ("Monday's Special," "O Death, Where Is Thy Spatula?", "Marisol," "Crown of Thorns," "Wound Man and Horned Melon Go to Hell"); and most recently longtime companions/chefs Rickey and G-man (The Value of X, Liquor, Prime, Soul Kitchen, D*U*C*K, numerous short stories). About her fondness for revisiting characters, Brite has said, "If I really get obsessed with a character or set of characters, it's usually not enough for me to write about them once; I like to revisit them over the course of time, at different periods in their lives, learning new things about them, getting to know them better and better over the course of several stories." Of her various recurring characters, Brite has stated that she is finished writing about Steve and Ghost and suspects she may be done with Dr. Brite as well. She plans to continue writing about Rickey, G-man, and the Stubbs family.
Brite has often stated that, while she will allow some of her work to be optioned for film under the right circumstances, she has little interest in movies and is not overly eager to see her work filmed. In 1999, her short story "The Sixth Sentinel" (filmed as "The Dream Sentinel") comprised one segment of episode 209 of The Hunger, a short-lived horror anthology series on Showtime. Of all her books, only Exquisite Corpse is currently under option, by producer Simon Rumley.
Born a biological female, Brite has written and talked much about her gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. She self-identifies almost completely as male rather than female but makes no attempt to dress or appear male and does not expect to be referred to as "he".Brite is comfortable with the term "non-operative transsexual".
She lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia prior to returning to New Orleans in 1993.
Brite and DeBarr run a de facto cat rescue and have, at any given time, between fifteen and twenty cats. Photos of the various felines are available on the "Cats" page of Brite's website.
During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Brite at first opted to stay at home, but she eventually left New Orleans and relocated 80 miles away to her mother's home in Mississippi. She used her blog to update her fans regarding the situation, including the unknown status of her house and many of her pets, [2] and in October 2005 became one of the first 70,000 New Orleanians to begin repopulating the city.
In the following months, Brite has been an outspoken and sometimes harsh critic of those who are leaving New Orleans for good. She was quoted in the New York Times and elsewhere as saying, in reference to those considering leaving, "If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life." (For text of entire speech, originally given at 2006's Banned Books Night, see Brite's journal entry for September 25, 2006.)
Poster Comment:
Compared to splatter-meister Brite, Stephen King is a wuss. King, however, noted quite correctly one of Cho's main problems is that he wasn't creative -- just a dim-witted mass murderer who could only express himself through inept plays like "Richard McBeef."
I get the distinct impression unusual people -- strange ones, really -- can use their creativity and their art to keep themselves under control.
If Brite wasn't a writer, what would she be? What bad things could she possibly do?
"I had no point of view in my late teens and twenties, just a procreative urge and a self-destructive bent." - writer Douglas Clegg