Hollow Words
An intense love of stories fuels the imagination of Jonathan Edward Durham, author of the darkly fantastic Winterset Hollow.
In 2021, when Jonathan Edward Durham linked arms with a hybrid press to publish his debut novel, Winterset Hollow, he crossed his fingers and hoped for the best. In the five years since, the “shocking” response to the book wound up changing his life, almost entirely for the better.
Winterset Hollow is a darkly fantastic tale influenced by the books Durham loved as a child, like A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and Brian Jacques’ Redwall. Readers’ love of Winterset Hollow compelled Hachette’s Union Square & Co. to snatch up the book and release a second edition, with some gentle modifications of Durham’s choosing.
Durham, a Lehigh Valley native who spent a few years living in Philadelphia, spoke with us the morning after an in-store event at Looker Books in Coatesville. Among the news he shared: Readers can expect a second novel of his, to be published by Union Square in 2028, and a forthcoming collection of “dark, twisty stories,” with a TBD publication date.
Q&A
I was out with friends a few years ago, and one of them was talking about a tattoo she might get, based on a book that she loved. It turns out it was artwork from the first edition of Winterset Hollow. That kind of devotion to a book is difficult to capture. At what point did you realize you had a tiger by the tail with this book?
When I first had it published, nothing really happened. I didn’t have much of an internet presence at the time, and nobody read it besides friends and family. I thought the best way to get reviews was to give it out for free, so I reached out to as many bloggers and influencers and reviewers I could find and said, “I’d love to send you this.” One day somebody left a review in a Facebook group called Books of Horror. It engaged the group. Because of that review, a lot of people bought the book, and it sort of snowballed. … That was the start of it all. Literally that group of readers changed my life; it took me out of one place and put me in another.
The book is basically about a group of young or young-ish adults who visit the island where the author of their favorite children’s book lived. It’s a dark novel, crossing the line between fantasy and horror, so of course things go horribly and violently wrong. Where did the story come from?
I grew up a latchkey kid, so I had a lot of time to myself and a lot of movies and books to keep me company, so I grew up with an intense love of stories. At one point in my life, before I wrote the book, I was a frustrated screenwriter in L.A., sitting in my apartment with nothing to do. I had gotten to a strange creative place, wondering if my love of stories had led me to the wrong place. I was thinking: Maybe this isn’t what I should be doing with my life. One of those stories I really loved as a child was Winnie the Pooh. All those animals had massive problems, for whatever reason, so I was sitting around and thinking about those stories, wondering: How would those animals feel if someone had written a book about them, how would they feel if they didn’t like the book that was written, and how would they feel about the person who wrote the book and even the people who read it?
You’ve been embraced by the horror community. What has it been like for you to be mentioned in the same sentence, and to share the same stage, with some of the biggest names in the genre, like Clay McLeod Chapman, Adam Cesare, and Christopher Golden?
It’s a little surreal, and nothing short of an honor, to be in the same cohort with all these people, who are amazing and brilliant and kind and generous and all that. I’m on the first of my books, so sometimes it feels like I’m not supposed to be there [with them]. It’s been a wild ride, and it took me a long time to get there—40 years or so.
You’re originally from the Lehigh Valley. Tell me about what it was like to come of age in this neck of the woods—good, bad, ugly, etc.
I was born in the Allentown area. I moved to Philly after college, then went to L.A., then moved to northern Virginia. One day a year and a half ago, my husband said, “Hey, this job opportunity opened up, and it sounds like a wonderful gig. It’s in Easton.” Lo and behold, we now live in Allentown, a mile from where I grew up. Moving back was easier than I expected. … Spending as much time as I did in L.A., I very much missed the East Coast. There was a period of reckoning when I first came back, but this is where I’m from and that’s OK. I love wearing my Eagles jacket and being able to talk to anyone about the game. There’s a built-in sense of community I forgot was here.
Some people know you not just for your book but also for your humor, through your presence on Instagram and Facebook. Has humor always come naturally to you?
Whether it’s the funny stuff I write on the internet and what I write in long form, they’re different parts of me, and it’s important for me to express both those things to feel balanced. Sometimes I need a break from the darker things, and sometimes I need a break from being funny. I need both of those things in my life.
I was and still am a very private person. I’m not very good at connecting with the world, so it was a radical shift for me to come to terms with that. I’ve become something of a public figure, and I was not always very comfortable with myself … and there’s still a lot of residual hesitancy about letting people into my life, letting people see who I am. At this point I’m pretty comfortable with it. So far it’s been a net positive.
Photo by Eric Forberger
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life, November 2026
