SOURCE: Gaiman, Neil, and Ray Olson. “The Booklist Interview: Neil Gaiman.” Booklist 98, no. 22 (August 2002): 1949.

In the following brief interview, Gaiman discusses whether his stories may accurately be categorized as horror fiction.

English fantasist Neil Gaiman's big breakthrough was the spooky graphic novel series Sandman, one of the most lauded works of its kind. He spent eight years writing it, and it keeps on selling—all 10 volumes' worth. It often looks like horror fiction, and so, at times, do Gaiman's novels Neverwhere, Stardust, and American Gods. His new book, Coraline, is a children's novel about a girl who visits an eerie parallel world in which she meets a sinister alternative mother. Still, debate persists as to whether Gaiman really is a horror author. At the delightful April 2002 World Horror Convention in Chicago—within relatively easy reach of his home in western Wisconsin—Gaiman reflected on that issue and expanded...