Standout Authors Unbound amplifies the voices of underrepresented writers and indie authors to disrupt an industry that rewards conformity over authenticity.
What if the thing you think is holding you back actually makes you stand out?
Angela Yuriko Smith figured that out in first grade.
She read a comic where the villain didn’t need strength or weapons to defeat every superhero in the room. He used words. And something clicked for a kid who felt powerless, out of place, and a little too weird for Wyoming.
“He who controls the words, controls the world.”
She didn’t want to be a super villain. She wanted her voice to direct her life and her stories to open doors. And they did. Over and over again.
In this conversation, Angela, a two-time Bram Stoker Award winner, former president of the Horror Writers Association, editor, publisher, and community builder, talks about what it actually means to own your creative life from the inside out.
Highlights
A letter to the editor changed everything.
Before the awards, the magazine, and the community, there was a simple letter.
Angela wrote to the editor of a publication she genuinely admired, not with a pitch or an ask, but with real, specific appreciation for what they were building.
That letter turned into one of the best writing gigs of her career, leading to interviews with people like Joan Jett and a trajectory she never saw coming.
“I have gotten so many places by just connecting to the person behind the publication and just saying a compliment, a genuine compliment.”
We forget that publishers and editors are writers too. They’re humans who rarely hear thank you. A little genuine connection goes a long way, and Angela’s whole career is proof.
Writing for a newspaper taught her to deal with rejection.
Working in newspapers teaches you something brutal and useful.
You can pour yourself into a story, spend hours crafting something that matters, and watch it get pulled for a tire ad without a second thought.
Angela says that experience wired her differently when it came to rejection in publishing.
“When I get rejected, I don’t really worry about it. It’s just not the right time. Not the right story. It’s not a big deal.”
She didn’t always feel this way. A critique group in high school was so brutal it stopped her from writing poetry for years. Now she has a Bram Stoker for poetry.
The lesson she carries: be careful with other people’s work, and don’t let anyone’s harsh words become the final word on yours.
Your weird is your work.
Angela was writing Gothic horror the way everyone else wrote Gothic horror.
Then her mentor, Bryan Thao Worra, stopped her cold.
He pointed out that she was mixed Asian, obsessed with tech, and drawn to science fiction. So why was she writing stories about babysitters in haunted houses?
She took his advice and wrote “Vanilla Rice,” a story rooted in her own experience of mixed identity, belonging, and the painful things families pass down. It sold. And she’s sold nearly every story since.
“Once I started putting what I love and what excites me into my work, it just took off. I think that is the key. Putting what makes us different into our work because we’re excited about it, and we pass that excitement on through the story.”
Horror is hopeful.
Angela talks about horror the way most people talk about therapy.
Because in a real sense, that’s what it does. It lets you rehearse the worst. It puts you in the scenario, makes you figure out what you’d do, and sends you out the other side a little less afraid.
There’s science behind it. During COVID, research found that horror fans were among the most emotionally resilient people. They weren’t caught off guard by being locked inside or facing existential uncertainty. They had already practiced.
“Horror is the genre that faces the fear and then tries to show us how to empower ourselves so that we don’t fall prey to that fear.”
100 people who actually care beats 100,000 who scroll past.
Angela had a post go viral once.
Millions of people saw it. And she sold almost nothing because of it.
Then she built a community, almost by accident, by dropping a few magazine staff members into a platform called Mighty Networks and forgetting about it. When she came back, 80 people had shown up and were talking, supporting each other, buying each other’s books.
“I would rather have 100 people that actually want to interact with me, that actually appreciate what I’m writing, than 100,000 empty likes.”
Social media is designed to farm your attention, not build your audience. The Authortunities she built does something different. It creates trust. And trust is what makes people actually buy.
Creation is sacred. Even when it’s messy.
Angela describes being a creator not as a job or a hobby, but as a state of being.
Her upcoming book, Art Not Arson, grew from a 52-week Substack series about the creative journey. The idea is simple and deep at the same time: we are going to create no matter what. The question is whether we build something or burn something down with that energy.
“We can build a bridge or burn the bridge, but we’re going to do something by the act of being human.”
Every creative person she’s met is proof. The drive doesn’t go away. It just needs somewhere to go.
We control our own destiny.
Angela has an eighth grade education. She left school twice. She’s been told she couldn’t do things because of her gender, her background, her degree, her age.
But she’s on her third bucket list.
Her message isn’t that the path is easy. It’s that the path is yours.
“I’ve constantly had people tell me why I couldn’t do something. And I have done everything that I wanted to do.”
What we call “I can’t” is almost always “I’m choosing not to.” As uncomfortable as that may sound, it’s also liberating. It means we have the ability to make our own choices.
When we stop waiting for permission, we realize we were holding the key the whole time.
Closing Reflection
Angela is proof that a weird kid from Wyoming with an eighth grade education and a love of monsters can become an award-winning author, a magazine publisher, a community builder, and a voice worth listening to.
She didn’t do it by being like everyone else. She did it by leaning into exactly who she is.
If you’re sitting on a story, a quirk, a weird obsession, or a genre that people raise their eyebrows at, this episode is your sign to keep going.
And if you’re an author with a story to share, leave a comment and tell us about your work. You deserve the spotlight too.
Thank you Margaret Williams, MS, ACC, Sophia Chang, LindaAnn LoSchiavo, and many others for tuning into my live video with Angela Yuriko Smith!
