Five Questions with Author Rebekah Faubion

Rebekah Faubion is one of those writers for whom storytelling isn’t just a job, it’s a reflex. A queer author and screenwriter living in Los Angeles, she shifts effortlessly from steamy sapphic rom-coms like The Lovers and The Sun and the Moon to darker territory. Her Young Adult Thriller Lost Girls of Hollow Lake hits shelves January 27th, 2026, with her adult horror debut What a Nightmare arriving later that fall. Influenced by filmmakers like Diablo Cody, Karyn Kusama, and Coralie Fargeat, as well as a wave of groundbreaking women in horror fiction, Faubion writes with a cinematic edge and a deep love for the genre.

The path that led her here wasn’t straightforward; she was a Texas kid acting out stories before she learned to put them on the page, later finding her creative spark again during the YA boom in New York. But ask her why she keeps going now, and she’ll tell you it’s simple: she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. Storytelling is her anchor, her way of making sense of the world, and with two big releases in 2026, she’s clearly just getting started.

Here she is, answering my Five W’s.

My novels are heavily influenced by my background in screenwriting and my love movies—especially horror movies.

One of my all-time favorite horror movies is JENNIFER’S BODY, which is written by Diablo Cody, and directed by the incomparable Karyn Kusama. Karen is a force in the horror and queer filmmaking space and she even directed two episodes of Yellowjackets, which is a major inspiration for my novel LOST GIRLS OF HOLLOW LAKE.

I loved Coralie Fargeat’s THE SUBSTANCE. It’s a really great body horror film, but what I found the most inspiring about that project was the way it was received critically. I love to see snobby people start taking horror seriously!

There are so many incredible women writing horror and thriller novels these days. It’s really hard to narrow down! One of my very favorite’s is Rachel Harrison. Some of her titles include, THE RETURN, BLACK SHEEP, and most recently PLAY NICE. I just think she’s doing incredible things for women in horror, breaking through some barriers that have been in place for us, and she is also an incredibly warm and lovely human!

One of my all-time favorite books is THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET by Catriona Ward. This book had a huge impact on me when I read it and really shaped in my mind what we could achieve in prose narrative form in horror fiction.

Unpredictable!

This stage in my career, with so many irons in the fire, every day looks different, but there are some things that find their way into days no matter what I have going on.

Coffee, good food, water, and light exercise—walking around my neighborhood, doing hikes, or on the treadmill in my office. Those are essentials to my life functioning properly.

I am always on some kind of deadline. Pretty much have been since 2023 when I sold my first solo novel to Berkley. So since I’m always on deadline, I am always writing something. Whether I’m drafting, revising, working on a screenplay—which I am frequently trying to fit in amongst all the book projects—I’m always writing, pretty much every workday.

Social media! Whether it’s making graphics, making videos, or just interacting with readers, social media is a part of my daily life as a working author.

On the business side of author life, you also do a lot of emailing.

2026 is such an exciting year of releases for me!

First up, LOST GIRLS OF HOLLOW LAKE, out on January 27^th, from Delacorte. It’s a dark Young Adult speculative thriller that I’ve pitched as YELLOWJACKETS meets I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It follows a group of teen girls who go missing on a school trip, on a mysterious island in a national park. When they are return 46 days later, three of the girls are nowhere to be found. It alternates between the past timeline when the girls are missing, and the present timeline when the girls are being hunted down by somebody who wants to make them pay for what happened while they were lost.

In the fall of 2026, my adult horror debut WHAT A NIGHTMARE releases from Berkeley. It’s about a woman who can dream nightmares into reality, and after accidentally almost killing her predatory boss, she returns home to her estranged family seeking redemption, only to realize revenge is so much better.

It has been such a long and winding road to get here. I’ve always been a storyteller, even when I was a kid—when I thought I wanted to be an actress—I was really just seeking a way to tell stories, though at the time I was acting them out instead of writing them down.

In my mid-20s, I briefly moved to New York City with my husband and toddler. I was floundering and ill-prepared as a sheltered girl from Texas, but it became the pressure cooker to force me into taking action on some of my dormant dreams. At the time, we were in this incredible young adult literature boom, and I was totally hooked on it. Reading THE HUNGER GAMES was the first time I thought that writing a novel was something I could conceive of doing because of how that book was written—the visceral first person and the sharp pacing. It really resonated with me as a screenwriter.

Oh, the heavy sigh I released when I read this question. Not because I don’t love this question, but because I ask myself this question often, as I’m sure a lot of creatives that you speak to do, no matter what industry they work in.

Recently, I was watching the TV show Pluribus—I’ll try not to spoil!—and there’s a part in the third episode where the main character, Carol, who is a multi-best-selling author, is confronting some realities about her relationship to her writing and the books she has published, and this is happening in the midst of the larger plot that deals with—essentially—the end of the world.

I had this thought while I was watching this episode: To me, that would be the hardest part about the end of the world. If I was still here, still living and thinking, I don’t know how I would get through it without being able to tell stories, or having anyone to share them with. For me, my experience in the world goes hand-in-hand with writing and telling stories and I’m not sure if I could handle not having an outlet for it. If stories didn’t matter anymore, would I want to be here?

And maybe that sounds dark, or that sounds short-sighted, but writing is compulsory for me, it’s also what makes me feel rooted to this existence. I keep going because I don’t think I have a choice. It’s what I’m here to do.

After a group of teens visit a dangerous island where three are left behind, the surviving girls realize they must return to confront the sinister force hunting them. This dark YA thriller is perfect for fans of Yellowjackets.

Eight were lost. Five were found. None will ever be free.

For Evie Williams, life is about to get a lot more complicated. Haunted by the events of a school trip to Hollow Lake National Park that went disastrously wrong, Evie and her friends returned changed, their lives forever marked by the mysterious Island they encountered—and the three girls they left behind.
Now, someone is picking off those who were involved, one by one. Their families, friends, and even online investigators are all caught in a deadly game. The stakes are raised when Evie receives a chilling message: to save her loved ones, she must return to the Island.
As Evie and the other “Lost Girls” navigate the treacherous terrain of the Island once more, they must confront the secrets they’ve buried, the horrors they witnessed, and the person—or thing—that’s hunting them. But some secrets refuse to stay hidden, and the Island demands a price for freedom.

Available for preorder on Amazon.