Monique Snyman’s mind is a confusing bedlam of glitter and death, where candy-coated gore is found in abundance and homicidal unicorns thrive. Sorting out the mess in her head is particularly irksome before she’s ingested a specific amount of coffee, which is equal to half the recommended intake of water for humans per day. When she’s not playing referee to her imaginary friends or trying to overdose on caffeine, she’s doing something with words—be it writing, reading, or editing.
Monique Snyman lives in Pretoria, South Africa, with her husband, daughter, and an adorable Chihuahua. She’s the author of the Bram Stoker Award® nominated novels, THE NIGHT WEAVER and THE BONE CARVER, and the upcoming South African horror series, DARK COUNTRY.
Monique Snyman was born on 27 September 1988 in Pretoria, South Africa and grew up on the western edge of the city during the post-Apartheid Era when the ideological dreams of a Rainbow Nation was at its height. As a result, Monique was fortunate enough to be exposed to various cultures, languages, religions, and class differences from a very early age.
When she was a child, she was known to devour any book she could get her hands on. She specifically enjoyed reading R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps and Fear Street series, mostly because she had already developed a love for all things Horror. Eventually, her reading material branched out into other fiction and non-fiction books that covered a variety of subjects—religion, mythology, paranormal encounters, conspiracy theories, war and so on. Her love for writing developed during her primary school days, where she initially dabbled in poetry, and her craft systematically evolved in high school toward writing longer fiction.
While Monique’s first language is Afrikaans, she dedicated her career to specializing in English creative writing . That said, she is known to sometimes read books in her mother language as well as in Dutch.
Monique finished her first novel in 2009, which was published in 2012, and the sequel released in 2014. She prefers not to be reminded of those books’ existence.
In 2018, she self-published the first installment of a YA Dark Fantasy series called, The Night Weaver, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. The Night Weaver was the recipient of a Silver IPPY Award in 2020. The entire series was picked up by Vesuvian Books in 2019. The second novel in the series, The Bone Carver, released in 2020, was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.
Monique went on to write a South African horror novel, Dark Country, which she often claims is an extension of who she is and where she comes from. The book has recently been acquired by Vesuvian Books and is set to release in 2022. She is developing an entire series to showcase the beauty and horrors of living in a pseudo-modern South Africa.
In 2021, Monique was signed on by Black Spot Books to partake in Black Mariah, a shared-world series that's filled with conspiracies and mayhem.
Monique still lives in Pretoria, South Africa, with her husband, daughter, and Chihuahua.
