Rebecca Cuthbert
Rebecca Cuthbert has been named a book award finalist and will receive a second undergraduate degree at SUNY Fredonia.
The adjunct lecturer’s hybrid collection “Self-Made Monsters,” published by Alien Buddha Press in October 2024, is a finalist for the 2025 Best Story Collection Imadjinn Award. She will attend the awards ceremony at the Imaginarium Convention in July in Louisville, KY.
A story from that collection, "I Won't Call It a Monster," was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2024, her poetry collection and debut title, “In Memory of Exoskeletons,” won the Imadjinn Award for Best Poetry Collection.
In other literary achievements, Cuthbert’s fifth title, “Six O’clock House & Other Strange Tales,” was published in January by Watertower Hill Publishing.
The 16-story collection of literary horror and dark magical realism has been favorably reviewed by esteemed outlets such as Cemetery Dance, The Horror Zine and Uncomfortably Dark, among others.
The Horror Zine's Jonathan Chapman compares Cuthbert to a young Stephen King and writes, "Cuthbert is as flexible in her styles as a virtuoso. Each story reads very differently from the last, except that they don’t. All carry the central theme of menace, feminine rage against the haunting hazards presented by the modern world and the men who chose to be predators and abusers.
It’s a thought-provoking collection that is a must read in this day and age, accomplished with that ease and smooth delivery one expects from a writer with so many credits,” Mr. Chapman concludes.
This fall, Cuthbert, of the Department of English, has two titles slated for publication with different presses and for different audiences.
“High Up on Witch Mountain,” a spooky children's book illustrated by SUNY Fredonia alum Dakota Marquardt, will be out in September from AEA Press and Malediction. A collection of ghost stories for adult readers, “The Hauntings Back Home” will be published in October by Undertaker Books. “The Hauntings Back Home” is dedicated to the Anderson-Lee Library in Silver Creek, NY, and is a homage to the many happy days Cuthbert spent there, looking for ghost story collections among the stacks.
News about book launches, readings and events (Downtown Brew, Next Chapter, Anderson-Lee Library) will be announced late this summer in the Observer and on Cuthbert's website and social media pages.
Cuthbert will graduate May 17 from SUNY Fredonia with a B.S. in Communication: Public Relations. She began teaching at Fredonia in the fall of 2012, and over the pandemic lockdown of 2020, decided to make use of the UUP tuition waiver to earn a bonus four-year degree one class at a time.
The degree is already paying dividends, as she uses the knowledge from her course work to enhance her professional undertakings in the writing and publishing world. She thanks her instructors from the Department of Communication who have provided her with so much help and guidance throughout that experience.
For more information about Cuthbert and her publications and activities, visit
