Author Trang Thanh Tran finds optimism after the end of the world

California continues to sweep up the ashes in the wake of the wildfires that snaked around Los Angeles in January; counties along West Virginia’s southern border are still recovering almost a year later, after floods submerged the region in April 2024; parts of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene last fall have yet to begin rebuilding their towns and homes. Environmental catastrophes surround us, not to mention political ones. In such times, it’s okay to take five from reality and curl up with a good book—even one centered on unnatural disasters.

Author Trang Thanh Tran’s new horror novel, They Bloom at Night, is the followup to her 2023 debut, She is a Haunting. Where the latter is a gothic mystery-cum-ghost story set in Đà Lạt, Vietnam, and confronts the city’s French colonial history, the former unfolds along the Louisiana coast, where Tran’s teenage protagonist, Noon, grieves her father’s and brother’s deaths in the hurricane that battered their town prior to the story’s events; she makes ends meet trawling in her dad’s boat with her mom, though the fish they catch are often horribly mutated. There might be a monster lurking under the water, too. Why else would locals be disappearing without a trace? 

The end of the world is no one’s idea of fun. But They Bloom at Night, taking place after the world ends, hums with surprising optimism—scary as it is to consider, life new and old can flourish in whatever remains in the post-apocalypse. With They Bloom at Night on shelves now, Tran and I talked about how her upbringing shaped the story’s background, what’s worth fighting for when the world as we know it no longer exists, and why body horror is more relevant in 2025 than ever.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Andy Crump: I thought a lot about things like (Jeff VanderMeer’s) Annihilation while reading (They Bloom at Night). What inspired the use of (post-apocalyptic horror) for you?
Trang Thanh Tran: Well, I used to live in the South, the deep rural part of Louisiana in this small town. It’s very special, because there were a lot of Vietnamese American shrimpers who were refugees in the area. My dad was a shrimper, and Mercy's inspired by this place. There's really no other place like it; maybe some other coastal towns in Texas where there's a mix of Vietnamese and Cambodian shrimpers. I have these vivid memories of being on his boat and smelling shrimp in the air. 

The settings in my books tend to be very strong, so I started with a place, and then the character, Noon. At the very beginning, I didn't necessarily know what the heart of the story was going to be; I did know it was going to be some sort of environmental disaster, because of everything going on around us, [Laughs], with global warming. And I love post-apocalyptic stories, the full range of them, from zombies to natural disasters. I think it's being able to see what people do in really difficult times. 

The other pieces fell into place as I wrote. I worked on the book for a long time compared to my first, because it was so hard getting those pieces together, like Noon's personal journey of overcoming the trauma in their life, and also this transformation piece. Before I start my books, I always know what the ending is. So I knew at the end that there would be a transformation, and that's not necessarily a spoiler. I just didn't know how they would get there.

AC: The idea of an apocalypse is frightening, but maybe the idea that there's something on the other side is comforting?
TTT: Yeah. I'm thinking about what (horror novelist) Stephen Graham Jones said recently, that horror works because you get to experience the story and then the horror ends, right? You get that conclusion in a horror story. It's similar in post-apocalyptic stories, I think. They’re about such extraordinary circumstances. Fiction is one way to explore what happens when all of these things are closing in, particularly for the main character who’s non-binary and a child of immigrants. It’s a really difficult time to live through.

I had difficulty at first crafting an ending that was also hopeful, because of my own skepticism, but that was something I wanted to do. There were many layers and many iterations of it until I got to a hopeful ending. But it was important for me to have this teenager reach a hopeful ending in a world that is very ugly.

AC: I know what (Stephen) is talking about. But it’s also important for the horror to linger. Do you feel like optimism allows that better than cynicism?
TTT: I think so. I wouldn't say that my book has a happy ending; it just has that thread of hope in it, how this teenager is actually thriving in the apocalypse. Even when everything else is bad, you can still thrive as a person. You can still be your truest self. So I think there’s a thread of hopefulness, of being able to continue with a bit of optimism, whereas an ending that is truly gutpunching might be too sad. [Laughs.]

AC: I don't think anybody wants to live through the apocalypse, but does finally having the freedom to be who you are make surviving it worth it?
TTT: Yeah, it definitely does. That was the element I was going for: even in those bad times, they are reaching a state where they are happy, and feeling at home with themselves. For as long as they can hold onto that feeling—I’m in the right body, I’m in my right self—then it's okay, even when everything else is bad. I think that’s a good message to have. A lot of people are forced to live in ways that aren't ideal, so if you can hold on to who you truly are, it’ll be worth it to push through everything terrible going on now.

AC: How does one keep up the spirit to fight for their identity? It almost seems easier in Noon’s circumstances; they’re still facing prejudice and scrutiny, and it’s a bitter joke to me that they get to be more themselves in the post-apocalypse than before.
TTT: I think in Noon’s case, it seems easier because the old systems are not necessarily in place: governmental systems, police, those things. If she’s, for example, not in school, she's not experiencing bullying, she's not experiencing people policing where they go to the bathroom. In this fictional world, Noon is fighting for the freedom this apocalypse has unleashed, ignoring all the environmental concerns. In real life, it's obviously harder because there are systems that we're all working in, like the government trying to close down protests, or limiting speech.

AC: One trope that drives me nuts in contemporary horror is the idea that “the monster” is not the real horror. The horror is trauma—it’s the horrible thing that happened to you in your childhood that you can't get away from. The book avoids that. At the same time, the reassertion of those old institutions is terrifying. Did you have a hierarchy of horror elements as you wrote the book?
TTT: I try not to think too hard about it. I feel like when you think too hard about it is when the book doesn't come to be the way it should be. At the beginning I focused on the environmental piece, the body horror piece, but because there was this human antagonist, I felt like what that person was about came together when I was writing the middle of the book, and I realized, “Oh, this is also something that is very terrifying.”

I wouldn't necessarily say that I did it on purpose, where I thought, “Oh, this man is trying to reinstate things.” It was more that this man is acting how he did in the systems that have benefited him before. Seeing the two sides of nature being monstrous, and then humans being monstrous, and seeing how those clash together was interesting. It's almost like, “Who would you rather fight, the bear or the man,” but it’s “would you rather fight an ocean or would you rather fight the man?”

AC: Noon would definitely rather fight the ocean. Is body horror one of the most relevant sub-genres horror has for us right now? It feels like you can read so much of our moment through that lens.
TTT: Yeah. With body horror, there's so much going on with policing bodies, and what bodies are acceptable, and where bodies are allowed to be. That pertains to people who are non-cisgender, but it’s also to do with women's bodies and controlling who can make decisions about a woman's body. So yeah, I feel like body horror is very relevant right now. It's on the table, you know? People are trying to pass legislation controlling people's bodies. That’s why there's such a deep exploration of it right now.