Bio

My name's Benjamin Solah; I'm a horror writer and Marxist revolutionary.

I was born in the Sydney suburb of Kogarah but grew up in the South-West suburb of Campbelltown until I was 21. As I kid I dreamed of being a cartoonist, writer, lawyer, writer, Race Car driver, writer, web designer, and journalist and eventually settled for writing again.

I currently work full-time in an office in the CBD of Melbourne after moving to this City of Literature in 2008, but I see my day job as a means to earn money and prefer to focus on my real passions, writing and political activism.

I'm a Marxist Horror Writer in that I write horror fiction, novels and short stories from a Marxist perspective. My political beliefs very much shape how I see the world and therefore the stories that I tell. The horrors in my stories are capitalism itself, and the things capitalism cause: wars, racism, exploitation, sexism and homophobia.

I was inspired to begin writing in Primary School at 11 or 12 years old after falling in love with R.L. Stine's Goosebumps collection of horror chapter books.

One of my earliest stories was called 'Couch Potato' and involved my character waking up in the middle of the night to find a human sized potato watching TV waiting to take revenge on my character and his family after they ate the potato's friends as mashed potato for dinner that night.

I also attempted a few novels and short stories involving ancient Egyptians, aliens from Mars, clowns, and aspiring race car drivers.

I neglected reading for fun and indeed writing for much of high school until my Year 11 English teacher encouraged us to develop a reading habit to help us with writing essays in our final years of school.

I was inspired once again, this time by Stephen King and Dean Koontz and began writing my own stories with the aim of being as gruesome as possible. Since then my writing style has developed both technically and thematically, having been heavily influenced by the growth and development of my political ideas at the same time.

My current influences are Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk and John Steinbeck as well as the vast variety of both horror and more political fiction.

I became involved in politics around the same time as I came back to writing, in Year 11 and 12. As a student with an interest in history and politics, I was inspired by Merlin Luck's protest during the 2002 season of Big Brother when he taped his mouth over and staged a silent protest to draw attention to the plight of asylum seekers and refugees in Australia's horrific mandatory detention centres.

From there, I attended many protests for refugee rights and against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I became a socialist from my overwhelming belief that the problems in this world come from the interests of profit for a rich minority at the top of society.

I continue to campaign against the injustices of capitalism and have attended protests such as the Work Choices rallies, the protests against the War in Lebanon in 2006, and when George Bush came to Sydney for APEC in 2007.