Iluka Chayan

Iluka Chayan (they/them) is an emerging writer whose work blends speculative fiction, memory politics, and quiet emotional depth. Their writing is shaped by a life lived between cultures and by a fascination with how stories preserve what history forgets. Iluka’s work often reflects their belief in social compassion, cultural continuity, and the dignity of marginalised voices. 

Read Chayan’s short story “The December Booth” in Horrific Scribes.

Description: On the Night of the Unforgotten, a small town in the Western Ghats gathers to honour its dead—yet every year, something in the Devagiri forest listens too closely. When an old STD phone booth begins ringing again after decades of silence, a newly transferred inspector stumbles into a pattern of vanished names, whispered rituals, and a history the villagers refuse to speak aloud. Set across two Decembers twenty-one years apart, “The December Booth” slowly unravels the terrible cost of a community’s survival—and the question of who gets to be remembered at all.