Vincent Tirado Books in Order

Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Dominican writer born and raised in the Bronx, a place that remains central to their fiction. Their horror stories put ordinary people in trouble that turns supernatural, while keeping an eye on family, neighborhood history, race, class, and the pressure to fit in.

Reading came first. Tirado has recalled spending Saturdays at the local library with a best friend, taking home stacks of books and returning the next week for more. Before long, they were writing stories of their own, sometimes making their teachers think they were taking notes when they were really working on a new idea.

In high school, they finished a first novel.

Tirado initially followed a science path instead. They left New York for college in Pennsylvania, earning a bachelor's degree in biology, then went to Ohio for a master's degree in bioethics. Horror became a stronger pull near the end of college, when films helped them see both how much they enjoyed the genre and how rarely Black characters were allowed to occupy its center.

That question helped shape Burn Down, Rise Up, their 2022 debut. The novel follows a Bronx teen pulled into a deadly supernatural game connected to local history, after disappearances and a frightening illness hit close to home. Tirado drew on the Bronx they knew, including its communities and spiritual traditions, and the book received the 2023 Pura Belpré Award.

Their next young adult novel, We Don't Swim Here, moves the scares to rural Arkansas. A competitive swimmer arrives in a town where water is off-limits, and its rules turn out to be tied to pain that has never really gone away. The book keeps the family tensions, social history, queer characters, and supernatural danger that readers found in the debut, but gives them a Southern Gothic setting.

Tirado doesn't make horror feel far away.

With We Came to Welcome You, Tirado made their adult fiction debut. The story follows Sol Reyes and her wife, Alice Song, after they buy a home in a gated Connecticut community where the friendliness feels increasingly wrong. You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom returns to adult horror with a family gathering, an inheritance dispute, a storm, and a possible demon hiding among the relatives.

Across these books, Tirado is interested in the rules people are told to accept, whether they come from a neighborhood, a family, or a powerful local tradition. Their characters tend to ask questions when everyone around them would rather stay quiet. That makes the scares personal as well as eerie.

When they aren't writing, Tirado has mentioned enjoying video games and digital art. They also share a fondness for coffee and their cat, Bugsy, which sounds like a sensible support system for someone who spends so much time inventing monsters.