Elena Alteri used to be something of a wild child. Coming of age in the late 1970s and early ’80s in New York City, she experienced the highs and lows of that era’s punk-rock explosion.
Now 66, suffering from tinnitus and living a quiet, almost hermit-like life in rural Vermont, Elena begins to hear the voices of dead friends after attending an art exhibit near her old haunts. These girls were murdered and forgotten in the big lights and gritty nights of the city — voices calling out for justice.
So begins Morrisville author Ann Dávila Cardinal’s new book, Hear the Dead, due out on October 9. The supernatural thriller draws on environments and themes from her own experience growing up in NYC’s punk scene. Like Elena, Cardinal, also in her sixties, remembers seeing the likes of Sex Pistols and Blondie play dingy, infamous clubs such as CBGB and Max’s Kansas City; she also caught more obscure acts, including Dead Boys and 999.
While Hear the Dead is her first literary foray into the punk-rock world of her youth, Cardinal is accustomed to switching lanes, even into musical realms. In addition to adult novels such as The Storyteller’s Death, she has written young adult horror, winning the 2020 International Latino Book Award for Five Midnights, as well as YA horror comedies such as 2025’s You’ve Awoken Her. She even wrote an illustrated children’s biography of Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny, something she’s very proud of, given her own Puerto Rican heritage.
For a book full of punk energy, Cardinal knew that a simple release party in which she read aloud to a quiet audience wouldn’t do the trick. Instead, she’ll debut Hear the Dead alongside a set by Vermont punk-rock outfit Violet Crimes at the Grange Hall Cultural Center in Waterbury Center on Tuesday, October 6.
Ahead of that event, Cardinal hopped on a call with Seven Days to talk magical realism, the benefits of fear and having a weird sense of pride about losing her hearing.
Punk is a thinking person’s art form.
Ann Dávila Cardinal
You spent your youth in 1980s NYC, photographing punk shows. Was it a desire to relive the glory days that led you to revisit that world for your new book?
That was certainly part of it. I was thinking of the Tuff Darts the other day — great band. They had this song called “(Your Love Is Like) Nuclear Waste.” But nobody knows them anymore; they only had one album! I’ve been watching bands I loved, like the Panic Squad, slowly die off. I’m 63 now, so that’s starting to happen more often. And I’ve been wanting to write about that time in my life for years. My publishers are so game for my weirdness. I told them I wanted to write a novel about an old woman with tinnitus who can hear old murders, and they were just like, “Yeah, go for it, Ann.”
What was it like returning to those clubs and shows and mentally inhabiting a New York that is largely gone now?
Oh, my God, New York is so different now. I was in SoHo a little while ago during Fashion Week, and it was just awful. We would have eaten those people for breakfast back then! I miss the primal grittiness of that New York and the punks. People think it was all skinheads or something, but punk is a thinking person’s art form. It’s inherently political. And visceral! I used to sit in front of the speakers at CBGB’s so I could feel my internal organs shake with the music. I knew then I was going to pay, and I’m not sorry I did it, but now I have terrible tinnitus.
It’s interesting that you use your character Elena’s own tinnitus as a sort of superpower in the book. It plays a part in her being able to hear the voices of her murdered friends.
I wanted to take a symptom of aging and turn it into something powerful. As a woman of a certain age, they tell you that you’ll become invisible and have less power as you age. But it’s the opposite. I’ve never felt so secure in who I am and who I’ve become.
Elena’s story also seems to revolve around grief she never quite dealt with.
Everything I write is about grief. My dad died of ALS when I was 8 years old, and when you lose a parent that young, it just defines you. I had an alcoholic mother, and when you deal with addiction at that age, it also just becomes part of your DNA. Processing grief is something I’ve spent my whole life doing, but I really liked the idea of writing about Elena, who wasn’t willing to do that. She ran away and escaped instead, hunkered down until her grief came calling for her.
You come from a long line of Puerto Rican writers and poets, but you work chiefly in the realms of horror and thrillers. What is it about these genres that calls to you? Do you like to be frightened?
I don’t necessarily like being scared, no. I got into horror because I had a shitty childhood. I love horror because you could say, Well, my life may be shitty, but at least there aren’t any zombies. It made me feel better about my own circumstances to see people getting through much worse situations. But I’m so afraid in general, I’m medicated — I have anxiety disorder. I see garbage bags on [Interstate] 89, and I think body parts. A kid’s abandoned bike on the roadside freaks me out. I think and write weird shit, Chris! But I’ve made a career out of fear.
Horror also allows for retribution for injustice, whereas real life often does not. A main character who can solve the decades-old murders of her friends must be an enticing prospect to explore.
The thing about magical realism is comfort. It’s the literary movement of the colonized; that’s why it largely started in Colombia. It’s the voice of the powerless. And as a Puerto Rican, it’s such an important mode for a writer to use. We’re the longest-lasting colony in the history of the world, so magical realism is big. In my case, with this book, it gives me a chance to inject hope and a little power.
But there are things that don’t get resolved in this story. I didn’t want to give all the answers or easy endings.
Having a punk-rock book release seems incredibly fitting for a story like Hear the Dead. Did you think about inviting some of the old punk bands that influenced you?
Well, that would be incredibly violent and destructive! [Laughing.] And most of them are gone, of course. I love the Dead Boys, but they would have been obnoxious for sure. Ooh, the Stimulators were a great band; they had a 12-year-old drummer named Harley.
I had a fantasy of having a punk band play the launch, and I was talking with [fellow author] Amy Klinger. I had just posted a Dead Boys song online, and she said, “Oh, we cover that song.” And I said, “Wait, what? You have a band?” So it was great to find out about her band, Violet Crimes, and have them play the event. I did tell Amy, “No mosh pits, please.” I was there when people started slam dancing back in the day, and I hated it. I liked to dance; I took party drugs to dance, not slam into people or nod out on heroin. So, no moshing, please.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Dead Speakers: Ann Dávila Cardinal’s new book is a supernatural murder mystery set during punk rock’s early 1980s heyday”
This article appears in September 23 • 2026.
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