While the world of horror cinema can often feel like a stale place, with too few original concepts coming through and too many beige sequels and remakes, the horror literature landscape isn’t just original and vibrant by contrast; it’s also wonderfully queer! In fact, I’d go so far as to say that queer authors are dominating the world of horror fiction right now, pushing the genre into new and strange places.
If you’re a horror movie fan who wants to see more stories by queer writers, or featuring good queer representation, head to the bookstore instead of the movie theater and you’ll find so many wonderful works of queer horror. And here are the books you need to pick up if you’re a lover of horror cinema!
Written by transmasculine author Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us is a post-apocalyptic novel set in a world ravaged by a doomsday cult who still have more terror left to unleash. This cult have raised Benji to be their ultimate weapon, but this trans kid has escaped and found safety with his new family: a band of queer rebels looking to fight back against the doomsday cult.
While so many post-apocalyptic stories, from The Road to A Quiet Place, focus on a small number of survivors struggling day-to-day, Hell Followed With Us is a horror novel that emphasises queer liberation and fighting back against the powers that be, even if they have already managed to do so much damage.
Seen An American Werewolf in London? Read Bored Gay Werewolf
Good werewolf stories can be surprisingly hard to come by, and Tony Santorella’s novel feels like a diamond in the rough. It tells the story of Millennial barman Brian, the titular bored gay werewolf. As Brian struggles to acclimatise to his new form, he is sniffed out by tech bro Tyler, a fellow werewolf who has big plans for their kind.
Tyler’s particular brand of toxic self-help bullshit has a surprisingly strong effect on our queer slacker, but as he learns more about Tyler’s big plans for expanding their werewolf pack, caution takes over. Though, it might already be too late. Bored Gay Werewolf is a fantastic horror-comedy that explores the lonely capitalistic trap that is modern masculine toxicity.
Fans of haunted house stories owe it to themselves to read Alison Rumfitt’s bleakly political horror novel, Tell Me I’m Worthless, a work of dreadful terror about the trans experience and the sad state of England today. If you like your haunted house stories to be as hopeless and sorrowful as they can be, this is what you’re looking for!
Rumfitt’s debut follows two former friends: Alice, a troubled young trans woman who is currently being haunted; and Ila, who has given into the transphobic cult mentality that has swept across the UK. While in college together, these two spent a night at a haunted house known as Albion (get it?). That house changed them both forever, and eventually the truth of that terrible night will have to come out.
Few would argue against the enormous impact that Ari Aster’s Hereditary has had on the horror scene, and if you’re looking for more cult-inspired works of paranoid terror — that also happens to be wonderfully queer — Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus will scratch that itch. And yes, this is the same Chuck Tingle who wrote My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass.
The titular Camp Damascus is a gay conversion camp hidden away in rural Montana, and it boasts a 100% success rate. Living near the camp is Rose, a well-behaved heterosexual Christian teenager. But, for some reason, Rose is vomiting flies and seeing images of shackled demons in the dark corners of her living room. What is happening to her, and what does it have to do with Camp Damascus?
With the exception of Sleepaway Camp, which has found itself a cult following of trans horror fans over the years, most slashers are decidedly straight. Samantha Allen has put an end to that with the brilliantly titled Patricia Wants to Cuddle. This queer slasher story takes place on an island off the coast of Washington State, where the finale of a Bachelor-esque reality show is currently being filmed.
We follow the crew and the hopeful finalists as they are picked off one–by-one by whatever strange beast lives on the island. For the longest time, you’ll ask yourself who Patricia is, why she wants to cuddle, and how exactly this book is queer? Those answers will all come in time!
Seen 28 Days Later? Read Manhunt
Apocalypse stories can be uncomfortably raw and jagged affairs, with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later being a perfect example. But even that movie has nothing on the grotesque world created by trans author Gretchen Felker-Martin in her novel Manhunt. A virus that targets testosterone has reduced men to cannibalistic monsters, and TERFs rove the land in gangs, hunting the trans people who have managed to survive.
Our protagonists are Beth and Fran, a pair of trans women making their way south, down the New England coast. To survive, they must hunt, kill, and eat the… parts… of men. Soon enough, they’ll find Robbie, a suspicious young trans man who will complete their found family; and the three of them must continue to survive in this awful wasteland.
Few directors have done body horror as well as David Cronenberg, but lesbian horror author Julia Armfield doesn’t just show us how to do body horror right; she also makes it gothic and gloriously gay. Our Wives Under the Sea follows married couple Miri and Leah. Leah’s story is set in a deep-sea submarine where she becomes trapped for months when a research trip goes wrong.
But when she finally returns, we read on with hearts breaking as her wife Miri watches the woman she loves fall apart before her eyes. Leah came back wrong; she is vomiting salt water and spending all her time in the bath. She is already gone, but Miri refuses to accept that, even as Leah changes into something grotesque and impossible. This novel hurts.
In cinema, the niche of claustrophobic space horror is home to a few great movies, including Alien, Event Horizon, and Sunshine. Filling that hole in the realm of literature is Caitlin Starling’ The Luminous Dead, a novel which combines the sci-fi terror of Alien with the damp underground horror of The Descent.
Protagonist Gyre has taken on a treacherous job: mapping the underground tunnels of a hostile planet alone, with only a disembodied voice on the radio for guidance and company. That voice belongs to Em, and for a long while these women will not get along. Em is brash and impatient, and Gyre is losing control in her isolated little world. But they must keep their bond if Gyre is going to survive this.
This young adult slasher story is a fantastic homage to the summer camp slashers of old, right down to the novel’s setting being a confident nod to Friday the 13th’s iconic Camp Crystal Lake. In You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, Kalynn Bayron introduces us to Charity, a teenager who works at Camp Mirror Lake, which was once the filming location for an 80s slasher movie. Now, guests pay to reenact the movie, and it’s Charity’s job to be the final girl.
But things go wrong very quickly. Several of Charity’s colleagues have either disappeared or failed to show up entirely. She has had to call her girlfriend and a few other buddies to fill those roles, but something is still amiss. Shadowy figures roam the lakeside, and the missing workers soon enough turn up dead. What exactly is happening in Camp Mirror Lake? Spoiler: It’s not what you think.
Seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Read Cuckoo
Gretchen Felker-Martin’s second queer horror novel pays reverence to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and also perhaps a little bit to Stephen King’s IT. This strange work of terror begins with a group of queer teens being kidnapped and taken to a conversion camp in the middle of the Utah desert. The camp is a cruel place, but there is something even worse lurking out in the desert: something that can wear the skin of those it kills.
The five kids we follow in Cuckoo must survive the pain and torture of the conversion camp, but also work together to avoid the eldritch thing that has set its sights on them. Unlike Felker-Martin’s debut, this is a more hopeful novel that has a focus on teamwork and queer kids fighting back against adversity.
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