Through the lens of horror - from Halloween to Hereditary - queer and trans writers consider the films that deepened, amplified, and illuminated their own experiences.
Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes-such as the circumspect and resilient "final girl," body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet-spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.
It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer's Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.
'A brilliant display of expert criticism, wry humor, and original thinking. This is full of surprises.' - Publishers Weekly, starred review
'A critical text on the intersections of film, queer studies, and pop culture that will appeal to both academic and public-library audiences.' - Booklist, starred review
'An essential look at how spooky movies so often offer solace through subversiveness.' - Electric Literature
'Unique and insightful.' - The Daily Dead
'A really terrific collection of essays by a great selection and variety of different authors - both fiction authors, poets, and essayists - about the intersection between queer studies and queer identity and horror movies.'-Gothamist
'An impressively diverse array of queer voices contributes their opinions on how and why particular horror movies made a personal and indelible impression on them.' - The Bay Area Reporter
'In this wonderful and only somewhat disturbing book (the subject is horror, after all), queer and trans writers explore the horror films that have shaped them and most reflected their own experiences. Horror, the anthology argues, while often full of misogyny and anti-trans, homophobic tropes, is also uniquely subversive and queer.' - Shondaland
'This book is perfect for exploring the queerness of horror through a kaleidoscopic lens.' - them.
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION
PART I: AN EXCELLENT DAY FOR AN EXORCISM
“A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life” by S. Trimble (on The Exorcist)
“Both Ways” by Carmen Maria Machado (on Jennifer’s Body)
“My Hand on the Glass” by August Owens Grimm (on Hereditary)
“The Girl, The Well, The Ring” by Zefyr Lisowski (on The Ring and Pet Sematary)
“Imprint” by Joe Vallese (on Grace)
PART II: MONSTER MASH
“Indescribable” by Carrow Narby (on The Blob)
“A Working Definition of the Monstrous” by Ryan Dzelzkalns (on Godzilla)
“The Wolf in the Room” by Prince Shakur (on Good Manners)
“Three Men on a Boat” by Jen Corrigan (on Jaws)
“The Wolf Man’s Daughter” by Tosha R. Taylor (on The Wolf Man)
PART III: FATAL ATTRACTIONS
“Twin/Skin” by Addie Tsai (on Dead Ringers)
“Loving Annie Hayworth” by Laura Maw (on The Birds)
“The Same Kind of Monster” by Jonathan Robbins Leon (on The Leech Woman)
“Centered and Seen” by Sumiko Saulson (on Candyman)
“Blood, Actually” by Grant Sutton (on Friday the 13th, part II)
PART IV: WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T FALL ASLEEP
“The Trail of His Flames” by Tucker Lieberman (on The Nightmare on Elm Street)
“The Me in the Screen” by Steffan Triplett (on Us)
“Sight Unseen” by Spencer Williams (on The Blair Witch Project)
“Bad Hombre” by Sarah Fonseca (on Eres tú, papa?)
“Black Body Snatchers” by Samuel Autman (on Get Out)
PART V: FINAL CUTS
“Long Nights in the Dark” by Richard Scott Larson (on Halloween)
“On Beauty and Necrosis” by Sachiko Ragosta (on Eyes Without a Face)
“Good Guys, Dolls” by Will Stockton (on Child’s Play)
“The Healed Body” by Jude Ellison S. Doyle (on In My Skin)
“Notes on Sleepaway Camp” by Viet Dinh (on Sleepaway Camp)
About the Author :
Joe Vallese is coeditor of the anthology What's Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey. His creative and pop culture writing appears in Bomb, VICE, Backstage, PopMatters, Southeast Review, North American Review, Narrative Northeast, VIA: Voices in Italian-Americana, among others. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a notable in Best American Essays for his essay "Blood, Brothers." He is currently clinical associate professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, and previously served as site director and faculty for the Bard Prison Initiative. Joe holds an MFA New York University, and MAT and BA degrees from Bard College.Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the bestselling memoir In the Dream House. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and the Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
is a Pushcart-nominated, queer ghost-nerd based in Chicago. He is a coeditor ofFat and Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives. His essays and reviews have appeared inThe Rumpus,Brevity's Nonfiction Blog,Sweet: A Literary Confection,Entropy,AWP's Writer's Notebook, and elsewhere. He attended the 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop as well as residencies and workshops at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) among others.Zefyr Lisowski is a trans and queer writer, artist, three-time Pushcart nominee, and North Carolinian currently living in New York City. She is the author of Blood Box, winner of the Black River Editor's Choice Award, and the microchap Wolf Inventory. She is the poetry coeditor for Apogee and was a 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop Fellow. Lisowski's work has appeared in Literary Hub, Nat. Brut., Muzzle Magazine, and DIAGRAM, among others. She has received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, McGill University, the New York Live Ideas Fest, the Blue Mountain Center for the Arts, and the 2019 CUNY Graduate Center Adjunct Incubator Grant.Richard Scott Larson earned his MFA from New York University, and he is the recent recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His creative and critical work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Chicago Review of Books, Harvard Review, Colorado Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. His writing has also been listed as notable in The Best American Essays, and he is an active member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Sarah Fonseca is a self-taught writer from the Georgia foothills who lives in New York City. Her fiction and cinema writing have appeared in Bosie, Evergreen Review, Leste Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Museum of the Moving Image's Reverse Shot, and others. She is a coeditor of The New Lesbian Pulp (Feminist Press 2023).
Review :
Praise for It Came From The Closet
“A brilliant display of expert criticism, wry humor, and original thinking. This is full of surprises.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A critical text on the intersections of film, queer studies, and pop culture that will appeal to both academic and public-library audiences.” —Booklist, starred review
“Wonderful off-road pieces that twist and turn with skeletal precision.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“An essential look at how spooky movies so often offer solace through subversiveness.” —Electric Literature
“Unique and insightful.” —The Daily Dead
“A really terrific collection of essays by a great selection and variety of different authors — both fiction authors, poets, and essayists — about the intersection between queer studies and queer identity and horror movies.” —Gothamist
“An impressively diverse array of queer voices contributes their opinions on how and why particular horror movies made a personal and indelible impression on them.” —The Bay Area Reporter
“In this wonderful and only somewhat disturbing book (the subject is horror, after all), queer and trans writers explore the horror films that have shaped them and most reflected their own experiences. Horror, the anthology argues, while often full of misogyny and anti-trans, homophobic tropes, is also uniquely subversive and queer.” —Shondaland
“This book is perfect for exploring the queerness of horror through a kaleidoscopic lens.” —them.
“Weaving elegantly between passages on theory to first sexual encounters and wrenching experiences with a surrogate, the essays take surprising turns and don't look for easy answers.” —BOMB Magazine
“Killers, monsters, and demons are frequently metaphors for what we don’t understand about our own humanity; they’re an attempt to externalize the “monstrousness” so many of us suppress within ourselves — or that others project onto unchangeable aspects of who we are… I finished [the anthology] with a new appreciation for the horror genre.” —Autostraddle
“A fantastic anthology of writing about horror, all from deliciously queer perspectives.” —Ms. Magazine
“A diverse collection of thoughtful and incisive essays that show that queerness and horror are natural (or occasionally, supernatural) bedfellows.” —Ghouls Magazine
“Revolutionary work.” —Monster Camp
“These essays are tender and funny, vulnerable and courageous.” —The Southern Bookseller Review
“There’s a moment in this book that’ll resonate with every single reader: undead, queer, or otherwise.” —Fangoria
“What does it mean to be haunted? To be enamored with the ghastly, with the monstrous, with the wrong? How do we find ourselves, as queer people, as disabled people, within a world of monsters? It Came from the Closet addresses these issues and more—beautifully and graphically and with a love of horror from all of the contributors.” —What Is Much?
"Why do queers love horror? What a gift to read writers I love and admire offer so many different answers. It Came From the Closet is at times beautiful, at times funny, at times gorgeously weird and baroque, and always as off-kilter brilliant as the genre, and queerness, itself. Horror teaches us about ourselves in all our thrilling extremes. Plus it’s just plain fun. Both of which are true of this deeply necessary collection." —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir
"What is the monstrous and what does it mean to us? It Came from the Closet collects twenty-five takes on twenty-five horror films that make us cringe, crack up, turn away and turn back again—each piece lavishly queer in its intelligence, vulnerability, and wit.” —Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
"Finally: a smart and serious yet playful book that interrogates the complex queerness of horror and the films that make a horror of queerness. These clear, insightful, and deeply personal essays reveal the real reasons why we've all been so scared." —Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men
"It Came from the Closet is a fantastic collection of diverse queer perspectives—an accessible, provocative, and much-welcomed addition to the growing body of queer horror analysis of our favorite films, new and old. This is a must-read for horror fans wanting to find connection and community in challenging the heteronormative and patriarchal narratives that can still dominate the genre." —Jessica Parant, cocreator of Spinsters of Horror
"As someone who grew up with posters of Freddy Krueger and Frank N. Furter over my bed, It Came from the Closet is the perfect gay bible for me. The navigations and dissections of some of my favorite slashers through various queer lenses are akin to any great horror film: mind-blowing, eye-popping, and heart-ripping. This book will see you and destroy you!" —Drew Droege, a.k.a. "Chloe," drag queen and writer
