Queer Gothic Novels and the People—and Places—That Haunt Them
By Melissa Faliveno
As I wrote Hemlock, I wasn’t thinking about one specific literary tradition. I was thinking mostly of a place—specifically, the Midwest; and more specifically, the remote Northwoods of Wisconsin. But I’ve always been a huge fan of horror, folklore, mystery, and psychological thrillers too, and I knew I wanted this book to be a literary story rooted in place, with these other elements glinting in from the shadows. I was specifically interested in exploring the many cultural mythologies of this strange little corner of the world, where I spent a lot of time growing up, stories that often center weird, creepy creatures of the woods. I thought about creating both a Midwestern Gothic and a Queer Gothic, neither of which are widely represented in literature. I read a lot as I wrote, revisiting old favorites and finding new ones—works of queer literary fiction, horror and mystery and thrillers, most of which are rooted in ideas of body or place or both, and all of whose characters are in some way haunted. Here, I share a few favorites!
A contemporary classic and queer Gothic I return to often as both a reader and teacher, every story in this collection is a total banger. But one of my favorites is “The Resident,” which takes place at a haunted, or at least haunting, writer’s residency. It’s a wonderfully creepy story, and deeply queer, that plays with a lot of fun horror tropes. It always makes me think of my own experience at a residency, in rural, upstate New York, which was absolutely haunted—by Edna St. Vincent Millay, the poet and namesake, who was bisexual and genderqueer; she went by Vincent to her friends, and built the barn the studios are housed in (I know, so butch). It is said her spirit haunts the grounds, and you can take a walk in the woods to her own grave and her graveyard of gin bottles. I stayed there alone one winter, and found myself quite haunted too.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 3, 2017. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
I’ve loved all of Megan Giddings’s novels, all three of which combine literary and speculative elements, and feature women who are in some way haunted—not least by loss and grief. In The Women Could Fly, Jo is a bisexual woman haunted by the disappearance of her mother, who was suspected of being a witch. Giddings is a Midwesterner like me, and all of her books are set in the Midwest, creating a kind of queer, dystopian Midwestern Gothic that centers Black girlhood and womanhood, and all of which have stayed with me long after I’ve finished reading.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 9, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Theo is totally queer, and I will die (in this house) on this hill.
Format
UK-B Format Paperback
(Revised edition)
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around November 28, 2006. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
This book is not a Gothic in any traditional sense, but it is a queer book that’s hugely important to me. It’s also the first time I really saw myself in a book—specifically in its intersections of body, class, and place. A novel with autobiographical roots, its genderqueer protagonist is finding themselves, and a home, in the queer communities around them and in their own queer body. They are haunted by a lot of things—namely, their past in rural, working-class upstate New York; by the AIDS crisis; by the ways in which their visibly queer body moves in the world. I stumbled upon a rare print copy of this book while I was revising Hemlock, and one of the epigraphs comes from its pages: “Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me.”
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around April 1, 2004. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
I am a massive fan of Louise Erdrich, (beet) queen of the Native Midwestern Gothic. In her 2021 novel, The Sentence, which I read while working on Hemlock, Tookie is a bisexual Ojibwe woman who’s recently gotten out of prison. She’s haunted by trauma, grief, and violence—also, by the ghost of an old annoying white lady, Flora, who refuses to leave the Minneapolis bookstore where Tookie works, and where the old woman died. It’s a ghost story about cultural appropriation, addiction, identity, and the power of books that, like so much of Erdrich’s work, is at once deeply profound, very funny, and wonderfully weird. A perfect read for winter.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around November 9, 2021. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
A debut novel coming in March from Mariner, this propulsive, beautifully written whodunit is told from the perspective of three women, all of whom are connected—and haunted—by one man. One of them, a lesbian named Birdie, flees her life in New York to a wooded island off the coast of Washington, in no small part to escape her past. T Kira and I read each other’s novels at the same time, and afterward we joked that we’re writing the “Haunted Queers Getting Weird in the Woods” canon. And listen, this is exactly the canon we need.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 10, 2026. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
I don’t purport to know how Camille Preaker, the main character of Sharp Objects, would identify, but she has always felt queer-coded to me, particularly in her relationship to gender—in how she eschews traditional modes of femininity, in the way she’s condemned for being wild and willful. What I know for sure is that Sharp Objects is one of my favorite books about a haunted woman. Much like Hemlock’s Sam, Camille is an alcoholic with a history of self-harm, who is haunted by a lot of things—namely, her mother, and the place she grew up. As a writer of place, and specifically the Midwest, one of the things I love most about this novel is its Southern/Midwestern (it’s set in Missouri, which is a little of both) Gothic vibe. It’s dripping with heat, with dread, with desire for oblivion. I love all of Gillian Flynn’s books, but this is the one I never let too far out of my grasp, and kept in close company as I wrote Hemlock.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 31, 2007. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam’s mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer.
As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door and her body takes on a strange new shape. As the borders of reality begin to blur, she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 20, 2026. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
