“A poignant, innovative, and urgent blend of memoir and criticism that has replenished my belief in how art and love can save your life.”—Torrey Peters

“Lisowski is an immensely generous writer with an unparalleled eye for the beauty to be found in the macabre.” —Julia Armfield

A sharply personal and expansive essay collection dedicated to the strange and absurd beauty of horror films, exploring the complications of gender, the insidiousness of class ascension, and the latent violence hidden in our own uncanny reflections.

This is how it worked: first I loved them, and then I loved myself.

At twenty-seven, poet Zefyr Lisowski found herself in the place she feared most: a locked psych ward. While inside, she turned to horror movies—her deepest, most constant comfort.

Rather than disturb, scary movies have always provided solace and connection for Lisowski, as they do many others—offering a vision of a world filled equally with beauty and pain, and a reason to reach out to others and hold them tight. After all, as Lisowski argues, what terrifies us most about these movies is our own uncanny reflection—and at the root of that fear, a desperate desire to love and be loved.

In these wide-ranging essays, Lisowski weaves theory and memoir into nuanced critiques of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Saint Maud. From fears about sickness and disability, to trans narratives and the predator/victim complex, to the struggle to live in a world that wants you dead, she explores horror’s reciprocal impact on our culture and—by extension—our lives. Through it all, Lisowski lays bare her own complex biography—spanning from a trans childhood in the South to the sweaty dancefloors of Brooklyn—and the family, friends, and lovers that have bloomed with her into the present.

Deeply felt, blood-spattered, and brimming with care and wonder, Uncanny Valley Girls thrusts this seasoned poet to centerstage.