Zefyr Lisowski

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • An Autostraddle Most Anticipated October Read • A BookRiot Most Anticipated Queer Book of the Year "In these extraordinary essays, Lisowski reads the entrails of her life like a witch and invites you along for the ride. How could you say no?" —Carmen Maria Machado From Lambda Award-winning poet Zefyr Lisowski, a sharply personal and expansive memoir-in-essays 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.

Essays on Horror, Survival, and Love

Uncanny Valley Girls

Clara Gauthier

This is a book about horror, real and filmic, which means it must also be a book about love. 

My body ached for you like the surgeon’s hand aches for the scalpel, like the butcher knife aches for meat. 

There are the marks that are left on us, and then there are the marks we leave on ourselves, and I’m still not sure if there’s a difference between the two. 

What is loss if not another kind of tumbling out of control? What is a wound if not the measure of life? Everyone I love has been hurt again and again, and each time they've emerged; everyone I love has lost themselves in so many dreams, but most have awakened. 

In the moments after I started to split open with hurt, I felt like I could see God or what was left behind when God left. 

Even now I confuse guilt and desire, slivering open the thick meat of each until only want is left. 

For me, horror is a love language, but maybe that’s because for me everything is a love language. Horror is at its most intimate is a way to share the secret parts of yourself with others: what frightens you, what comforts you, what you’re nonplussed by. 

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