Beyond the Glow // A Reading List for the Age of Trans Horror

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, even if horror has always been historically queer, trans horror is sure having a moment right now. Since the 2024 release of Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow, many a trans cinephile has newly gotten into horror, a genre previously reserved (in the popular imagination, at least) for edgy 12-year-olds and long-suffering goths. That said, if you, like me, discovered your love for horror after watching I Saw The TV Glow, you might know the difficulty of finding horror media with similarly powerful trans representation. As a result, let’s get you started with these suggestions.

Jean Genet’s completed works 

I know, I know — this is a deeply pretentious suggestion. At the same time, novels such as Our Lady Of The Flowers —  (Genet’s best-known work) a semi-autobiographical poetic novel about an incarcerated trans person’s daydreams and fantasies that blend criminality with genuine queer community — distill the psychological nature of trans horror while casting off some of its shock value. Genet explores topics such as crime, betrayal, and death with a more nuanced lens than his more moralistic contemporaries. This arguably makes him an influence for insurrectionary anarchists and tortured poets alike.

Much like Jane Schoenbrun’s films, Genet’s novels tackle dark topics without being especially gory or leaning on the supernatural to scare their audience. They do so while including realistic and often brutal views of the trans experience. For newly minted horror fans, starting with Our Lady Of The Flowers or The Thief’s Journal and exploring further from there is certain to expand one’s literary horizons toward more macabre topics while remaining grounded in trans liberation.

Spectrum: An Anthology Of Autistic Horror

For readers wanting something more contemporary but still dreaming of horror media that captures Jane Schoenbrun’s queer-inclusive and collectively minded narratives, Spectrum is sure to offer a good introduction to horror fiction. Out on Third Estate Books, this anthology focuses on neurodivergent experience, with some horror stories centering Autistic protagonists and others serving as allegories. If you only read one story, I would suggest Xochilt Avila’s “Safe Food”. It is a gruesome yet darkly satisfying tale in which a nonbinary teen eats their abuser after said abuser disrespects their sensory needs around food for the last time. The entire anthology is worth a read, though.

Tommy Wyatt Blake’s MIASMAMIST 

For readers less interested in narrative and more interested in vibes, this poetry collection offers a balance of macabre imagery (such as the self-explanatory Angel Or Ghoul quiz) and deeply felt emotion. Written in the author’s teens, MIASMAMIST is part of a broader body of work that is in conversation with the horror genre. The horror game “Mouthwashing” directly inspires one of Blake’s other chapbooks and others cite horror media as a key influence. Ephemeral enough to avoid gore and cheap thrills yet rooted in genre enough to provide plenty of subtle nods to dark topics, MIASMAMIST is a must-read for any Schoenbrun fan.

Literary magazines (actually)

When sitting down with a book feels difficult — or you’re like me and your TBR is thousands of pages long at any given time — you can also find horror in indie lit. I recommend Bloodletter Mag for this, as well as BEESTUNG for work that isn’t explicitly horror but has some overlap. But like all things — perhaps especially like being trans — indie lit is less about what you read and more about the community you find, the spaces you join, the art you’re inspired to create. I hope that, if nothing else, horror media gives you a chance to explore your own identity and needs, to meet people, to build the kind of haphazard belonging that makes being queer as horrificly beautiful as it is.