Uncanny Valley Girls - Essays on Horror, Survival, and Love

"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 "I''m in awe--this collection is an absolute sensation."--Jeanne Thornton 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. ...

About the author

Zefyr Lisowski is a trans and queer writer, artist, and North Carolinian living in New York City. A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, she's the author of the poetry collections Girl Work, winner of the 2022 Noemi Book Prize, and Blood Box, winner of the Black River Editor's Choice Award from Black Lawrence Press. Zefyr's work has appeared in The Believer, Electric Literature, Catapult, Literary Hub, Split This Rock, and elsewhere. From 2016 to 2024, she served as poetry co-editor for the Whiting Award-winning Apogee Journal. She's seen grave robbers twice.

Summary

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year
"In Uncanny Valley Girls, horror is more than a genre—it is a language, a sensibility, a lifeline, a semaphore between culture and our own grief and pain and longing. 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
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.

Report

"Zefyr Lisowski has written a poignant, innovative, and urgent blend of memoir and criticism that has replenished my belief in how art and love can save your life-a book that can single-handedly infuse new and unexpected beauty into your favorite films." - Torrey Peters, author of Stag Dance and Detransition, Baby
"Expansive, skillful, and tender, Uncanny Valley Girls made me think in new ways about seemingly familiar stories. Lisowski is an immensely generous writer with an unparalleled eye for the beauty to be found in the macabre."
- Julia Armfield, author of Private Rites and Our Wives Under the Sea
"This lyrical, thoughtful essay collection is as gripping as any horror movie. Zefyr Lisowski's gorgeous prose belongs equally to the canons of memoir and culture writing." - Rax King, author of Sloppy and Tacky
"In Uncanny Valley Girls, Zefyr Lisowski pushes past the easy discursive tropes of horror, trauma, and trans girlhood, finding and naming the messier, lovelier realities within. In so doing, she's gifted us a book that's somehow both sharp and generous, and a joy to read. I'm in awe-this collection is an absolute sensation." - Jeanne Thornton, author of A/S/L and Summer Fun
"In Uncanny Valley Girls, Zefyr Lisowski is unafraid to encounter the most monstrous things-the violences of white supremacy, cis-hetero patriarchy, transphobia, ableism, classism-and consider not only their ubiquity, complexity, and nuance, but also how they live, slyly and softly, in each of us. . . . This fearless inquiry is directed at everyone, not least of all the author herself, and yet its militant commitment to insight never feels punitive. In response to the adage, 'the call is coming from inside the house,' Zefyr answers the phone and asks to speak to whoever-whatever-is on the other end of the line." - Johanna Hedva, author of How to Tell When We Will Die
"In Uncanny Valley Girls, horror is more than a genre-it is a language, a sensibility, a lifeline, a semaphore between culture and our own grief and pain and longing. 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, National Book Award Finalist and author of In the Dream House
"This sharp, exquisitely layered book is like a slasher film inverted: Lisowski takes a blade to the big feelings art can evoke, and with great care, she does the delicate paring needed to fit criticism to memoir and to interlace thought and emotion. Horror, revulsion, yearning, shame, and harder-to-name feelings resonate across one another, given space to ring out. The movements of the mind at work in Uncanny Valley Girls had me hurtling toward Lisowski's incomparable insight, hard-won though the precision work on display here as she pushes to understand a terrifying, lonely, dazzling, and otherwise incomprehensible world."
- Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic

"Horror is horrific in part because it brings humans a little too close to ourselves for comfort. It holds a mirror to the parts of us we don't want to see. But it can also act as a space for solace and interpretation for those who love it, and that seemingly contradictory place is what excites me about these essays." - Literary Hub, "Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025, Part Two"

Product details

• Authors: Zefyr Lisowski
• Publisher: Harper Perennial USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 07.10.2025
• EAN: 9780063413993
• ISBN: 978-0-06-341399-3
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 203 mm x 14 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; LITERATURE: WOMEN'S LITERATURE, LITERATURE: GENERAL FICTION, LITERARY COLLECTIONS: Essays, LITERATURE: L G B T Q, SOCIAL SCIENCE: Media Studies, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: LGBTQ+, LITERATURE: MEMOIR & BIOGRAPHY, LITERATURE: ESSAYS