Welcome back for the third and final part of our Pride Month horror spotlight! As I discussed in our previous two posts, I recently asked a group of fabulous LGBTQ+ horror authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life?

And now I’ll let our writers in our third installment share their favorites!

J.A.W. MCCARTHY: I first saw Lucky McKee’s 2002 film May at a time in my life when I was facing my sexuality again, after years of shelving that part of myself. Bisexuality was often portrayed as an identity invented by people who wanted an excuse for their indecisiveness and promiscuity. I had friends who believed that. When I saw the titular May yearning for companionship and understanding, her desires clear-eyed and open regardless of gender identity, I saw a piece of myself.

I can’t say if May would identify as bisexual, pansexual, or something else. What I know is that she’s lonely, hungry, and honest in her need for connection. Though she was ostracized as a child for a physical difference, she remains hopeful in adulthood, eager for companionship even as she stumbles through social interactions and struggles to keep her urges at bay. She becomes infatuated with a male mechanic and female coworker, optimistically exploring relationships with both. Angela Bettis portrays May with an aching vulnerability and guilelessness, making her increasingly unhinged actions believable in her pursuit of love and acceptance. How could you not root for May? The problem is, she takes things way too far.

Despite her actions (mind the CWs), I found myself identifying and sympathizing with May back in 2002 and today. Like her, I know the pain of being hungry and lost, searching for another soul who will understand and embrace me, bad-weird parts and all. While there are many queer characters I love, May is my tender underbelly turning towards the light.

L.L. MADRID: Dorian Gray was one of the most attractive monsters in the show Penny Dreadful. With his soulless nature, he wasn’t a role model, but I couldn’t help but admire how unapologetic he was regarding his sexuality.

When Penny Dreadful first aired, I was a quiet, semi-closeted bisexual. I’d only had casual flings with women and been in just a couple of serious relationships, both with men, which felt safer. My youth had been church-heavy, and it was hard to get rid of the ever-lurking sense of shame.

Dorian had no shame. He didn’t concern himself with gender norms or social standing. A true hedonist, he sought pleasure, taking lovers he found alluring. He didn’t deny or suppress his fluid sexuality and reveled in the diversity of his partners. Dorian Gray inspired me to cease thinking about those who would disapprove and to create queer characters who may feel shame, but never about who they love.

KATHERINE SILVA: One of my first introductions to queer characters in horror was in the 2000’s with Willow Rosenberg and Tara McClay of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The beautiful and dark places their relationship went as they grew closer, the hurtles they had to overcome and the loneliness they felt were all so palpable and rare for television, especially in shows aimed at young adult audiences. To this day, I think they are two of the best depictions of a lesbian relationship in horror because they show that queer characters are allowed to be fully-developed powerful individuals who are more than the tropes their sexuality is often portrayed as.

MARTIN AGUILERA: The queer character in horror that haunted my adolescence and, to a degree, impacted my life, was the character of “Nothing” from the novel LOST SOULS by Poppy Z. Brite. As a teen in the mid-90’s I was fully aware of my sexuality, and thankfully never struggled with owning my identity to myself or the people in my circle, but growing up in El Paso, Texas was a very alienating experience for me. I was in love with the prose of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Clive Barker, V.C. Andrews, and the queen Anne Rice’s sensual, gothic Old World vampires. But it was Poppy Z. Brite who showed me a character who felt as alienated and isolated as I did, and who was also contemporary. That’s what really made him stand out. “Nothing” was a version of me, but also a version of the emo boys I was attracted to at the time, and his descent into darkness was equally profound and entirely titillating. I’ve never forgotten him, or the novel, which isn’t talked about as much anymore, but I hope is ready for rediscovery, along with the complete body of work by Poppy Z. Brite (now William Martin).

HARALAMBI MARKOV: As with most media, there is a significant delay between horror anything being released in the US and it finding its way to Bulgaria. Being a former communist country meant much catching up to do, so it wasn’t until my late teenage years I watched the Nightmare on Elm Street series. I was particularly drawn to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, agreed by everyone to be queer-coded on steroids and it really did me in as a closeted teen.

My heart raced every time Jesse Walsh appeared to the screen and confronted not just Freddy but something else that I didn’t have the language for then. Part of it was definitely the fact that Mark Patton was cute, but also that he was vulnerable and displayed masculinity that didn’t conform to the macho male archetype that I grew up with. Jesse quelled my worries that I was very much wrong. I remember how viscerally I lived through Jesse’s discomfort as a young queer person and the sense of isolation that comes with your entire reality being upended by some internal force that you can’t name. I was going through it at the time and honestly, Jesse Walsh calmed me down a lot during those years where I fought my own demons. Cheers to the male Final Girl!

MAE MURRAY: Lestat and Gabrielle de Lioncourt. I know it’s probably a cliche, and I wouldn’t be surprised if others said the same, especially about Lestat, especially if they’re Gen X or Millennial. But reading The Vampire Lestat as a pre-teen truly changed the trajectory of my life. I first read it over 20 years ago, and I still remember the lighting in my bedroom and how I was lying on my belly, feet kicked up, when I read the Wolfkiller scene (IYKYK). Anne Rice had a way of living through her characters, both Lestat and his mother Gabrielle, who, when turned into a vampire, began to dress as a man and cut her hair short. Anne Rice herself said she never felt like a woman. “I would see a gay man in the park and think, ‘That man has my body,'” she once said. “I felt like an imposter as a woman.” “I feel like I’m gay and forget I have a gender.” In Lestat, Rice showed me how to be fearless in feeling. In Gabrielle, she showed me another way to be a woman. And in all her works, she showed me how to create queer worlds that are alive.

CATHERINE LUNDOFF: Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show was probably the first bi/queer media character that I was aware of before I came out. Out, loud and deliberate, no coding needed, no ambiguity – it was a revelation in 1982 or so when I first saw him! My high school friends and I would dress up as the characters (I was Magenta) and go see the Rocky in Greenwich Village in the early 1980s and it was one of the first times that I can recall having a sense of belonging. Just a bunch of freaky, geeky high school kids who would eventually come out as queer or as crossdressers in later years. Bearing in mind that this was the height of what would be historically known as the AIDS Crisis and we were in NYC’s epicenter for the plague, having someone represent being queer as joyous and powerful, if a tad fucked up, was pretty amazing. I can still sing along with most of the songs and cheer every time I see Tim Curry in any role because what he gave us was a gift to be treasured.

RACHEL BOLTON: Many bisexuals can relate to the idea of “do I want to be her or with her?” When I was young, I did not understand that this feeling was attraction to women. But there was one male character who invoked this in me, Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes. While not straight up horror, the Granada adaption of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories have strong horror elements. The Hound of the Baskervilles is a gothic mystery and several cases are quite gruesome.

I remember watching Brett’s Holmes with layers of admiration. It was more than just a crush, I wanted to be as observant, smart, and capable as he was. This blend of desire and mimicry was normally reserved for characters like Shego from Kim Possible or Judy Funnie. I dressed up as a detective for career day and made my sister and friends play Sherlock Holmes with me.

While Jeremy Brett never publicly talked about his sexuality, he was known to have relationships with men and women. I admire him as Sherlock Holmes for more than just being under the same part of the rainbow. Brett was committed to portraying an accurate version of the character and stories. During the end of the series, Brett continued playing Holmes even as he was struggling with bipolar disorder and dying from a lifetime of complicated health. His only complaint on set was saying, “But, darlings, the show must go on.”

CHAD STROUP: Though this choice may be a bit too recent to qualify as my “favorite” queer character in horror, I’m going with Owen from I Saw the TV Glow, because the portrayal of this tragic soul deeply affected me and has stuck with me since. Upon finishing the film and soaking in Owen’s journey of existential horror, I was awestruck. Yet at first I wasn’t sure why, so I allowed the story’s impact to sit with me for a few days. Then it hit me–Owen’s tragedy could have easily been mine had I not finally lived my truth. As someone who came out as nonbinary fairly late in life (at about age 47), I was at risk for living an inauthentic existence. Growing up as a teen in the late 80s/early 90s, I didn’t have access to the same vocabulary and support many queer people have today. Despite occasionally toying with gender in various capacities, there was no epiphanic moment. Only confusion and thoughts of, “Oh, I’m just weird, I’ll grow out of this.” And so I locked it all away instead. Just like Owen. Fortunately, my story has a far less somber ending, as finally coming to an understanding of my personal relationship with gender has led to me becoming a much more content and complete human. I only wish Owen could have been so lucky to experience the same joy.

THERESA DERWIN: This one is tricky as a woman coming out in her forties, especially as a late bi awakening descended on me. Ironically, everyone I then told – and it took years – said “Oh I knew” or “Oh, I assumed.” So, I have to be honest, Orange is the new black hit that button. At the same time I was devouring American Horror Stories; the first run. And a figure in a certain black body suit.

In retrospect it was obvious. I was reading Clive Barker, Poppy Z Brite, Christopher Fowler – And then I found Spanky.

Something about Spanky – and let’s face it, that original kinkster cover – spoke to me. Spanky was the brave, sexual, sarcastic and cheeky devil I wanted to be. He helped Martyn discover his real self.

I was never that comfortable with my body or the feminine aesthetic. That came later in life but even now it’s easier to wear joggers or shorts with t-shirts.

In later years the discovery of the kink (BDSM) community gathered me in its arms and welcomed me. I started going to the BBB event in Birmingham and finding new friends, new family.

To be fair, my family did kind of notice I was a rebellious little devil.

And now, in my fifties and my post menopausal era … I’m even more so.

AMANDA HEADLEE: How could I have known, as a teenager in the late ’90s, picking up Sabriel by Garth Nix for the first time, that the book was the beginning of a chapter that would lead me down a road toward understanding who I am?

Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series has had a profound impact on my life as both a reader and a writer. These dark fantasy novels shaped my love of fiction, magic, and worldbuilding. I still find myself reflecting on how Nix constructed the Old Kingdom and its unique magic systems, as well as the depth he brought to every character, from the protagonists to the supporting cast. Looking back, I can see just how much these books have influenced my own approach to storytelling.

But it wasn’t until I read Clariel, the fourth book in the series, in my late 30s (yes, I know I was a bit late to the book), that the series took on a much deeper personal significance for me. There was something about the protagonist, Clariel, that resonated with me in a way no fictional character ever had before. She is most fulfilled when pursuing her own interests rather than seeking romance. She resists her family’s attempts to push her toward marriage and struggles to understand the complexities of romantic relationships and society’s fixation on them.

Her strongest desires are never framed in terms of love or partnership; instead, they center on independence, nature, and the ability to determine the course of her own life.

What I admire most about the book Clariel is that these traits are never presented as a lesson or reduced to a label. Clariel simply exists as herself. Her asexuality emerges through her thoughts, feelings, and actions rather than through explicit explanation. As a reader who spent much of her life feeling out of step with expectations surrounding romance and attraction, I found something deeply familiar in her experience.

After finishing the book, I learned that Nix had intentionally written Clariel as an asexual character. I was familiar with the term, but I had never taken the time to explore what it really meant. Curious, I started reading. One article led to another, and before long, I found myself learning about asexuality, aromantic identities, and the broad spectrum of experiences they encompass.

The more I learned, the more I recognized myself in what I was reading. For the first time, I had language for feelings (or the lack thereof…no pun intended) that had accompanied me throughout my life. Things I had once dismissed as personal quirks or as simply failing to meet social expectations suddenly made sense. I wasn’t broken, and I wasn’t missing something everyone else seemed to have. I simply viewed attraction, relationships, and connection differently. I now understand that romance doesn’t have to be a priority in my life and that I don’t need to squeeze myself into the perfectly shaped “ideal woman” box that society deems acceptable.

When I first entered the Old Kingdom, I was captivated by bells that bound the dead, ancient magic, and dark journeys through Death. I never imagined that years later, the most important thing I would find there would be something far quieter: a character who helped me
understand myself more clearly than ever before.

Sometimes self-discovery doesn’t arrive in the first chapter. Sometimes it arrives decades after the story has already begun.

And that’s part three in our spotlight on queer horror characters! Please check out part one and part two of our series as well! And be sure to celebrate queer horror all year-round! 

Happy reading, and happy Pride Month! 

Welcome back for part two of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight! As I mentioned in our last post, I recently asked a group of wonderful LGBTQ+ horror authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life?

So I’ll let our writers in part two take it from here!

ADDIE TSAI: Jareth in Labyrinth. I was completely entranced with Bowie’s embodiment on stage and how the character encapsulated villain and prince, flamboyant and masculine, powerful and vulnerable. I would later realize that his genderbending aesthetic immensely influenced my own genderfluid style, in ways that persist to today, especially in terms of its theatricality and pageantry.

REI ALYSSA MURRAY: This character will probably appear several times throughout this post from various authors, but I am too spiritually connected to her to say anyone otherwise: Carmilla. Vampires have always been a very important archetype to me, and as someone who has identified with the image of the female vampire for a long time, this mysterious lesbian vampire has always been dear to my heart and has helped me to build an internal image that I am trying to externally express now.

My honorable mentions, speaking of vampires, would be Lestat and Louis. Those two definitely had some gay stuff going on.

JESSICA MCHUGH: Dr. Frank-N-Furter and the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show had a profound effect on me. I’d probably pinpoint that as my introduction to queer culture in a visual sense, not just as a topic of conversation at slumber parties…where I also had some of my scariest and gayest experiences up to that point. 😉

The campy horror glam won me over instantly—every sparkling weirdo, every boisterous song—and I found Frank-N-Furter endlessly intriguing. I already knew and loved Tim Curry from roles like Legend and Annie, but I was utterly fascinating by this man embracing femininity while still being so dominant, so fearless. He was beautiful and powerful, wild and wounded, and entirely unapologetic about who he was.

Personally, that scene of him hooking up with Brad followed by a hookup with Janet had my brain buzzing. Like, you can DO that? Brad AND Janet?! BOTH?! It would be years before I came out as bisexual, but middle school Jess was enthralled and curious and very excited to discuss this interesting development at the next slumber party…right after being dared to leave a hickey on Emma H’s butt cheek.

ANGELA SYLVAINE: My favorite queer character is Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I first saw the movie in my teens on the big screen, and it’s my first memory of seeing a bi character. While Lucy wasn’t explicitly bi, it was pretty obvious to me, and I was smitten. She was so incredibly vibrant and unapologetically herself.

Lucy helped me realize I was bi, but she’s also meaningful to me because of what she endured. From her suitors to Dracula, no one cared what she wanted, only what she could give them. While she seemingly had a repressed hunger that was released at her turning, she never had a choice. I remember being very angry that she was villainized and “saved” from her own impurity by the same men who sought to possess her. Sure, she was about to feed on a baby, but a girl’s gotta eat (#girldinner).

She showed me that women are often judged and used and controlled and owned. That we are robbed of choice. That we aren’t allowed to be vibrant and unapologetically ourselves. And if we dare, we may pay a painful and perhaps deadly price. There was time when I internalized this as a cautionary lesson, but in recent years that caution has burned away to leave only fury at how she, how we, are treated. For me, Lucy has shifted over time from a crush to a monstrous femme icon. I wonder if we should all become monsters.

SARA TANTLINGER: Dr. Alana Bloom from NBC’s Hannibal is one of my favorite queer characters. In the books, Dr. Bloom is a male character with a minor role, so for showrunner Bryan Fuller to gender-swap the original and give her a complex storyline was exciting. Plus, by season 3, we learn Alana is bisexual. Watching this show in my early 20s and seeing not only the most beautifully macabre show I had ever seen, but for there to be queer characters and a bisexual woman was so meaningful.

Seeing any queer female character in horror media who wasn’t being treated as an object for the male gaze was significant. When she begins her relationship with Margot Verger, I remember some of the backlash that came out. Viewers were upset that her sexuality wasn’t hinted at more obviously before, and I thought that was a ridiculous criticism. Someone not revealing their bisexuality right away isn’t a “trick” that they’re hiding. Then again, I was never surprised by her bisexuality. Something about her character made more sense to me when she bonds with Margot over the visceral horrors they both endured. Alana spends so much time trapped between the desires of Hannibal and the breakdown of Will Graham. To see her become stronger in season 3 as she embraces a little darkness, and with Margot by her side, only made her cooler in my view. It is definitely a character arc that really had an impact on me and continually inspires my writing!

BILL COZZA: A queer horror character who has never left my brain is Will Rabjohns, from Clive Barker’s Sacrament. As I started really digging into horror, as a bi man, I paid close attention to how certain groups were represented, and most of what I was picking up portrayed queer people very stereotypically, almost never as the main character. Then I read Sacrament, and the thing that struck me about Will is how unremarkable his sexuality is in the scheme of the book. Will’s a gay man, and a portion of the book is him reflecting on AIDS and its effect on his community. But when it comes to the overall plot, Will is just like any other male protagonist. He acts the same way a straight man does, he makes the same decisions, deals with the same things. He’s introspective, he’s brave, he’s complex. He’s not written as a “gay main character.” He’s just the main character. Coming from Clive Barker, one knows this is intentional and to prove a point. And knowing that Clive had a fight over publishing this book because Will was gay (and this is only the mid-90’s), his refusal to change this aspect to sell better has always been a beacon to me. I’ve always looked for bi representation, but Sacrament was the first book I read that showed me that queer characters in general could carry a story, unapologetically, and not stereotypically, as main characters. So, Will stays with me after all this time.

ALAN KELLY: American Horror Story: Asylum‘s Lana Winters is my Favourite Queer Character

AHS: Asylum follows reporter Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), a woman whose storyline initially resembles a Final Girl narrative arc; she gradually evolves into an infinitely more complex and well-rounded character as the season progresses. As much a literary homage to the brazenly Sapphic characters of a Rita Mae Brown novel as she is a non-traditional horror story heroine — exactly what LGBTQ people need in our dark times – Lana Winters is one of the strongest queer/lesbian characters in horror.

MAY WALKER: To age myself in spectacular fashion, I remember watching Isabella Rossellini in Death Becomes Her at a sleepover party, while eating Green Apple Jolly Ranchers. My brain tends to file important memories away in full sensory detail, and that one is etched in neon green. And I’m far from the only one. To paraphrase an article from Vanity Fair, Isabella Rossellini said she can predict with 90% accuracy if someone is gay by telling her they loved her in Death Becomes Her. She might be onto something.

GARRETT COOK: I think my favorite Queer character in horror cinema is Doctor Septimus Praetorius from The Bride of Frankenstein. Ernest Thesiger’s performance is so shamelessly gay at a time when homosexuality in public life was still a huge taboo. He is big, broad and ridiculous and instantly transports this gothic production into a world of Bizarro camp with a laboratory full of weird little homonculi. Praetorius is a good role model in this way because he reminds us that being authentic genuinely transforms the world around you. He might be a campy archvillain but he has control of the world around him, control of the plot and knowledge of what it is to be an outsider. Praetorius is just really cool.

SAMANTHA CURTIN: Surprising to no one who knows me, my queer horror icon is the great character of Tiffany Valentine who graced the screen in the 1998 Bride of Chucky. Since seeing her in both human and doll form unlocked something in my baby queer self that I’ve been trying to embody ever since. Tiffany was also notably played by a queer horror icon in her own right: Jennifer Tilly. The fact that later on in the series they went meta and she played not only Tiffany, but herself, continued to prove just how iconic she is.

VIOLET MCMASTER: For my response, I offer my unhinged beloved May Dove Canady, the titular character of the 2002 film, and played sublimely by Angela Bettis. May’s attempts at desire throughout the film felt like the fumblings of someone uncomfortable in both body and sexuality. Desire for friendship and connection gets wrapped up with sexual exploration, culminating in a sense of confusion and performance as a means of finding recognition, of feeling seen. But humans are untrustworthy. They so often flee at the first sign of strangeness. If we can’t find friends…we must make them.

May likely had little understanding of the totality of queerness throughout the events of the movies, but she was figuring it out before the string of rejections that awakened her inner Victor Frankenstein. Queerness here has less to do with sexuality and more to do with isolation bred from the pursuit of perfection as a means of fostering connection. Obsession leads to her undoing, yes, but this world wasn’t built for her trauma in the first place. May is receiving a well overdue reevaluation, and I think we can thank the Weird Girl movement in film and literature, as well as more normalized conversations regarding queerness and the myriad expressions it takes. Yes, her methods for making friends are questionable on many levels, but at least her heart is sort of in the right place…as is her eye.

KRISTY PARK KULSKI: It’s Lisa from Girl, Interrupted. Sure, Angelina Jolie holds an honored place in my realization of being a bi-sexual woman and this movie was significant part of that self-discovery process—but I see Lisa as something more significant. She’s permission to be dangerous. While not classified as a horror, to me, Girl, Interrupted is a horror. To be institutionalized for being “problematic,” for needing something the world will not give, for being true to ourselves as women, even more so as queer women—that is where horror lives.

Oh, cruel, raw, yet powerful, Lisa, who says, “some advice. Don’t point your fucking finger at crazy people.”

How can we exist as queer women and not feel fucking crazy sometimes? Who doesn’t get tired of the bullshit? Lisa drags the rage and pain into the open and laughs at it, at us. She calls people out. She knows that makes her dangerous. Be inconvenient, make others uncomfortable, be imperfect and damaged. Be human.

Lisa doesn’t just say the truth, she mocks you with it. She can’t stand you holding back either. What she wants is the truth—no matter how horrible or painful it is. She wants you to tell her the truth about herself too. We already know she’s not healthy, but she doesn’t pretend to be either.

She knows she’s a problem, but she won’t stop—can’t stop—and I both love and hate her for it. Worse, I want her to be okay. But she won’t be and that’s part of the horror.

STEPH PATTERSON: One of my favorite queer characters in horror is Yaya Betancourt from Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper. A queer cosmic body horror. As a bi woman with chronic illness, I absolutely devoured this book. A woman named Yaya discovers she has teeth between her thighs and then it transforms into a large entity with tentacles and a mind of its own. During all this, she falls in love with a woman named Doc.

Reading about a queer character going through unimaginable body horror, falling in love, and then becoming fantastically larger than life was empowering and healing. It made me reflect about my own queerness, and how often as a teen I was taught to shrink that part of myself. I now fully embrace my bisexual identity.

Yaya was so badass and inspiring to me that I wrote a poem called “Devour Me.” It’s an ode to Yaya, her love for Doc, and the entity that becomes Magenta. An ode to when queer love cannot be contained. I first posted it on my Instagram, and then later published it in the anthology The Alien Buddha Loves You Too from Alien Buddha Press.

JOHN LINWOOD GRANT: To find a queer character with a direct influence on my own life, I have to go back to the folk-horror television play Penda’s Fen, which I watched as a teenager when it first came out, in 1974. A strange and very personal encounter for me, because like the play’s protagonist, Stephen, I too was at an old-fashioned all-boys school and lived in a small village; I too wandered a rural setting which could set the imagination ablaze. More than that, in those days we really did fear the techno-atomic threat which is an undercurrent in the play – not so far North of our village stood an early-warning station, a constant reminder of destruction.

Against that backdrop, Stephen wrestles with life and, crucially, with his sexuality; I had a swooning crush on our gorgeous village paper-boy, extremely non-Platonic feelings about male schoolmates, and yet found some of the local girls almost as attractive – just to confuse my adolescent brain. And as I watched the play, I walked alongside Stephen with his musings/fears; I echoed him, or he echoed me. So I still remember Stephen well, a boy who turns from a conflicted prig into – essentially – a free thinker, with hope. Maybe others found hope from Penda, and from recognition that life is a constant, flexible dialogue, informed by history but not constrained by it, not an orthodox monologue to be hammered into us. Queer, ironically, can also turn out to mean unfettered.

BRONTE ROWAN: I’m writing this shortly after arriving back in my hometown after attending a human rights conference. Already I can see my colours fading.

Honestly? It hurts to let the rainbow bleed out of me.

It is in moments like this that I remember my favourite anti-hero, Lestat de Lioncourt. What would he do? He’d raise hell in the name of equality. In The Vampire Lestat, he plans for vampires to come out – Anne Rice was very much aware of what she was doing with her monsters.

There is a certain kind of poetic justice in queering vampires.

Eternal love is a beautiful juxtaposition to how queer love has always been erased. Lovers are historically portrayed as friends, a whole generation of queer people was left to die during the AIDS crisis, and queer people face horrendously high violent crime rates.

The vampire is also a metaphor for found families because through blood, Lestat establishes his own coven of people to create the family he always longed for – people who care for each other.

I know that, as queer people, we still scare others because of our identity and sexuality. I feel sorry for those who believe that the only kind of love is of a sexual nature.

Anne Rice’s characters – Lestat in particular – toy with that. He is unafraid of what others have taught him to fear.

Happy Pride – stay safe, embrace your (found) family, and scare the hell out of the bigots by being your beautiful, queer selves.

That’s part two of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight! Please check out part one and part three while you’re here! 

Happy reading, and happy Pride Month!

Welcome back, and happy Pride Month! I’m so thrilled to present this year’s Pride Month Horror Spotlight! I’ve asked a group of amazing LGBTQ+ authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life? The answers are of course just as incredible as the authors themselves!

So without further ado, here’s part one in our Pride Month horror roundtable!

JESSICA GLEASON: I thought about this, pressing myself to find something poetic to say. As a teen, soaking in the more adult horror, representation was sporadic at best. Often, the queer character was the monster, a big reveal to villainize the othered. We didn’t have Mindy Meeks, a cynical horror-loving nerd, whose queerness is part of the whole. She’s a real girl instead of a plastic token. No Cole and Rust, gay heroes, not victims. For me, Willow Rosenberg is a standout, her sexuality fluid as she moves from her longing for Xander Harris to her relationship with the wolfish Oz and onto her love affair with Tara Maclay. She was imperfect and, at times, downright awful. I would never call her a role model or something to aspire to, but she represented possibility. Choice. Never once did I question her varied tastes, each partner made sense as she let her heart and not gender guide her romantic entanglements. Is she my favorite, though? No. That spot belongs to the alluring and unhinged Dr. Frank-N-Furter. So much of my youth and tastes were, in some way, a reflection of Tim Curry’s version of the character. Black clothing. Dramatic makeup. Tattoos. And, a love for Brads and Janets everywhere. “Don’t dream it. Be it.”

KASSIDY VANGUNDY: I know it’s a little basic, but my favorite queer character from a horror film is Jennifer Check from Jennifer’s Body. Although I’m probably more of a “Needy” myself, Jennifer and her gorgeous succubus ways had me rooting for her throughout the entire movie. It was so camp and transgressive. Her iconic “I go both ways” line made teenage me flip out as one of the few openly out queer kids at my Midwestern high school. Suddenly, I felt affirmed as a fellow bisexual femme who also had a bit of a toxic crush on one of her best friends at the time – a hallmark of queer adolescence really.

C.R. LANGILLE: I didn’t really become active in the LGBTQIA+ community until I hit my 40s after I transitioned. It was during this time that my egg broke, and when it did, it hit me like a cannonball. So, I don’t have a lot of influential queer characters that were a huge influence or that have changed my life. I will say, watching I Saw the TV Glow and what the character, Owen, endured by staying closeted was heavy to watch and a reminder of what a possible future could look like when hiding that side of yourself.

I am happy to see that queer horror is really starting to stand on its own two feet now. Representation matters, and seeing so much trans and queer horror coming out from different authors and presses has helped fill my little dark heart with love. I hope to see the trend continue to grow as more and more folks feel comfortable writing the stories that they need and want.

SIAN PENNY: Let’s talk about how entirely I vibe with Alexia from Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021). Not that I have all that much in common with a lesbian serial killer who gets herself pregnant with a cyborg baby after having sex with a custom car and goes on the run by pretending to be a dead teenaged boy. But the thing about Titane is that it’s not really a film about a genderfucky transhuman psychopath, it’s really a film about how genderfucky transhuman psychopaths are still human beings who absolutely, completely can be loved and adopted with a pure, unconditional fervour.

And in the eyes of so many people we’re monsters and we receive the treatment that people think are due to monsters. Many of the worst people in the cishet world have people who love them. So why don’t we get that?

Alexia is a messy, spiky character, who doesn’t conform to any idea of “good representation” — but that’s a domesticated idea anyway. Alexia is a monster, but she’s one of the most authentically human monsters in cinema. And people like us need that.

CHLOE SPENCER: For me, it’s gotta be Deena Johnson from The Fear Street trilogy. She’s badass, resourceful, and unapologetically queer. What’s also significant about Deena is that she’s a major queer character that’s headlining an entire trilogy. Yes, technically the 2nd and 3rd films focus on other characters, but she’s present throughout each of the films and is ultimately the one that propels the action throughout the interconnecting story. It’s refreshing to have a character who is confident in her sexuality and who she is.

SARAH GRAVEN WEIR: Having grown up in the nineties, Tara Maclay in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first queer character I truly remember seeing on television. A shy outsider with a gentle soul, Tara stood out to me because she felt different from the louder
female characters often portrayed. She was soft-spoken, emotionally intelligent, awkward, kind, yet quietly powerful, and she carried a strength that didn’t rely on toughness or clichés. Her relationship with Willow Rosenberg gave viewers a chance to see themselves reflected in horror during a time when queer representation still felt rare. As someone still
trying to figure things out, Tara resonated with me because she felt believable rather than
exaggerated or performative.

I’ve always found outsider characters far more intriguing, particularly within gothic and supernatural horror because they often carry vulnerability and more hidden depth beneath
the surface.

Although I wasn’t keen on the way Tara’s story ended, especially during a time when
queer characters rarely received happy endings, her death became a turning point for
Willow’s darker storyline surrounding grief and addiction. Even so, Tara’s impact lasted long
after the show itself ended. She also helped challenge stereotypes that not all queer people
look or behave the same, and opened the door for more layered LGBTQ+ characters within
the horror genre.

During my final years at school, I also had the pleasure of meeting Amber Benson at a
signing in Forbidden Planet in Birmingham, UK, which made Tara feel even more
meaningful to me personally.

GAYNOR JONES: Can you say you were in the closet if you didn’t even know you were? The question’s lingered since acknowledging my bisexuality in my 40s, and I thought it often while watching Daniel Molloy in AMC’s Interview With The Vampire adaptation. Here, the interviewer has aged; he’s in his 70s, he’s ill, but sharp, astute. Though perhaps not about his own sexuality. Early episodes give glimpses – in the way he shifts when Louis comes close, and especially the way he gazes at Rashid. Indeed, when Louis feeds on Rashid in front of him, Daniel wonders what he tastes like.

Daniel’s sexuality is more explicit in flashbacks, where young Daniel tells Louis, “I mean, if something happens, you know, I’m cool”, then removes his shirt to “[fulfill his] side of the social contract” with an expectant grin wide on his face.

I kissed girls when I was younger, I collected clippings of female celebrities, paused and rewound certain films at certain times – but I was straight, right? I used to drink heavily then, Daniel did drugs; maybe we were looser, or maybe categories just didn’t occur to us.

Back in the present, when Daniel is jokingly propositioned by Louis, he blinks and swallows but doesn’t answer. He presents as a man who is clearly queer, but amongst openly queer people can’t quite acknowledge it. I think of myself – married to a man, doubted by friends, still in the closet to most people – and I fully understand why I relate to him so much.

HAILEY PIPER: I wracked my brain for a more direct choice, but I can’t deny the Gillman. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a classic, but specifically the third movie in that trilogy, The Creature Walks Among Us, was the one that hit me in a unique way. After a fire burns the Gillman, it’s discovered he has traits that make it possible for him to live on land, and the other characters attempt to make him part of the human world. It goes disastrously because the key theme of the trilogy continues to be: this creature was doing just fine before humans decided they needed to have their way. Much of the movie disgusted me as they try to change the Gillman, and though I didn’t have the phrase as a closeted queer child, it read as conversion therapy. “Who you are, how you are happy, these are wrong. We will make you right.” I’d seen attempts to tame and cage movie monsters before, but I’d never seen attempts to fundamentally change who and what they were until then, and it was disturbing. Perhaps that’s projection to some extent, but that’s just how art works sometimes.

ROBERT LEVY: One of my all-time favorite protagonists is Cass Neary, Elizabeth Hand’s mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know bisexual photographer who first appeared in the novel Generation Loss. I’ve long been attracted to damaged characters, and not only is Cass herself damaged but she also has a preternatural ability to spot this trait in others; in fact, it helps fuel her art.

Hand once described Cass a kind of alternate, frayed version of herself if she’d had her brakes cut, a concept that’s stuck with me over the years. There’s something inherently uncanny about queerness—ostensibly appearing normal, but in fact being different or somehow “off”—and the idea that as writers we can create fictional versions of ourselves on the page with varying fates is a natural extension of this same queer uncanniness.

NICK AUCOIN: While perhaps more horror-adjacent, the first queer character I remember having a big impact on me was Willow Rosenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Watching her character realize that she’s developing feelings for another woman, explore that, come out to other characters on the show, and then grow into a relationship she hadn’t considered before meant a lot to my younger self.

AZZURRA NOX: My favourite queer character in horror is Lestat de Lioncourt from The Vampire Chronicles. I discovered the series when I was thirteen, and up until then I hadn’t really encountered queer characters in the books I read. What made Lestat so important to me was that he existed with complete fluidity in his sexuality. Many people place him under the bi umbrella, and I understand why, but what resonated with me was that he never seemed confined by labels — he simply was who he was.

For me, that was incredibly liberating. I was growing up in a deeply homophobic environment: a Sicilian town and a private American school where being queer was treated like a character flaw. I remember people I considered friends saying things like, “If my child was gay, I’d feel like I failed as a parent,” or reacting to Madonna and Britney’s MTV kiss by calling it “disgusting.” Against that backdrop, Lestat felt radical. He was unapologetic, expressive, and entirely free in the way he loved and desired.

That freedom shaped the way I think about sexuality myself — as something fluid rather than rigid or boxed into a single label. While “bi” is probably the closest term for me, what I connected to most in Lestat was his refusal to be limited by definitions.

SUMIKO SAULSON: Like many young goths in 1983, at fifteen, I was obsessed with vampires. My most recent cinema crushes on Irena Gallier (Natasha Kinski) and Paul Gaullier (Malcolm McDowell) in 1982’s Cat People, made me aware of my bisexuality, but I was still closeted. Then The Hunger hit the big screen. A perfect vehicle for my adolescent fantasies: from the minute the Bauhaus started performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in the opening credits, I was hooked.

It’s a steamy love bloodsucking love triangle where Miriam Blaylock is the hinge. Powerful, sophisticated, immortal, and eternally young, the charismatic Miriam sucks in her human companions with promises of immortality. Once changed, they live for hundreds of years before suddenly, rapidly aging. To our horror, they don’t die. The book’s author Whitley Strieber is heterosexual, as is Catherine Deneuve, who plays Miriam, but both David Bowie, the actor who plays her husband John, and Susan Sarandon, who plays his would-be replacement Sarah, are bisexual.

Because the characters were openly bi, and Bowie was already out at the time, it served as a platform for discussions with friends and family about bisexuality, and I came out to my cousin, Gina, during a conversation about the movie. Sarandon came out as bi many years later.

The AIDS/HIV Pandemic deeply impacted our young lives at the time, and made The Hunger important as a queer cinema of the era. Gay and bisexual men were being prohibited from donating blood, and vampires were an obvious metaphor.

SEREN LEE: As my 2014 Instagram bio can attest (“Don’t Dream It, Be It!”), The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Frank-N-Furter had a life-altering effect on my creative development. Call me Brad and Janet (asshole! slut!), but as a closeted theater kid with a cookie-cutter framework, Tim Curry’s audacity and fishnets embodied a version of authenticity I had never seen before. Though murderous and imperfect, he loves big, loves freely – and it’s that determined self-assurance that infects all mere mortals who dare to enter his castle. May we all stand in our power, follow our desires, and leave the critics shaking with an-tici——pation!

NICOLE GIVENS KURTZ: My favorite queer character in horror that changed my life was when I first watched Ruby Baptiste (played by the astounding Wunmi Mosaku) sing in episode one of Lovecraft Country, I not only fell in love, but also changed my life. Here, for the first time, was a Black woman who wasn’t rail thin, blonde, or racially ambiguous. Ruby was confident and independent, sexy and queer.

Initially, she’s wooed by a white man named William, but she later discovers that it is a disguise for the treacherous white woman Christina Braithwhite. The discovery of the betrayal doesn’t stop their now bisexual relationship. As noted in A Guide to Watching Lovecraft Country, Ruby and Christina’s relationship is intertwined with body horror. When Ruby is temporarily transformed into a white woman to get a taste of privilege she’s missed out on as Black woman, it’s Christina’s potion that provides the means to do so. Her lover grants her wish, but it serves only to remind Ruby of the great width between their stations.

Moreover, it isn’t stated what happened to Ruby at the end of Lovecraft Country. It isn’t necessary, because I know what effect she had on me. Watching Ruby’s fall into her bisexuality was confirming to me. I didn’t discover I was bisexual until I was 24 and falling in love with a woman for the first time. Upon reflection, I realized I’d fallen for women many times before but due to society and religious pressures, I denied them. It wasn’t an open acknowledgment but rather, a “I love this person who happens to be a woman…”

The same was the case with Ruby. She fell for William, but when it was discovered that it was a woman, she still stayed. Because she loved the person, gender didn’t matter.

And for me, it still doesn’t.

And that’s part one of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight. While you’re here, consider checking out part two and part three of our spotlight as well!

Happy reading, and happy Pride Month! 

Welcome back to part two of our Women in Horror Month spotlight on resilient female characters in horror! Since our theme for this year’s Women in Horror Month was all about resilience, this seemed like the perfect topic to discuss with other female horror authors.

And with that, our featured authors can take it away!

CYNTHIA PELAYO: Clarice Starling’s resilience is disciplined and intensely internal. She enters spaces designed to intimidate her, but she doesn’t flinch. What moves me is how her vulnerability becomes a part of her superpower, and how ultimately she doesn’t become hardened by her experiences but sharpened.

MADISON MCSWEENEY: In Clive Barker’s Cabal, Lori is introduced as the supportive girlfriend of Aaron Boone, a mental patient and suspected serial killer who is gunned down by police. Visiting the site of his violent death, Lori discovers he’s still half-alive: the newest member of a cult of subterranean, flesh-eating monsters. As a war brews between humanity and the Nightbreed, Lori helps Aaron accept his new identity and ultimately chooses to join the Breed herself, knowing she’ll suffer displacement and persecution along with them. She’s not simply following her lover into the darkness; Barker writes Lori as an independent, self-assured woman who has made her peace with losing Aaron. It’s her strong will and sense of self that allow her to recognize her own kinship to the monsters.

JESS HAGEMANN: My favorite resilient female character in horror is Jenny from The Green Ribbon. She resists pressure from everyone around her until the end, when she takes her fate into her own hands.

GRACE R. REYNOLDS: When I think of resilient female characters in horror, the first that comes to mind is Tess from the film Barbarian. She subverts the trope of the Final Girl by questioning her surroundings and refusing to be a passive victim in the depths of the Mother’s lair. She wields patience and empathy as a weapon, quite literally, to pull herself out of the pits of hell!

L. MARIE WOOD: I’d have to say Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Specifically the original. She was a teenager doing teenage things who got caught up in a terrible nightmare that could cost her life. After losing her best friend and her boyfriend, Nancy didn’t just wait to die – she fought Freddy Krueger with everything she had, sacrificing her body in the process to pull him into the light. It was badass and that was punctuated by the way she said, “Screw your pass,” when the hall monitor asked for it. Side note, the amount of times I say, “Screw your pass!” when I don’t want to do something is embarrassing.

MAY WALKER: I’m not sure if Jane from The Autopsy of Jane Doe is my favorite, but she’s certainly resilient, surviving torture, time, misogyny, and the stripping of her identity. She deserves her vengeance, and in this dark time in history, this is a feeling that resonates.

MICHELLE RENEE LANE: One of the most resilient female characters I’ve seen in a horror film recently is Hailey Freeman, played by Danielle Deadwyler in 40 Acres (2025). Hailey is a complicated character who takes the trope of the strong Black woman to the extreme end of that spectrum as her blended family’s matriarch. Hailey lives with her partner and their children on an isolated farm in Canada that has passed down to her through multiple generations from her great great grandfather who escaped slavery. A former soldier, she has trained her family like a special ops team to protect them from cannibalistic raiders in a post apocalyptic, near future world ravaged by pandemics, wars, and species extinction. Hailey has high expectations and strict rules in her household and insists on being in control to keep her family safe. A series of unfortunate events leads her to risk her own life to save her loved ones. Reluctantly, she finally yields some of that control enough to trust her family to look after themselves after she nearly dies to rescue them and ends up being saved.

ANN FRAISTAT: Pearl from Ti West’s Pearl. I admit Pearl is a bit of an oddball choice, as her resilience does ultimately fail her, time and time again—but that said, her shattering resilience is precisely what makes for one hell of a villain origin story. Pearl is ravenous for stardom, determined to the point of delusion to escape her austere and lonely life, and when her glittering defiance does crack into bloody rage, it’s a pain I can feel in my bones. Plus, she has a pet alligator named Theda, which obviously gives her bonus points.

ERIN AL-MEHAIRI: Rose Madder, from the Stephen King novel of the same name, has always been a strong example of resistance and resilience to me. In the wake of leaving her abusive husband, scared and alone, she becomes powerful not just with help from the magical world, but by channeling her anger and rage into something far more powerful and life-changing. As a survivor of domestic violence myself, this book and its main character helped me through so much in my escape to a new life and taught me how to be resilient even in confronting extended periods of abuse and harassment before and after leaving and all the obstacles that kept jumping in my way. It’s really the catalyst of why I began to write horror.

KENYA MOSS-DYME: One of my favorite resilient women in horror fiction is Brittany from the story “Armor”. Armor is one of the short stories in the Maleficient Tales (2025) collection by author Mya Lairis. Brittany, a quiet but angry teenager, has experienced deep trauma within her own household and was left unprotected and savaged by those she loved and trusted. In the story, she experiences a brutal and monstrous transformation that allows her to heal from the inside out, so to speak. It’s haunting, ugly and raw, but. I think about Brittany often because she shares a name with my daughter and because I wish every daughter have some sort of armor against the world.

RACHEL BOLTON: My resilient female character in horror is Christine the 58′ Plymouth Fury from the 1983 film.

Christine may be a car but she is coded as female. She is a lady and expects to be treated like one. Her first on screen kill is a man who dared to smoke a cigar in her interior. Sure, she is possessive, a child murderer, and evil, but Christine always gets what she wants. From putting her broken frame back together to driving down the street on fire, Christine is unstoppable.

CHRISTINA SNG: I’ll have to say Carol in The Walking Dead. She’s had such an incredible journey from battered wife to the strongest and smartest survivor in the show. Her resilience and her resourcefulness sets her apart from everyone else. If something goes wrong, it’s Carol who saves the day. I admire her so much and aim to be like her when I grow up!

NICOLE M. WOLVERTON: My favorite resilient female character in horror is the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which I realize is an odd choice–except that she is so single-minded in her pursuit of gaining agency for herself in a world where women are denied the freedom of movement and their own desires. Given the effort in contemporary politics to effect a backslide in freedoms for women, it feels particularly of-the-moment in some ways. I am particularly fascinated by the use of food in the story and the way the narrator opts out of her forced diet of “cod-liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat” as a way to carve out some semblance of decision-making and its place in setting her free, for what it’s worth, by the end of the story.

LISA MORTON: I’m going with Clarice Starling (and yes, dammit, The Silence of the Lambs absolutely IS a horror/mystery!). So many women in horror novels and films exist to be victims – even when they are the protagonist – but Clarice is so great because throughout her life she has worked to raise herself up, and in the story’s finale she firmly catapults herself out of any potential for victimhood.

AGATHA ANDREWS: Lolly Willowes from the book LOLLY WILLOWES by Sylvia Townsend Warner – She was tired of everyone taking advantage of her and making demands on her life, so she became a witch and sold her soul to the devil just so she could get some peace and quiet. Then she tamed the devil.

LYDIA PRIME: My favorite resilient female character in horror is a bit hard to pin down, but I’ll go with Maya from The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. Imagine being kidnapped, permanently marked, and kept for years; staring your only conceivable twisted end in the face day in and day out. Maya expertly navigates not only her captivity in ‘The Garden’ but several, if not all, of her fellow prisoners to foster some level of comfort… well, what little comfort they can find in this place. To hold on to one’s sanity knowing the clock is ticking for yourself and those around you, I can’t imagine a stronger person.

CATHERINE JORDAN: Noomi Rapace is a favorite character in my favorite drama horror movie, You Won’t Be Alone, and endures her kidnapping by becoming the other, by allowing herself to be shaped by watching and feeling. She stands as a profound yet overlooked resilient woman because she does not want to be saved; she learns and lives within her experience.

TRISH WILSON: I chose Rynn Jacobs from “The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane”, a 1976 horror film starring 13 year old Jodie Foster in one of her first major movie roles. The movie takes place in a conservative small seaside town in Maine. Martin Sheen stars as pedophile Frank Hallet, with Geraldine Page as his nosy, enabling mother, Cora Hallet. Scott Jacoby rounds out the main cast as Rynn’s only friend, disabled teenager Mario Podesta. Only a year earlier, Sheen starred in “Sweet Hostage” opposite a teenaged Linda Blair. The movies are uncomfortably similar. “Sweet Hostage” romanticized Sheen’s charismatic escaped mental patient who seduces Blair, resulting in Blair’s case of Stockholm Syndrome. He quotes Coleridge and devolves into frightening and violent flights of fantasy. The similar characters yet very different and disturbing portrayals offset each other quite well.

While Rynn is only 13 years old, her intelligence and lack of naivete enable her to fend off the lecherous pedophile, Frank, as well as keep nosy neighbors at bay since the townspeople wonder where her poet father is. He is never home when people barge in unannounced or he is writing and can’t be disturbed. Rynn is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but she trusts Mario enough to let him get close to her and to help her. Frank continues to sexually harass Rynn, who has her own effective ways of dealing with him. I won’t discuss details of the plot so I leave no spoilers. Suffice to say Jodie Foster knocks her performance out of the park – so much so she won a Saturn Award for Best Actress.

AMY GRECH: Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is my favorite female character. I love her steadfast transformation as she struggles with her identity in a patriarchal, totalitarian state of Republic of Gilead where women’s bodies are owned through political subjugation and complicity is the norm.

SABA RAZVI: The resilient horror heroine is the ultimate final girl of the page: Scheherazade from The 1001 Nights. Even though this is not a typical horror story as seen through the lens of Western narrative structures, it sprawls across all the nightmares and atrocities of the East in an unapologetic and intricately faceted way. And, if you take a step back from the frame tale or the whimsy it contains, you can see how horrific the scenario is. The frame tale is structured around sustained horror and serial murder, and the tales contained within it feature all kinds of adventure and danger and nightmare, which are offset by the whimsy or beauty or ephemeral. You can get lost in the stories, and forget which threads connect to each other. The premise and the atmosphere are a nightmare that suggest that survival is a fragile kind of miracle or a gift for the lucky or the cunning. Scheherazade jumps into the dangerous situation of choosing to marry a serial killer (let’s face it, he is doing exactly that through his revenge agenda of “marry, seduce, and kill” with state power sharpening his sword).

But she sees the haunted palace that he is. And, she refuses to be defeated or annihilated, surviving solely though the force of her imagination. She walks into the nightmare and decides to save herself and Shahryar from his violent plan with nothing but a story that she pauses at just the right time to keep things going. Her resilience is a reminder that time is always running out and the stakes are always life or death when we go all in with our endeavors. Her narratives feature all the darkness of humanity: strangeness and excess, jealousy, cruelty, demons and jinn, sorcery, shipwrecks and false faces…and even the heart of the king’s psychic wound, jealousy, betrayal, and tenderness. She sneaks beauty in to disarm the horror, but it’s always an otherworldly kind. What I love about her resilience is that it reminds us of the power of words and that narrative can be dangerous and risky as well as it can be liberating. It is the poetry of our language that takes us into the darkest parts of ourselves, but leaves us a thread we can use to wind our way back out. Her resilience comes at the risk of herself, but she believes in herself and in the power of her own imagination, her own ability to transform the nightmare. By invoking the horror, she finds a way to turn it into hope. In our world, today, trauma seems to lurk everywhere, and the path to surviving it is connected to faith in the self, fascination with imagination, and indulgence in the lyricism of language. Her resilience reminds me that if you pull the monster into your own story, you can find a way to survive the trauma he imposes, to write yourself free.

And that’s part two of our Women in Horror Month spotlight on female characters. While you’re here, please consider checking out part one and part three of our resilient characters spotlight! 

Happy reading, and happy Women in Horror Month! 

Welcome back! Today, I’m thrilled to share part two in our roundtable featuring Seton Hill University’s female horror students. As I mentioned in Part One earlier this week, all of these writers are part of the Writing Popular Fiction program at the university, and they’re some of the most promising up-and-coming authors you’ll find in the genre.

So once again, I’ll let them take it away!

This year’s theme for Women in Horror Month is Horror and Resilience. Do you have a favorite resilient female character in horror?

JENNIFER VILLALOBOS: A female character who has always stayed with me is Carrie White from Stephen King’s Carrie. Carrie endures relentless bullying at school and suffocating religious abuse at home from her fanatical mother. I think many of us can relate to the cruelty of the high school experience. Along with the isolation, there’s the realization that we may never truly fit in, yet most of us have a support system somewhere; Carrie does not. What I think makes Carrie so compelling is not just her suffering but her breaking point. She’s pushed beyond what anyone should have to bear until she finally claims her power. But it’s only claimed in a way that destroys those who hurt her and herself. For me, she’s a reminder that resilience has its limits because, frankly, there’s only so much shit we should have to put up with. I just wish that Carrie had survived in the end.

BETHANY NEAL: I think Grace in Ready or Not is the epitome of resilience. She’s thrown into a murderous game with a family (that she was about to marry into!) full of psychopaths, and she doesn’t hesitate or give up on surviving. For her, survival is the only option. That’s admirable…and a little funny.

JEMMA K. DRAPER: My favorite resilient female character in horror is Rosemary from Rosemary’s Baby. I have always loved the complicated resolution to her story. For all its angst, Rosemary is a character who made the best of her situation, willing to smile in the face of the literal devil.

BUFFY NESBITT: It’d be remiss to talk about resilience without mentioning my nickname’s namesake, Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My dad showed me the series as a kid to introduce me to what a strong, modern woman could look like. It kind of worked; I definitely didn’t get physically tough, but I’ve used lessons from the series in some of the roughest patches of my life. Buffy hit a lot of stereotypes of nineties girls–she was fashionable, wore heels and makeup, liked her pretty bad boys in leather jackets–but she never failed to kick ass and save the day, no matter what she was going through, and damn, did she go through a lot. And she was written with great nuance, more than many of other female leads on TV at the time. She did fail sometimes; she made mistakes, had regrets, and even was held back by them sometimes, though her friends were always there to carry her through. The series is definitely a relic of its time (and I won’t speak kindly now of Joss Whedon) but it was formative for me in many ways!

ALEX BELANGER: This may be a hot take, because I know a lot of people do not like this genre of revenge movies, sometimes they do feel exploitative, but I would say that the female character that stands out to me the most, even years after watching the movie, is Mary Mason from American Mary, due to the lengths to which she is willing to go to, to rise above a rigged system which protected her abuser. She finds an alternative (though illegal) career that leverages her underappreciated skills and knowledge and empowers herself—making good money and demanding respect— as an underground bodymod surgeon. She then uses her power to avenge herself against the man who abused her when she was at her most vulnerable. To the very end (spoiler) she fights to maintain her reclaimed autonomy, performing surgery on herself, while bleeding to death, as the cops rush in to arrest her. It’s a very moving closing scene, and I feel Mary’s story is one of the most visceral depictions of the female struggle that I’ve seen within the horror genre. She is without a doubt in my mind a feminist icon.

GRACE MCKAY: I adore Deena Johnson in the Fear Street Trilogy. While the movies themselves were exciting, the reason I was invested was because of Deena as a character. As a queer woman myself, it was refreshing to see a queer lead fight to save the woman she loves—a tale we have seen countless times from a heterosexual perspective. Despite the seemingly endless obstacles Deena faces, she remains relentless and focused on her goal to save Sam from the witch’s curse. As the leader of the group in this series, Deena shows resilience in how fast she jumps back into action following tragedy.  She is messy and imperfect, which, to me, makes her feel more human. If she made all the right choices, the story wouldn’t be as interesting. I hope to see more characters like her in horror going forward. Women deserve complicated and resilient heroines.

A.N. MILLER: It’s so hard to narrow down to a particular character given that horror has so many resilient female characters, but if I had to choose just one, I’d say Denver from Beloved by Toni Morrison. Her growth from a sheltered agoraphobe to a strong woman dealing with impossible circumstances in an unforgiving environment is a perfect foil to Sethe’s downward spiral, culminating in her rallying the community to save her mother and home at the climax of the novel. Denver’s journey is both moving and deeply satisfying.

ZOE FALK: My favorite resilient female character in the horror genre is Selene from the Underworld series. Though the franchise is not considered horrific by critics, Selene’s intelligence and determination make her a fabulous protagonist. For me, she’s on the same level as Sarah Connor and Laurie Strode

KARI J. WOLFE: There are two that I will mention:

Ellen Ripley of Alien and, sure, the second movie too. She’s intelligent and she keeps her head while dealing with an indestructible xenomorph.

The Biologist/Ghost Bird of The Southern Reach Series. She stays steady and collected while everyone else starts to go to pieces.

TERI HAWK: If I had to choose the female character that stands out the most for me, it would be Ripley from the Alien films. Ellen Ripley was originally written as male, but when they decided they wanted a female lead, the writers didn’t rewrite the script. They just replaced “he” with “she” and left the rest as-is. And so, we have Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, a strong female protagonist portrayed the same way a strong male protagonist would have been. I think this is striking for me personally as a retired member of the Navy. They talk about resilience a lot in the military. And, while the official materials never singled out women, it was not uncommon to hear mutterings about how much less resilient women were than men. How women shouldn’t be going on deployments because they supposedly couldn’t handle it like men could. That kind of thinking infuriated me. So, seeing Ripley on the screen, going through hell while being just as tough as the next guy, meant a lot to me.

VICTORIA HUGHES: Though usually considered to be a psychological thriller, The Collector by John Fowles features a woman named Miranda who is held captive by an obsessive man named Frederick Clegg. I won’t say much more on the plot of the novel, as it is one I think everyone should read, but throughout the book it becomes clear that Miranda is certainly deserving of the term “resilient.” Kim White from Full Brutal was also resilient, though in a very different way. I won’t spoil this book either, but she just… kept going.

What are your hopes for the future of women in horror? Likewise, what are your hopes for your own future in the genre?

JENNIFER VILLALOBOS: For one, I’m thrilled to see so many more women writing in horror. It feels like we’re seeing more characters with real agency, women who make proactive choices and fight patriarchal norms rather than being beaten down by them. I also love the growing intersectionality in the genre, with more BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors becoming true standouts. I say that as an older straight white lady, but I love it. I love seeing new perspectives, new fears, and new forms of resilience represented. Horror has always been about more than just instilling fear. For me, it’s a way to say something about society, about how the very things we are taught to fear often hold us back. It’s a space to fight injustice and challenge the powers that be, all while creating cool monsters and letting our imaginations go wild. For myself, I hope to keep writing, get published, and be part of the community and the conversation.

BETHANY NEAL: I hope the future of horror embraces female rage. For so long, in basically every other genre, female rage has been deemed “unlikeable” and “unsellable”. I think horror is primed to embrace that coming of rage moment in female-driven horror stories.

As a female writer filled with pent up rage (who isn’t?!), I hope my future holds an outlet to share my writing not only for entertainment, but to also offer a rage release. Working on a Bloody Mary retelling has been quite cathartic for me. Hopefully, I can share that experience with readers when that novel is published.

JEMMA K. DRAPER: My hope for the future of women in horror is to have more women in horror. Of the women that write in the horror genre, few seem to make it to a bookshelf in a Barnes & Noble, so we simply need more of them. My hope for my own future is to be the author of a book that made someone a new fan of horror. I want to bring someone from perusing the horror section to being a devout follower of the genre.

BUFFY NESBITT: Women have always been a driving force in horror, even if their contributions have been overlooked or ignored! And womanhood/girlhood/the entire concept of gender in a socioculturally enforced binary system are themes that are horrific in real life as well as in fiction. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is, in so many ways, a horror story. Oddly, I don’t consider myself a woman so much as the rest of the world does–if anything, I’m a dedicated femme, and I’ll commit to a joke before I ever commit to a gender–which comes with its own fascinating elements of horror that plague my life and the lives of many nonbinary queer individuals in the modern world. The relationship between me and my body is a complicated mess of codependent loathing, and that’s before ever bringing chronic disability into it. I guess it shouldn’t surprise anyone that body horror is one of my favorite subgenres. Still, horror is all about challenging the status quo, recontextualizing the world around us, and exploring fears, and there are few people better poised in the world’s societies today than minorities (even if women are ~50% of the population… there’s horror in that, as well).

ALEX BELANGER: I would love to see more women writing horror, directing horror, and starring in it. I would also like to see more diversity in terms of the women telling the stories, how they’re told, and how the women in these stories are portrayed. I would say that I still often struggle to identify with female characters in the mainstream, as someone who does not identify with gendered expectations or stereotypes, so I’d like to see more female characters that challenge the mainstream’s idea of what a woman can be. As for myself, I hope that my work too, someday contributes to making more readers feel seen within the horror genre.

GRACE MCKAY: A lot of the horror I was exposed to while growing up used women and other minorities as objects to drive the story forward. Although we are seeing a shift, there is still much work to be done. I hope that the presence of women in horror will grow as we continue to expand and innovate the genre, providing fresh ways to shock and horrify readers from a new perspective. We deserve to have our voices heard. As for my future in the genre, I expect I will return to horror often. It has provided me with a place to process and work through my anxieties in a way no other genre has. I would like to write more short horror stories to sharpen my craft and build upon what I learned while writing my first novel.

A.N. MILLER: Women are marginalized across the arts in general, but horror definitely has a reputation for being more of a “boy’s club” with its dearth of slashers chasing scantily clad women and scream queens. My hope is that horror will continue to evolve past the cliches of ‘70s and ‘80s franchises to better represent the lived experience of women from all backgrounds, particularly women of color and the queer community. The world is a scary place, and being able to exorcise some of the anxieties and fears of modern life through fiction can make it easier to face them. My hopes are to publish my most recent novel in the next one to two years and find a home for some of the short stories rattling around my hard drive. Long term, I’d love to be able to quit my day-job and write full-time.

ZOE FALK: I predict women taking over horror in the future, and I cannot be more excited. I encourage women to give the genre a try. I never thought my work would be considered dark fantasy, but the more I kept writing, the more my work felt alive. There is beauty in horror, and anyone can create from it. They need only a pen and paper.

KARI J. WOLFE: I think the more women authors there are, the more changes we’re going to see in how women are seen in horror. Personally, I would like to see more women whose bodies age and whose stories don’t just evaporate because of it. Our culture tends to sidelines women after youth — I don’t want my horror to do that.

I would like to see more actual women in horror, rather than final girls. There is something to be said about a middle-aged housewife who mocks the demon in her attic by playing it Hank Williams Sr. albums all day, right? Right?!

I want a world where the girls who weren’t chosen are still powerful.

My own future is in writing these types of stories.

TERI HAWK: I think it’s very interesting that women are one of the most underrepresented groups in horror writers, running around 45% lower than in literature overall. Yet female protagonists account for nearly half of protagonists in horror. I’d love to see more women telling their own stories. When people write from a place of experience, telling their own lived horror, they can paint it in a way that paves the way for universal understanding. An example that comes to mind is the recent film Nightbitch based on the novel by Rachel Yoder. I remember an abundance of talk around the film festivals when it was released, from men being made deeply uncomfortable to women feeling like they were seeing a part of themselves on the screen that society always made them feel the need to hide away. But what stood out the most for me was hearing men express that the film provided them insight into their partners’ lives like never before. I’d love to see more women telling stories like that, and I hope my work does the same for someone else someday.

VICTORIA HUGHES: In the future, I hope to read more from women in Splatterpunk and extreme horror. I think a few new, ambitious voices could absolutely dominate in those subgenres. And while there is already such great stuff written by women in the “transgressive” side of horror fiction, I firmly believe there is great potential for more, so hopefully (and very likely) in the future we’ll get more of that. In a similar vein, I think it would be great to be one of those authors. That is the dream, anyway, but for the near future, I hope to start getting some of my short stories published before I publish my debut novel in the next couple of years.

Thank you so much to the Seton Hill MFA students for being part of this roundtable! Be sure to keep an eye out for their work in the years to come!

Happy reading!