By Jim Mcleod The Best Trans Horror Writers: Voices Redefining Fear and Identity
Horror has always been a genre where the marginalised find resonance, and trans authors are carving out spaces that challenge conventions, reclaim monstrosity, and explore the visceral intersections of identity, politics, and terror. From body horror to gothic surrealism, these trans horror writers are not just telling stories—they’re reshaping the genre. Here are some of the most groundbreaking trans horror authors to add to your reading list.
Ginger Nuts of Horror stands with trans horror writers, and we reject the court’s narrow worldview and champion a future where equality transcends biology. So, I have created a section on Ginger Nuts of Horror to highlight and promote trans Authors and filmmakers. We will make a pinned article permanently placed at the top of the home page. We will add trans creatives to the list from all genres of literature and media. We will also have a rolling set of free adverts across all the site pages, with links to purchase their media.
If you would like us to cover you, please send an email to
jimmcleod@gnofhorror.com
Please include a description of your book, film, comic, etc, and your preferred link to purchase/ watch/ read your product. As well as the genre you would like your art placed into.
Additionally, if you would like to be featured on the site, we have several articles that you can contribute to. Which can be found here
Billy Martin (Poppy Z. Brite)
A pioneer of queer horror, Billy Martin (formerly writing under the pen name Poppy Z. Brite) emerged in the 1990s with Southern Gothic-infused tales like Lost Souls and Exquisite Corpse. His work, drenched in blood and queerness, redefined vampire lore and explored taboo desires. Though he shifted genres in the 2000s, his early horror remains a touchstone for its unflinching portrayal of outsiders 1210.
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite
A terrifying novel of love and slaughter set in London and New Orleans.
To serial killer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from a life sentence in prison, he makes his way to America with the intention of bringing his art to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, he inadvertently joins forces with Jay, a dissolute playboy. They set their sights on a young Vietnamese-American runaway, who they deem to be the perfect victim.
Moving from the grimy streets of London’s Piccadilly Circus to the decadences of New Orleans’ French Quarter, Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a serial killer in this riveting, unforgettable masterpiece of horror.
Polly Schattel
Polly is a writer and filmmaker who has written and directed three award-winning, internationally distributed feature films. Her first novel, The Occultists, was published by JournalStone in 2020, followed by Shadowdays (2022) and 8:59:29 (2023).
She has taught Film Directing, Screenwriting and Film Editing in the NC University system, New York City and elsewhere. Proudly and passionately transgender, she lives in the mountains of Asheville, NC with her wife and four wild and vicious animals who love people food.
8:59:29 by Polly Schattel
When a disgruntled adjunct faculty teacher decides to get revenge on the head of her department, she begins a dark (and darkly comic) journey into the cracks between modern society and the secret depravity that lies underneath. She has to navigate the demons of technology, creativity, and Hell itself, but soon she must face the deepest, darkest horror of them all: her own personal failures.
“Polly Schattel’s 8:59:29 is an expertly rendered fable of moral conflict. Threaded into the high-velocity plot is a playful but exacting study of obsolete forces leaving residue on the contemporary world. It’s a tale of demons and hexes, of class and education, and of technology’s pernicious expansion as a governing social force. Wicked, sardonic, intelligent horror fiction.” —Mike Thorn, author of Peel Back and See
“…this wry, wicked send-up of artistic and academic frustration has a bizarre charm.” —Publishers Weekly
Find out more about Polly and her work here
Hailey Piper
Award-winning author Hailey Piper is a powerhouse of body horror and cosmic dread. Her debut novel, Queen of Teeth (2021), follows a woman whose body rebels in grotesque ways, blending vagina dentata mythology with critiques of corporate exploitation. A Bram Stoker Award winner, Piper’s work—including The Worm and His Kings—melds queer resilience with existential terror 1610.
Cranberry Cove by Hailey Piper
What’s been happening at Cranberry Cove? It’s unspeakable. It’s unspoken.
Emberly Hale is about to take a dark journey inside the derelict hotel—and inside her own past—to find out the horrible truth.
“This is a hell of a read.” — Cemetery Dance
“What follows is the best crossover episode of Law and Order SVU and X-Files that you never knew you wanted and now cannot live without.” — Booklist
“Cranberry Cove feels like a more thoughtful and nuanced episode of Tales from the Crypt with its harrowing examination of masculinity and gender roles inside a carnivorous hotel. Exquisitely written with Piper’s signature lush and haunting prose, this bleak and undeniably upsetting novella will provoke and excite like all excellent works of art should.”
—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Find out more about Hailey Piper at here website here
https://haileypiper.com
Alison Rumfitt
British trans writer Alison Rumfitt confronts fascism and transphobia head-on. Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021) reimagines the haunted house trope as a metaphor for Britain’s far-right ideologies, while Brainwyrms (2023) uses body horror to dissect gender dysphoria and societal hatred. Rumfitt’s work is raw, political, and impossible to ignore.
Brainwyrms by
When a TERF bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, sleeping with strangers, pushing away her friends. Then, she meets Vanya.
Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya. The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, so too does Frankie’s feeling that Vanya is hiding something from her. When Vanya’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy, the roots of which go deeper than she ever imagined.
Shocking, grotesque, and downright filthy, Brainwyrms confronts the creeping reality of political terrorism while exploring the depths of love, pain, and identity.
Gretchen Felker-Martin
Felker-Martin’s Manhunt (2022) is a post-apocalyptic nightmare where a testosterone-targeting virus turns men into ravenous zombies, forcing trans survivors to battle both monsters and TERFs. Her follow-up, Cuckoo (2024), pits queer teens against a skin-stealing entity in a conversion camp. Unapologetically brutal, her stories weaponize horror to critique bigotry.
Cuckoo Kindle by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers meets Tell Me I’m Worthless in this relentless and visceral horror about a group of queer kids trying to survive the conversion camp from hell, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Manhunt
Something evil is buried deep in the desert.
It wants your body.
It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived—but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
Julya Oui
Malaysian writer Julya Oui infuses her horror with Southeast Asian folklore. Taiping Tales of Terror (2021) features vengeful were-tigers and bloodthirsty vampires rooted in her hometown’s myths. Her short stories, like those in Bedtime Stories From the Dead of Night, offer bite-sized nightmares with cultural depth.
Taiping Tales of Terror by Julya Oui
Thirteen boys retell tales of terror one night around the campfire. But as the session draws to a close, they realize they started out with only twelve. The stories in this collection are works of personal gratification, nostalgia, and reverence and they serve as an homage to the author’s hometown and her favorite horror writers. They take place in various timelines and are written as stories within stories ranging from a headless ghost that returns as a grim reaper, a bird-like creature on the loose, a were-tiger out to seek vengeance, a vampire that decimated an entire village, and other restless paranormal entities that walk among us.
Eve Harms
A rising star in body horror, Eve Harms’ debut Transmuted (2021) follows a scientist whose experimental gender-affirming procedure goes horrifically wrong. Harms’ work, including handmade zines, celebrates trans joy while interrogating medical exploitation.
Transmuted: 30 (Rewind or Die) by Eve Harms
Her doctor is giving her the body of his dreams…and her nightmares.Isa is a micro-celebrity who rarely shows her face, and can’t wait to have it expertly ripped off and rearranged to look more feminine. When a successful fundraiser makes her gender affirming surgery possible, she’s overjoyed-until she has to give up all her money to save her dying father.
Crushed by gender dysphoria and the pressure of disappointing her fans who paid for a new face, she answers a sketchy ad seeking transgender women for a free, experimental feminization treatment. The grotesquely flawless Dr. Skurm has gruesome methods, but he gets unbelievable results, and Isa is finally feeling comfortable in her skin.
She even gains the courage to ask out her crush: an alluring and disfigured alchemy-obsessed artist named Rayna.But Isa’s body won’t stop changing, and she’s going from super model to super mutant. She has to discover the secret behind her metamorphosis-before the changes are irreversible, and she’s an unwanted freak forever.TRANSMUTED is an outrageous and unapologetically queer body horror tale that will leave you gasping, giggling, and gagging for more.
Hi, my name’s Naomi and I’m a 50-something trans woman book blogger. I mostly read science fiction and fantasy, though I have also been known to dip into the pulp, noir, crime, and thriller genres at times.
I’ve been an active book blogger and reviewer for a few years now, and recently decided to add a few semi-regular columns to the site, including a jaunt around Michael Moorcock’s multiverse, and a look back at past Hugo Award winners. I have a few other ideas I’d like to explore, so please feel free to subscribe to the site using the widget at the bottom of the page to keep up with all the latest developments.
I’m a first generation Star Wars fan, and a second generation Star Trek fan, and was one of those presumptuous nerdish readers you find in almost every school. My first taste of fantasy was The Hobbit, back when my age could still be measured in single digits, and since then I’ve devoured thousands of SFF and genre-adjacent works.
I’m also a bit of a writer, with a couple of published short stories under my belt many years ago, and an out-of-print cyberpunk short novel that I keep meaning to rewrite and republish. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not great at sticking to a single project, so whether I’m ever going to get something finished or not remains to be seen. Maybe one day. Until then, you can find some of my more palatable short fiction right here on this site.
Fight Like A Girl – Volume 2
The first volume of Fight Like A Girl was produced in response to accusations that stories of women warriors were somehow unrealistic and anachronistic. Sadly the need to counter such narratives still exists, but with this new volume we have also sought to broaden the types of women in the stories, and the ways in which they fight. In this book you will find a variety of science fiction and fantasy stories by top women writers. The heroines will face down adversity in many different ways and show what it is like to Fight Like A Girl.
Featuring stories by Danie Ware, Gaie Sebold, Dolly Garland, Cheryl Morgan, Juliet E McKenna, Anna Smith Spark, K R Green, Julia Hawkes Reed, K T Davies, S Naomi Scott & Lou Morgan, plus an introduction by Charlotte Bond
Jordan Hawk
For Lovecraftian thrills without the racism, Jordan Hawk’s Whyborne & Griffin series pairs a gay detective with an academic battling eldritch horrors. Hawk’s fast-paced, queer-centric stories prove cosmic terror and romance can coexist.
** Over 3,000 5-star reviews on Goodreads! ** A reclusive scholar. A private detective. And a book of spells that could destroy the world.
Love is dangerous. Ever since the tragic death of the friend he adored, Percival Endicott Whyborne has ruthlessly suppressed any desire for another man.
Instead, he spends his days studying dead languages at the museum where he works. So when handsome ex-Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty approaches him to translate a mysterious book, Whyborne wants to finish the job and get rid of the detective as quickly as possible.
Griffin left the Pinkertons after the death of his partner. Now in business for himself, he must investigate the murder of a wealthy young man. His only clue: an encrypted book that once belonged to the victim. As the investigation draws them closer, Griffin’s rakish charm threatens to shatter Whyborne’s iron control.
But when they uncover evidence of a powerful cult determined to rule the world, Whyborne must choose: to remain safely alone, or to risk everything for the man he loves.
Widdershins is the first novel in the Whyborne & Griffin series, where magic, mystery, and m/m romance collide with Victorian era America. Buy it today and join the adventure.
Andrew Joseph White
Queer trans author Andrew Joseph White merges historical fiction and horror in The Spirit Bares Its Teeth (2023). Set in Victorian England, it follows Silas, a trans medium trapped in a sanatorium, fighting patriarchal oppression and ghostly forces. A YA novel with teeth, it’s a fierce critique of systemic erasure.
The Spirit Bares Its by Andrew Joseph White
This instant New York Times bestseller is a visceral Victorian gothic horror of a young autistic trans boy who can commune with spirits, forced into a haunted sanitorium.
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first.
Asmodeus and his siblings were brought into the world in the middle of the bombing of Berlin, forty years ago. Their master never finished giving them their mission, their direction or their orders; instead, Asmodeus has spent the intervening decades as a restless force of chaos and despair.
Asmodeus’s story wraps around other short stories and poems about the dead, undead, and unholy, in Elliott Dunstan’s third collection. A teenage girl’s near-death experience turns her into a fractured kaleidoscope in ‘Bury Your Lovers Bury Your Friends’; a ghost of a former rock star visits a poet in ‘The Transient’; a censor tries to keep herself safe in ‘Mary Mary Ordinary’, and a bricked-up wife fights restlessness and doubt in ‘The Dripping Tap’.
Please note that Revenant’s Hymn contains adult content. A non-exhaustive list of trigger warnings is as follows: death/grief, dissociation, domestic violence, drug use, dubious consent, graphic depictions of violence, mental illness, Nazism/Holocaust references (offscreen largely), necrophilia, psychosis, sexual assault/abuse, suicide, and other dark/mature topics.
Achilles King
Born in 1992, Achilles was raised to be a girl and ended up as a man with a dry sense of humour and a love for defying expectations. Every piece is choc-a-bloc with smut, fun, and, uh, anti-capitalism.
Achilles loves erotic horror, erotic eroticism, and hot tea with milk and sugar. When he’s not writing, he’s gaming or thinking about writing.
Anyway, come for the smut, stay for the jokes about existential dread.
Rigor Mortis by Achilles King
12.5k MM Erotic Horror with a transmasculine protagonist. After disaster strikes in the United States at the hands of the greedy megarich of the world, the everyday people are forced to deal with the fallout.10 years after the apocalypse, Golightly Sitwell is on a mission to find his missing friends. When he locates the zombified love of his life, Hideki Akagi, he makes a reckless decision that changes the trajectory of his future.
Monroe S. Templeton
I Won’t Go To Mars (Or Dance In Strangers’ Cars) by Monroe S. Templeton
Isabella Tártago is a woman in crisis.
It is nine months since she began a relationship with her roommate, Nicola. And things were going steady – they’re hosting a party to celebrate the looming Mars landing. But Nicola has never told Izzy “I love you” sober, and Izzy is questioning why they’re still a couple, and if those nine months have been wasted.
But what if it never had to be that way?
Izzy has a condition – an ability to leap into her parallel selves. But will this let her escape heartbreak, or only defer her pain?
The Best Trans Horror Writers: Voices Redefining Fear and Identity
Samara Abigail Hunt
Samara Abigail Hunt is the Georgia-born author of the Amazon Top 10 Horror Malus Domestica series, and the Outlaw King fantasy series, winner of Reddit.com’s /r/Fantasy “Independent Novel of the Year” 2014 Stabby Award. She is also a “Mentor of Poetry, Prose, & Performance” with the National Creative Society.
In 2005 she joined the Army and after an ill-advised stint in the military police, she went back to school to be a transportation coordinator in order to deploy to Afghanistan.
Stationed in Camp Arena, Herat, Samara was promoted to Specialist and placed in a Lieutenant position in a joint Italian-Spanish command room, where she coordinated and recorded hundreds of convoys and outreach missions into far-flung parts of RC West, the western quadrant of the Afghanistan theater. She was awarded a Joint Services Achievement Medal for her efforts.
She currently lives in Petoskey, Michigan.
Burn the Dark: Malus Domestica #1 by S. A. Hunt
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets Stranger Things in award-winning author S. A. Hunt’s Burn the Dark, first in the Malus Domestica horror action-adventure series about a punk YouTuber on a mission to bring down witches, one vid at a time.
Robin is a YouTube celebrity gone-viral with her intensely-realistic witch hunter series. But even her millions of followers don’t know the truth: her series isn’t fiction.
Her ultimate goal is to seek revenge against the coven of witches who wronged her mother long ago. Returning home to the rural town of Blackfield, Robin meets friends new and old on her quest for justice. But then, a mysterious threat known as the Red Lord interferes with her plans….
“Brilliant!” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times–bestselling author
The Malus Domestica series
#1: Burn the Dark
#2: I Come with Knives
#3: The Hellion
Vegan Alternative Ortolan by Victor Hannibal
/ Time passes like milk souring, like people leaving a party. It goes and goes until there’s nothing left but the light of the screen.
This 55+ page book collects original stories and artwork previously published in other zines and anthologies. Grit your teeth and grab your popcorn for ten strange stories with plenty of horror, mixed with genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and romance. For everyone living in a digital world, a dying world, not knowing why they keep going to work or how to open up to the person next to them, there’s something here for you.
A backpacker tracing the route to a music festival is followed at night…
A new skin condition inspires hope and horror in those who develop it…
A victim of identity theft waits to see who buys their life…
Content warnings: As this is primarily a horror collection, please expect disturbing content within. These stories are recommended for adults. Watch out for the following – death, body horror, mild gore, murder, surgery, insects, spiders, injury, blood, drugs, dysphoria, paranoia, stalking, suffocation, knives, and teeth.
The Best Trans Horror Writers: Voices Redefining Fear and Identity
Kel Mention
I write about magic, belonging, love in all its forms, and foxes (you will come to learn, as many have, that I adore foxes). I tend to weave Gaeilge and/or Irish mythology and history into my work in one way or another. My work for children is whimsical and light, but my Young/New Adult work can explore some more intense themes.
I did both my degree in English literature and my MA in Medieval literature at UCC. I particularly loved learning all about monster theory, and reclaiming the title of ‘Other’, which creeps into my fiction more often than not.
When I’m not writing, I work as a freelance youth theatre facilitator, and a creative writing facilitator/mentor! I’ve also given some talks or sat on panels discussing being trans in the arts in Ireland, being a neurodivergent writer, and the importance of inclusive representation in literature.
Be Careful. The dark is listening.
A powerful and moving YA novel that seamlessly blends queer romance and fantasy
Content note: contains references to suicide and self-harm, homophobic and transphobic hate speech and references to past sexual assault.
The boy turned to face him. He lifted one hand and let the light play on his fingers. Not light, a thread.
A single golden thread, drifting like a cobweb, strong as steel. It blossomed from his chest, right above his heart.
Hanan realised with a start that the thread ended in his own chest.
Hanan is supposed to be dead.
The forest outside Skenashogue sent him home alive – but changed. A strange new magic makes every emotion a physical force he can’t control.
Bright and gentle, fox-like Pax is everything Hanan is not. And when he touches Hanan he mutes his secret power, quiets the curse.
To survive their own darkness they’ll need to open up to each other. But Hanan isn’t sure Pax will like what he finds out …
Can their love help them find their way back to the light?
Fox N. Locke
Hey all, I’m Stefanie Carter, a trans femme enby who writes and publishes queer genre novels under the pen name Fox N. Locke.
If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’ve already read one of my books or are a looking for a queer novel to get lost in. Either way, it’s great to have you here!
Take a look at my books below, have a click about, and see if anything jumps out at you. Feel free to follow me on Bluesky, over on Itch,io, or send me a message over on my contact page.
Their Heart a Hive
If you’ve a love for the gothic, queer centric stories, and unique takes on the vampire, this debut YA novel may just be for you.
It isn’t until meeting Lowen, a lowborn boy dealing with grief and battling bad luck, that the immortal genderqueer aristocrat, Tamorna Rosen Roane, can face the shame of their past lives and move towards catharsis.
Inspired as much by the rugged beauty of south-eastern England as Cornish folklore, this spooky slice of life portrays a queer-normative society with an 18th century flair.
A story of shanties and secrets, of long dead giants and merfolk that mind the sea, where piskies provide luck and the beast of Brasbudfand stalks the night.
Balancing the macabre and the absurd, this unconventional coming-of-age tale promises twists and turns and lyrical prose aplenty. A story about the power of kindness and empathy and how no one is ever beyond help.
“A beautiful book in both style and substance. That I was left in tears at the end only speaks to how lovely the story is and how invested I became in the characters and their outcome.”
“There’s a really moving redemption arc, skilfully crafted so that every loss hits hard, drawing the reader in to really emotionally invest in the tale and its complicated characters”
“A vastly underrated queer fantasy with Celtic and cottagecore undertones that at times almost feels like a sweeping gothic with a fantasy backdrop”
Written by trans author Stefanie Carter under the pen name Fox N. Locke with cover art by Teramori.
Ollie Shane
Ollie Shane is a poet, undergraduate English major, and the number one tote bag carrier and iced coffee sipper in the Tri-State Area (Delaware and Pennsylvania).He is Autistic and their special interest revolves around literature (currently on 20th century literature (such as W. Somerset Maugham, who they’re doing their thesis on) in conjunction with contemporary poets such as Danez Smith, sam sax, Franny Choi, Terrance Hayes, Mary Alice Daniel and others).
Also, he is constantly looking for more poetry and prose recommendations.On a writerly note, they are the author of the chapbook I Do It So It Feels Like Hell (Bottlecap Press, 2022), and their work has been published in Thirty West’s magazine AfterImages, Poetry As Promised, Palindrome Journal, and elsewhere. They also have a newsletter on Substack called Not Another Newsletter. To see more of their work, check him out on Instagram @aolshane and Chill Subs under olshane17.
Notes From the Void by Ollie Shane
COVID, institutionalization, coming out, and Kurtz and Marlowe’s relationship in Heart of Darkness are among many of the topics that Ollie Shane discusses in “Notes From the Void.” Like in “Brute” by Emily Skaja, and fellow Wild Ink writer Johnny Francis Wolf’s “Men Unlike Others”, honesty and a painstakingly observant view of their subjects is what guides them through the work. Come for the transparency about mental health; stay for the numerous literary references.
Trans horror writers reframe fear as a tool for liberation. Whether through body horror reflecting dysphoria, haunted houses symbolising societal rejection, or monsters embodying resilience, these authors confront the real-world terrors faced by marginalised communities. Their stories are not just about survival—they’re about defiance.
These voices are essential for readers seeking thrills that resonate beyond the page. Dive into their worlds, and you’ll find horror that’s as transformative as it is terrifying.
Explore more titles and authors in the sources cited, and support trans creators by purchasing their works directly or through indie bookstores.
Em Reed