Grace Byron and Zefyr Lisowski discuss horror!!!!

Grace Byron and Zefyr Lisowski return to Providence to discuss their work!!! Join us on Friday, October 16th from 6-7pm as we host Grace Byron and Zefyr Lisowski in conversation at Symposium Books. Signed copies of Grace Byron's Herculine and Zefyr Lisowski's Uncanny Valley Girls: Essays on Horror, Survival, and Love will be available for purchase. About Herculine: One of the Best Books of the YearELLE • Autostraddle • Debutiful • Chicago Review of Books • MUBI • Dazed • LitHub • Library Journal • them •Loosey “Devious and diabolical, Herculine is a jaw-dropping and completely unpredictable literary bewitchment about trauma, desire, and identity.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke A “witty, often-chilling, compulsively readable” (Vogue) horror debut following a woman who seeks refuge at an all-trans girl commune only to discover that demons haunt her fellow comrades—and she’s their next prey! Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods. The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon, what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own. While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go. About Uncanny Valley Girls: FINALIST FOR THE 2026 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR TRANSGENDER NONFICTION An Electric Literature Best Nonfiction Book of the Year • A them Best LGBTQ+ Book of the Year • A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • An Autostraddle Most Anticipated October Read • A BookRiot Most Anticipated Queer Book of the Year "In these extraordinary essays, Lisowski reads the entrails of her life like a witch and invites you along for the ride. How could you say no?" ―Carmen Maria Machado From Lambda Award-winning poet Zefyr Lisowski, a sharply personal and expansive memoir-in-essays dedicated to the strange and absurd beauty of horror films, exploring the complications of gender, the insidiousness of class ascension, and the latent violence hidden in our own uncanny reflections. This is how it worked: first I loved them, and then I loved myself. At twenty-seven, poet Zefyr Lisowski found herself in the place she feared most: a locked psych ward. While inside, she turned to horror movies―her deepest, most constant comfort. Rather than disturb, scary movies have always provided solace and connection for Lisowski, as they do many others―offering a vision of a world filled equally with beauty and pain, and a reason to reach out to others and hold them tight. After all, as Lisowski argues, what terrifies us most about these movies is our own uncanny reflection―and at the root of that fear, a desperate desire to love and be loved. In these wide-ranging essays, Lisowski weaves theory and memoir into nuanced critiques of films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Saint Maud. From fears about sickness and disability, to trans narratives and the predator/victim complex, to the struggle to live in a world that wants you dead, she explores horror’s reciprocal impact on our culture and―by extension―our lives. Through it all, Lisowski lays bare her own complex biography―spanning from a trans childhood in the South to the sweaty dancefloors of Brooklyn―and the family, friends, and lovers that have bloomed with her into the present. Deeply felt, blood-spattered, and brimming with care and wonder, Uncanny Valley Girls investigates the art of horror―and of the self―with brilliance and wit, blending the two topics seamlessly with essays such as: • “Ghost Face,” exploring the legacy of whiteness in Scream from the vantage point of the author’s childhood in coastal North Carolina. • “War on Terror,” outlining how the violence of the Iraq War and its legacy of torture impacted the films of that era, such as Final Destination, House of Wax, and Turistas. • “Southern Fried,” an ode to the author’s beloved Texas Chain Saw Massacre and how the film’s simple beauty and cruelty shaped the author’s relationship with the South. • “Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Werewolf Girl,” a complication of the werewolf as an inherently masculine form―and of the uneasy distinctions of victim and perpetrator―through the lens of films like Ginger Snaps and Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf.” • And more. About the authors: Grace Byron is a writer from the Midwest based in Queens. She regularly contributes to The New Yorker, The Nation, Vogue, GQ, and elsewhere. She is the books columnist for Defector. Her debut novel Herculine is out now in paperback. Zefyr Lisowski is the author of the essay collection Uncanny Valley Girls (Harper Perennial 2025), a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Leslie Feinberg Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction. She’s also the author of two poetry collections, Girl Work (Noemi Press 2024), winner of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry, and Blood Box (Black Lawrence 2019). She lives in Brooklyn and at zefyrlisowski.com.