Uncanny Valley Girls: Essays on Horror, Survival, and Love – A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Memoir on Trans Identity and Gender

“Calling the book a memoir in movies doesn’t capture the deftness with which Lisowski examines the role movies played in shaping who she was, longed to be, and became. . . . Even amid breakdowns, family traumas, and physical pain, there’s a sense of optimism that emerges from each essay, a belief that horror is not a static construct of violence and fear but a shapeshifting entity that can be a teacher, a mirror, a haven and more.” – Salon

“Zefyr Lisowski has written a poignant, innovative, and urgent blend of memoir and criticism that has replenished my belief in how art and love can save your life—a book that can single-handedly infuse new and unexpected beauty into your favorite films.” – Torrey Peters, author of Stag Dance and Detransition, Baby

“Expansive, skillful, and tender, Uncanny Valley Girls made me think in new ways about seemingly familiar stories. Lisowski is an immensely generous writer with an unparalleled eye for the beauty to be found in the macabre.”

– Julia Armfield, author of Private Rites and Our Wives Under the Sea

“. . . [Lisowski] is particularly skillful in her usage of horror films as framing devices, expertly using them as a needle through which to thread thoughtful, beautifully written explorations of gender, disability, race, class, and more.” – them, “The 32 Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2025” ​​​​​​​

“Lisowski never shies away from the complexities of her experience, no matter the horror it holds, but instead writes from a place of tenderness and accountability (and if that doesn’t culminate into care, I don’t know what does.) . . . . In this way, her criticism is a form of love towards both her chosen art objects and herself.” —The Rumpus

“Reading Uncanny Valley Girls is like wading into water without fishing, but pulling up line after line of transcribed narrative intermixed with the author’s lived experience, contextualized by popular culture, until you are left holding a beautiful tangle of words racing straight to the core of feeling.” – Chicago Review of Books

“With gentleness and curiosity toward what is horrific within herself—including, strikingly, her transness—Lisowski performs for us an address to a lover wherein her body “aches for you like the surgeon’s hand aches for the scalpel, like the butcher knife aches for meat.” . . . . . [Zefyr Lisowski] rarely tells us what to think, preferring to make thought itself, continuous and relational and unresolvable, seem irresistible. Messy as guts, her feminism apprehends horror as a resource belonging to “those of us who live in power’s periphery—trans, disabled, non-white, poor,” by which she really means all people for whom “love happens under violence’s shadow.” Ironically, what emerges from her guts-spilling is a powerful invitation to scream with, and perhaps even at “me,” screaming for reasons not fully understood, as long as we are doing it with each another.” —Sophie Lewis, The Massachusetts Review

“This lyrical, thoughtful essay collection is as gripping as any horror movie. Zefyr Lisowski’s gorgeous prose belongs equally to the canons of memoir and culture writing.” – Rax King, author of Sloppy and Tacky

“…any list of recent trans horror would be incomplete without Zefyr Lisowski’s stellar collection of essays. . . . Uncanny Valley Girls knows how to challenge the ableist, racist, and classist themes of the genre while also engaging with them as nuanced works of art and pop cultural significance. Also, as her recent Lambda win for Transgender Poetry would attest, Lisowski’s prose is stunning and evocative.” —Autostraddle, “10 Trans Horror Books You Should Read Right Now”

“In Uncanny Valley Girls, Zefyr Lisowski pushes past the easy discursive tropes of horror, trauma, and trans girlhood, finding and naming the messier, lovelier realities within. In so doing, she’s gifted us a book that’s somehow both sharp and generous, and a joy to read. I’m in awe—this collection is an absolute sensation.” – Jeanne Thornton, author of A/S/L and Summer Fun

“A visceral collection of essays tracking Lisowski’s biography starting from her trans childhood in the south, the book explores gender complications, violence, and class ascension with a careful hand.” – Electric Literature, “Electric Lit’s Best Nonfiction of 2025”

“In Uncanny Valley Girls, Zefyr Lisowski is unafraid to encounter the most monstrous things—the violences of white supremacy, cis-hetero patriarchy, transphobia, ableism, classism—and consider not only their ubiquity, complexity, and nuance, but also how they live, slyly and softly, in each of us. . . . This fearless inquiry is directed at everyone, not least of all the author herself, and yet its militant commitment to insight never feels punitive. In response to the adage, ‘the call is coming from inside the house,’ Zefyr answers the phone and asks to speak to whoever—whatever—is on the other end of the line.” – Johanna Hedva, author of How to Tell When We Will Die

“Lisowski takes an intimate approach to horror films . . . drawing poignant parallels between her experience as a trans woman and the monsters and final girls of the films she loves. . . . [Lisowski is a] talent to watch, with a strong, singular voice.” – Library Journal

“In Uncanny Valley Girls, horror is more than a genre—it is a language, a sensibility, a lifeline, a semaphore between culture and our own grief and pain and longing. In these extraordinary essays, Lisowski reads the entrails of her life like a witch and invites you along for the ride. How could you say no?” – Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award Finalist and author of In the Dream House

“[An] urgent, complex debut pulling at the threads of horror, trauma, care, and ultimately the endurance of trans women and queer people at large . . . . [Lisowski] never shies away from the messiness of its subject matter or the complexities inherent in fleshing it out. Uncanny Valley Girls is deftly tuned to our cultural moment, never missing the opportunity to name the greater systems that shape and impose upon our lives. At every turn, she highlights the nuances of her analysis, looking at its limits and applications across identity, time, and location. That said, these essays are as emotionally-charged as they are astute. Lisowski makes a fervent argument for care, kindness, and understanding between every bloody, hard-to-look at moment of hurt and pain. Through her meticulousness comes a clear, resounding message reminiscent of the horror movies she pulls from: Stay alive.”
—Electric Literature

“This sharp, exquisitely layered book is like a slasher film inverted: Lisowski takes a blade to the big feelings art can evoke, and with great care, she does the delicate paring needed to fit criticism to memoir and to interlace thought and emotion. Horror, revulsion, yearning, shame, and harder-to-name feelings resonate across one another, given space to ring out. The movements of the mind at work in Uncanny Valley Girls had me hurtling toward Lisowski’s incomparable insight, hard-won though the precision work on display here as she pushes to understand a terrifying, lonely, dazzling, and otherwise incomprehensible world.”

– Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic

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

“…an unflinching reflection of [Lisowski’s] life in its many stages . . . . Lisowski writes prose that jumps off the page and demands your attention . . . . [shining] a light on the contradictions of our world and our own resistance towards them.” – Screen Speck

“…a generative book that bends toward hope.” – Booklist (starred review)

“Zefyr Lisowski’s Uncanny Valley Girls is a book that feels alive . . . . By the end, we read of hope not just for the author but for all marginalized people. We read that survival and love is possible not just for those who can speak their truth to the world but also for those who haven’t yet found their voices.” —The Coachella Review

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