Neuroqueer in the Horror Aisle
Neuroqueer in the Horror Aisle
BY CHLOE JOHNSON
Horror fiction – and especially “weird girl” lit fic – is having a bit of a moment. It makes sense that, in 2025, we’re seeking comfort in stories that are dark, disturbing, twisty, and strange. When bad news is available at the touch of a button, we’re looking to allegory and metaphor as a way of coping with our reality.
Horror as a genre has typically been a home for experimentation, a safe space for things that “aren’t normal.” So it’s no wonder that the genre attracts marginalized readers, as its stories are often told from the perspective of outcasts who deal with messy feelings – without the pressure to make it look pretty.
In fact, in this genre, negative emotions work best when they look as horrifying as they can sometimes feel.
More and more marginalized authors are recontextualizing horror, writing around themes of identity, anger, and pain, with their unique perspectives front and center. Queer, and particularly sapphic, horror fiction has a boon of amazing-looking releases dropping this year: Hungerstone, Voice Like A Hyacinth, The Starving Saints, They Bloom At Night, Eat the Ones You Love. Yet horror fiction featuring neurodivergent characters is much rarer and less overtly advertised as such – let alone those with race, sexuality, and gender intersectionality.
To celebrate Pride Month, if you’re looking for a horror book from LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent authors that explore both identities together and separately, look no further. Here are some 2025 reads you should be checking out:
Hollow by Taylor Grothe – Oct. 7, 2025
Grothe’s debut is set to give us our favorite things: cults, grappling with a recent autistic diagnosis, and strange happenings in the forest.
Hollow is described as a queer YA cult horror that is Don’t Let The Forest In meets The Whispering Dark. The plot follows Cassie Davis, a recently diagnosed autistic teen whose family has moved back to upstate New York to help her feel “normal” again. After trying to fit back in with her old friends, she ends up on a camping trip to Hollow Ridge in the upper reaches of the Adirondacks, where her friends end up missing and Cassie gets saved by a boy named Kaleb, who whisks her away to a compound of artists and outcasts he calls the Roost. A fierce love letter to queer and neurodivergent belonging, this YA novel looks like it will unsettle you as much as it sees you.
Hazelthorn by CG Drews – Oct. 28, 2025
Hazelthorn is a queer gothic horrormance described as Knives Out meets Belladonna, from the New York Times-bestselling author of Don’t Let the Forest In (remember that from above?). Drews describes it as their “autistic rage book” – and if that doesn’t pull you in, then may we offer: botanical body horror in the vein of The Secret Garden (but it’s rotting), inherited old mansions, and a rage-filled boy named Evander who can only trust Laurie, another 17-year-old boy who tried to kill him 7 years ago.
The Lamb by Lucy Rose – Feb. 4, 2025
Lucy Rose is an LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent author who has written an impeccable, folklore-inspired novel with “femgore” for days. The novel covers abuse, womanhood, queerness, and the price of love, following Mama and daughter Margot who live a cannibal/cottage-core lifestyle – until one of Mama’s intended victims, Eden, has Margot wondering if there’s only room for one girl in Mama’s heart after all.
Though the novel doesn’t explicitly feature a neurodivergent character, Rose is a vocal neurodivergent and queer author whose own experiences inspired the novel. In an interview with Curtin Brown, when asked about why she wanted to create a cannibal story, Rose answered:
I have a complex relationship with food as well, which has probably influenced it without me even knowing… I think of my own torturous experiences with food as a neurodivergent person and think – wow, people have a lot of baggage when it comes to the things we eat. What a great starting point for a story.
Autistic, trans author Andrew Joseph White has become a known name in the horror space in recent years. You might have heard of Hell Followed With Us, in which 16-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him, featuring both real monsters and embracing the monster within. White’s debut adult horror novel, which follows a mute trans man forced into an unwanted pregnancy, is set to also be a hit. It’s part Alien, part Midsommar, and there are plenty of neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ themes to pick apart, set amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.
We can definitely hope and ask for more intersectional representation in the future, but for now, these are some authors depicting queer neurodivergent perspectives in the spooky space. Make sure to check them out – and maybe read them long after you should have blown out that candle…
BIO: Chloe is a freelance books and digital culture journalist, focusing on challenging hustle culture, disability inclusion, and writing as a form of resistance, with bylines in The Bookseller, Fast Company, RadioTimes, The Independent, and more. She is also an author herself, writing literary-leaning gothic romantasy with queer and disabled women, and is represented by Inkwell Management.
