What Is Femgore? An Introduction to the Feminist Horror Subgenre

Hungry Chinese ghosts and anti-Asian racism take center stage in this femgore novel from Japanese Gothic author Kylie Lee Baker. Her sister’s murder, a hate crime carried out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, has left crime scene cleaner Cora Zeng reeling. The killer is still on the loose when dead bats start turning up at the crime scenes she’s called to clean up—the murders of other East Asian women. But Cora’s got other problems… like the ghost that’s just moved into her home.

Originally published in 2015, Choi Jin-young’s novella Hunger has become a sweeping cult classic. The story centers on lovers Dam and Gu, whose circumstances have kept them apart. When Dam finds Gu’s body in the street, she takes it home to begin the process of cannibalizing her late paramour. What follows is an intricate portrait of grief, consumption, and longing, told through memories of Dam and Gu’s lives together.

Wendy Dalrymple’s sugar baby heroine, known only as “Baby,” is living an aimless life in the early Aughts. Art school didn’t bring her the life she wanted, but neither does sex work. When she becomes the victim of a violent crime, Baby takes to her bed, only to discover she’s falling apart, bit by bit. She’ll have to locate her assaulter if she wants to lift the curse, but finding the mysterious woman who targeted her may be a tall order in this body-horror romp.

From the author of the femgore classic The Eyes Are the Best Part comes Molka, the story of a woman whose life begins to fall apart after she and her lover are caught on an illegal candid camera. Left alone to weather the storm of media attention, Dahye becomes the target of another camera operator: her co-worker, Junyoung. Dahye’s mental health is already fraying at the edges when she learns who’s behind the cameras, leaving her with only one option—bloody revenge.

Maeve Fly works at an L.A. theme park you’ve heard of, playing a princess character whose movies you’ve probably seen. Away from work, she’s keeping her only living relative alive on hospice care. She doesn’t have the time or inclination for romance, no matter how attractive her best friend’s hockey-star brother might be. But when Maeve discovers she might be alone in the world sooner than she thinks, she embarks on a violent path of murder, torture, and ultimate destruction.

Frankie is in a self-destructive spiral. All the alcohol and kinky sex in the world can’t close the hole that one act of domestic terrorism has left in her life. Someone bombed the clinic where she worked—with Frankie inside—but the culprit was never found. So when she meets Vanya, Frankie clings to her new lover like a lifeline. But Vanya’s hiding something, and if Frankie can’t figure it out before it’s too late, it could cost her everything.

In Vivi’s world, pregnant people go through an act of rebirth: bearing a copy of themselves in childbirth that will kill them and then take their place as parent to their new baby. Everyone comes out of rebirth stronger. Everyone, that is, except for Vivi. Now divorced, she’s raising her son alone and trying to figure out what went wrong with her delivery—but is she ready to learn the truth?