'It Came From the Closet': Avid Bookshop to host free discussion with queer horror authors

Andrew Shearer, Athens Banner-Herald
·3 min read
Addie Tsai is the author of "Unwieldy Creatures" and a contributing essayist for the queer horror collection "It Came From the Closet."
Addie Tsai is the author of "Unwieldy Creatures" and a contributing essayist for the queer horror collection "It Came From the Closet."

Even if you're not a diehard horror movie fan, the recently-released essay collection "It Came From the Closet" might help you sort out your feelings toward the often dark and frightening genre.

But if you're someone who's always interested in modern takes on monsters from cinema's sometimes problematic past, you'll definitely want to add it to your reading list.

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Avid Bookshop will host "A Horror Colloqueery with Addie Tsai and Joe Vallese" at 7 p.m. Thursday via the Athens retailer's virtual discussion platform. Vallese is the editor of "It Came From the Closet," and Tsai is one of the contributing authors. The book talk is free of charge, but guests must register at avidbookshop.com by 5 p.m. Thursday to attend.

Self-described "Franken-Stan" Tsai will also be discussing her novel "Unwieldy Creatures," a biracial, queer, gender-swapped retelling of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Customers who purchase Tsai's book from Avid before the deadline will automatically be registered for the virtual discussion.

Cover art for editor Joe Vallese's "It Came From the Closet," a collection of queer reflections on horror movies.
Cover art for editor Joe Vallese's "It Came From the Closet," a collection of queer reflections on horror movies.

Tsai told the Banner-Herald that Vallese is a horror movie expert, but described her own interest in the genre in terms of her relationship towards certain stories. Tsai, who has an identical twin, originally pitched an essay on "Black Swan" for "It Came From the Closet" before honing in on the 1988 movie "Dead Ringers," which was based on a real-life incident involving twin surgeons.

"I typically hate almost all representations of twins in media, and certainly in horror, it's much worse," Tsai said. "Even though 'Dead Ringers' is still sort of interacting with those stereotypes and tropes, I do find it to be one of the most realistic in terms of this fight between this enmeshment and individuation."

Subtitled "Queer Reflections on Horror," "It Came From the Closet" contains 25 essays including Carmen Maria Machado's take on "Jennifer’s Body" and Jude Ellison S. Doyle's look at the underrated 2002 French body horror film "In My Skin." Vallese's essay on 1980s slasher "Sleepaway Camp" opens the collection.

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"Sleepaway Camp" star Felissa Rose Esposito poses with a fan at a horror convention in 2015.
"Sleepaway Camp" star Felissa Rose Esposito poses with a fan at a horror convention in 2015.

Often cited as one of the most shocking and problematic movies of its era, "Sleepaway Camp" has evolved into what Vallese calls "the quintessential queer horror reclamation."

"('Sleepaway Camp') is so profoundly and thoughtlessly homophobic and transphobic and, yet, it's so soaked in queer coding that it's basically looped back around to being a queer horror classic," Vallese told the Banner-Herald.

"It's within that specific, sensitive space where we reckon with how we participate and interact with art that's so often erasing us or villainizing us that 'It Came from the Closet' exists - and insists."

To register for the virtual book talk, visit avidbookshop.com/event/horror-colloqueery-addie-tsai-and-joe-vallese. Avid Bookshop is located at 1662 S. Lumpkin St., Athens.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Book talk: Avid hosts free online discussion with queer horror authors