Her Body and Other Parties

If you want sapphic fiction that is strange, unsettling, and impossible to categorize, start here instead. Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection blurs the lines between horror, fairy tale, and literary fiction, and nearly every story centers on women desiring, loving, and losing other women.

Why This One

Her Body and Other Parties is the alternative pick for readers who want their sapphic fiction to push boundaries. The opening story, “The Husband Stitch,” retells the classic green ribbon folktale as a meditation on what women are asked to give up in relationships. “Inventory” catalogues a woman’s sexual history against the backdrop of an apocalypse. The novella-length “Especially Heinous” reimagines every episode of Law & Order: SVU as a surreal, haunted procedural.

Machado writes about queer women’s bodies and desires with a frankness that feels radical. Her characters are not defined by coming out stories or the struggle for acceptance. They are simply living, desiring, and navigating a world that is often strange and hostile. The queerness in these stories is woven into the fabric rather than serving as the central conflict.

What to Expect

A 248-page story collection that ranges from the deeply unsettling to the darkly funny. The writing is dense and rewards careful reading. This is not comfort reading. It is the kind of fiction that gets under your skin and stays there. A finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.