Celebrating Pride Month with ‘It Came From the Closet’ and special events

Posted on June 1, 2023

This Pride Month we are delighted to publish It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror – destined to be your new favourite book – and to announce several special events in partnership with some of the best independent cinemas from London to Glasgow.

This anthology explores a multitude of queer experiences, from first kisses and coming out to transition and parenthood, in a collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays. It’s a varied and accessible anthology that leans into the fun of horror while taking its cultural impact and reciprocal relationship to the LGBTQ+ community seriously.

The relationship between horror films and the LGBTQ+ community? It’s complicated. Haunted houses, forbidden desires and the monstrous can have striking resonance for those who’ve been marginalised. But the genre’s murky history of an alarmingly heterosexual male gaze, queer-coded villains and sometimes blatant homophobia, is impossible to overlook. There is tension here, and there are as many queer readings of horror films as there are queer people.

Edited by Joe Vallese, and with contributions by writers including Kirsty Logan and Carmen Maria Machado, the essays in It Came from the Closet bring the particulars of the writers’ own experiences to their unique interpretations of horror films from Jaws to Jennifer’s Body.

Let the celebrations commence!

Come and join us in celebrating this fantastic collection with four special screenings of popular horror classics, plus the chance to meet contributors and join the conversation, at these independent UK cinemas:

See you there!