Eight books about feminist folklore

Ruth Gilligan is a writer and academic from Dublin now based in the UK. She has published five books to date and was the youngest person ever to top the Irish Bestsellers’ List.

Her most recent novel, The Butchers [US title: The Butchers' Blessing], is set in the Irish borderlands during the 1996 BSE crisis, and was published to widespread acclaim in March 2020.

[Q&A with Ruth Gilligan.]

Gilligan holds degrees from Cambridge, Yale, UEA and Exeter. She contributes literary reviews to the Irish Independent, Guardian, TLS and LA Review of Books. She works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham and is an ambassador for the global storytelling charity Narrative 4.

At Electric Lit the author tagged eight weird and wonderful "books that combine feminism and folklore; books where uncanny tales are used to empower female voices (and, crucially, female bodies)." One title on the list:

Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Combining fairy tale, fantasy and folk horror, Carmen Maria Machado’s wildly inventive collection offers a monstrous inventory of the different forms of violence and shame that can be exacted on women’s bodies. Yet, for all their darkness and political rage, these stories are shot through with a wonderful humor, a kind of irresistibly freewheeling gothic glee.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue