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Welcome to International Gothic Reading Month!

International Gothic Reading Month (IGRM) invites you to join us each January in discovering and celebrating the many faces of Gothic literature as we aim to spark awareness of the genre’s rich and haunting history and traditions.

What is Gothic?

The Gothic is a literary and aesthetic mode that emerged during the eighteenth century. It revealed what the Age of Reason sought to repress—fear, desire, death, power, and the unknown. By giving voice to the monstrous, the feminine, the queer, and the racialized Other, the Gothic transgressed boundaries of taste and decorum as it revealed cracks in the ideological edifices of religion, race, class, and gender.

Aesthetically, the Gothic depicts dark and forbidding spaces—castles, crypts, and asylums—charged with heightened emotion and an uncanny atmosphere. It confronts the past through hauntings as hidden stories are revealed. Psycho-spiritually, the Gothic enacts the return of the repressed through a descent into the unconscious mind that engages with tabooed desires and the deepest, unutterable fears found in the darkest corners of the mind.

The modern Gothic has evolved into many distinct subgenres, among which are the Historical Gothic, Victorian Gothic, and Romantic Gothic, as well as Gothic Horror, Science Fiction Gothic, Southern Gothic, Black Gothic, Urban Gothic, and Suburban Gothic—and the genre-blending Gothic mixing magick, murder, and witchcraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, known as the mother of Gothic Horror.

How to participate in International Gothic Reading Month for January

 We invite your participation in IGRM in a variety of ways.

General Readers may wish to read and post book reviews or recommendations of Gothic literature on social media. Reach out to school libraries, local libraries, and bookshops to ask them to display Gothic books, novels, and short stories during IGRM in January. Organize an online chat with friends to share favorite novels, characters, and haunted Gothic locations.

Other activities: host a book club meeting; create a podcast with friends discussing Gothic novels; make a video about your favorite Gothic books or authors and share on social media; host a Gothic themed party for friends and family.

Authors: Post about IGRM in January on your social media highlighting your Gothic book; discount your book or do a giveaway for more visibility to readers; partner with a local bookshop or gift shop for a Gothic book display; pitch IGRM to your local newspaper; collaborate with other Gothic authors for a group promotion; share photos of your writing space on social media; have a party with friends to celebrate Gothic literature; post quotations of your favorite Gothic authors; review Gothic books on your blog or Substack; record a YouTube video about the Gothic genre.

Bloggers/Podcasters: Bloggers and podcasters are strong voices in our community and provide a discussion hub. Focus on Gothic authors, fiction or nonfiction books, and interview Gothic professionals for your blog or host a Gothic panel discussion for your podcast.

Publishers: Offer discounts on your Gothic book titles for IGRM in January! Promote your Gothic authors with interview bookings for IGRM. Run a contest about Gothic literature, characters, and themes.

Librarians: Organize displays for IGRM! Engage with your local educators to give a talk or a reading. Hold a Gothic event about Gothic novelists with a speaker.

Booksellers: Showcase Gothic literature in your shop window during January and decorate with Goth themes and styles. Feature a reading event with a local Gothic author.

Teachers/Instructors/Professors: Assign a Gothic text for IGRM. Give extra credit for student engagement with IGRM. Encourage social media book reviews, videos, and art inspired by a Gothic text. There are so many possibilities!

Students: Approach your professors/teachers with an idea on how you and your classmates might engage with IGRM to celebrate Gothic history, stories, locations, and characters.

To assist in your activities, please download our flyer here.

Edgar Allan Poe, known as the father of American Gothic.

The following are suggested book titles of classic and contemporary Gothic fiction.

  • A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness
  • Batman: Year One, Frank Miller
  • Beautiful Creatures , Kami Garcia
  • Bellefleur, Joyce Carol Oates
  • Beloved, Toni Morrison
  • Bloodthirst, J.M. Dillard
  • Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny
  • Carmilla, J. Sheridan le Fanu
  • Collected Ghost Stories, M.R. James
  • Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Dracula, Bram Stoker
  • Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire
  • Eye Killers, A. A. Carr
  • Fledgling, Octavia Butler
  • Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  • Gothic Tales, Elizabeth Gaskell
  • Hallowe’en Party, Agatha Christie
  • Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay
  • House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
  • I am Legend, Richard Matheson
  • Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
  • Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
  • Joplin’s Ghost, Tananarive Due
  • Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist
  • Ligeia, Edgar Allan Poe
  • Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
  • Mean Spirit, Linda Hogan
  • Matilda, Mary Shelley
  • Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
  • Plain Bad Heroines, Emily Danforth
  • Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith
  • Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  • Salem’s Lot, Stephen King
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
  • Summer of Night, Dan Simmons
  • Rosemary’s Baby, Ira Levin
  • The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle
  • The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter
  • The Buffalo Hunter, Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones
  • The Cask Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole
  • The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Elementals, Michael McDowell
  • The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty
  • The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Gothic Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft
  • The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
  • The Haunting on the Hill, Elizabeth Hand
  • The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
  • The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • The Invisible Girl, Mary Shelley
  • The Last Ones Left Alive, Sarah Davies-Goff
  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
  • The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
  • The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe
  • The Monk, Mathew Lewis
  • The Mortal Immortal, Mary Shelley
  • The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
  • The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
  • The Quick, Lauren Owen
  • The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Route of Ice and Salt, José Luis Zárate
  • The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix
  • The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss
  • The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
  • The Transformation, Mary Shelley
  • The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
  • The Vampyre, John William Polidori
  • The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
  • The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
  • Twilight, Stephanie Meyer
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
  • White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi
  • Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

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For Gothic nonfiction, we suggest the following:

  • Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, Kenneth Silverman
  • Gothic: An Illustrated History, Roger Luckhurst
  • Gothic Horror, A Reader’s Guide From Poe to King and Beyond, Clive Bloom
  • Mary’s Monster, How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein, Lita Judge
  • The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
  • The Cambridge History of the Gothic, Editors Angela Wright, Dale Townshend, Catherine Spooner 
  • The Gothic, David Punter, Glennis Byron
  • The Gothic Wanderer, Tyler R. Tichelaar

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Edgar Allan Poe’s birth date is January 19, 1809. He is revered as the father of American Gothic because of his dark themes exploring love, death, and the supernatural. Because so many of us remember Poe in January, we chose January for our Gothic reading month to honor his fiction and poetry. His impact on literature cannot be overstated. The week of January 19th is a perfect time to sponsor events, read, and discuss Poe’s Gothic style of writing.

We remember Mary Shelley for January as well. On January 1, 1818, Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus, was published anonymously. In the second edition, 1823, published in France, the name Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley appeared with the title. Known as the queen of horror, the mother of Gothic, and the mother of science fiction, she is revered as one of the most recognized Gothic novelists in literature.

Thank you to all who have stopped by our IGRM website. Please leave a comment and share your enthusiasm for IGRM. Do you have a Gothic book or short story suggestion? Drop the title and author’s name in the comments. We would love to hear your thoughts.

Tell us how you are participating in International Gothic Reading Month celebration for January.

The Gothic genre will never die! Our best wishes to all Gothic fans.

The International Gothic Reading Month Committee

Paula Cappa, Director
Alexia Mandla Ainsworth
Barbara Beatie
Ruthann Jagge
Carey Millsap-Spears
Arline Wilson

Sponsorship: Jeffrey A. Weinstock
President, Society for the Study of the American Gothic

Questions? Contact Carey Millsap-Spears at [email protected].

Copyright © 2025. All rights reserved.