Queer Voices Reading Group

Welcome back to the Queer Voices Reading Group! Our second meeting of the year will commence with a 2026 debut that promises to disgust and thrill.

A feral shut-in discovers a disturbing internet porn video of what seems to be herself. A seance of coked-up artists summons unearthly forces in a studio apartment. The staircase of an exurban marketing company descends endlessly beneath the earth. In Aoife Josie Clements' electric, nightmarish, intricately layered novel, the impossibility of goodness crowds in upon two young trans women barely surviving on sex work and zero-hours contracts. Below the familiar evils of capitalism and the bottomless depths of internet culture, a darker horror awaits. What curse follows these women? What are they escaping? What are they running towards?

"Is it too early to be putting books down as potential books of the year? Because Persona by Aoife Josie Clements is an incredible, vital and original literary horror novel, and if I read much else on a par with it this year we’ll be in a golden age of fiction." -The Fantasy Hive

"Clements’s prose is fearless and sharp, diving into gut-churning corners of the human experience and balancing brutal body horror with pitch-black social commentary." -Publisher's Weekly