Author Guide · Fiction, Memoir & Horror
Books Written by
In 2013 Carmen Maria Machado applied for a job at Starbucks, was turned down, and took one at Lush, the soap shop, while she taught as an adjunct and wrote stories. Four years later her first book, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Two years after that came In the Dream House, a memoir about an abusive relationship with another woman, written in the second person and broken into chapters that each borrow a genre, from noir to a Choose Your Own Adventure. It won the Rathbones Folio Prize in 2021, the same year a Texas school district pulled it from its book clubs. In between she wrote a horror comic for DC. This guide covers her 3 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 key books · 2017–2020 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Carmen Maria Machado has published three books under her own name: the story collection Her Body and Other Parties (2017), the memoir In the Dream House (2019) and the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods (2020), drawn by Dani. Start with Her Body and Other Parties. Below are all three in order, her editing work, and the story collection she has announced next.
Where to Start with Carmen Maria Machado
If you want her fiction
→ Her Body and Other Parties (2017) — eight stories, opening with “The Husband Stitch”.
If you want her most acclaimed book
→ In the Dream House (2019) — the memoir that won the Rathbones Folio Prize.
If you want horror in comic form
→ The Low, Low Woods (2020) — a Pennsylvania mining town where people lose their memories.
3 Carmen Maria Machado Books, in Order
Her Body and Other Parties
Her debut, published by Graywolf Press in October 2017: eight stories about women’s bodies and the violence done to them. In “The Husband Stitch” a woman never lets her husband untie the green ribbon around her neck; “Especially Heinous” turns 272 episode titles of Law & Order: SVU into short new scenes; in “Eight Bites” a woman has weight-loss surgery. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for a first book, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the Bard Fiction Prize.
In the Dream House
A memoir of her relationship with a woman she met while studying at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, much of it set in a small house in Bloomington, Indiana, where the abuse escalated. It is written mostly in the second person, in short chapters that each take a different form: noir, erotica, a play, a Choose Your Own Adventure, and essays on the history of abuse in queer relationships. It won the Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and, in March 2021, the £30,000 Rathbones Folio Prize.
The Low, Low Woods
A six-issue horror comic for Hill House Comics, the DC imprint curated by Joe Hill, drawn by the artist Dani and collected as a book in 2020. In the mining town of Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, a strange illness erases people’s memories, and two teenage girls try to find out why, amid rumours of rabbits with human eyes and deer-women at the windows.
In What Order to Read Carmen Maria Machado
The three books stand alone and share no characters, so publication order works as well as any. It also shows a pattern: the same preoccupations with bodies, memory and fear move from stories, to her own life, to a comic.
If you are unsure whether you like her style, start with “The Husband Stitch”, the first story in Her Body and Other Parties. In the Dream House describes psychological and physical abuse in detail, so check that it is the right time for it. Her next book, the linked story collection A Brief and Fearful Star, has been announced by Knopf; in a 2025 interview it was said to be slated for 2027.
A reading path
1. Her Body and Other Parties (2017)
2. In the Dream House (2019)
3. The Low, Low Woods (2020)
4. Carmilla, her annotated edition (2019)
Everything Else Carmen Maria Machado Published
Beyond the 3 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited and introduced
2
2 books · 2019
- 2019CarmillaJ. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Victorian vampire novella, edited by Machado with her introduction and annotations (Lanternfish Press)
- 2019The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019guest editor, with the series editor John Joseph Adams
The years · 1986–2022
Quick facts about Carmen Maria Machado
- Known for
- Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House, books that use horror, fairy tale and genre forms to write about women’s bodies, queer desire and abuse.
- 1986
- Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania
- 2008
- BA, American University, Washington, D.C.
- 2022
- Announces A Brief and Fearful Star
- Born
- 3 July 1986, Allentown, Pennsylvania; her paternal grandfather emigrated from Cuba
- Education
- BA, American University (2008); MFA, Iowa Writers’ Workshop; the Clarion workshop
- Taught
- Writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania; visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2021)
- Debut
- Her Body and Other Parties (2017), a National Book Award finalist
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship (2019); Rathbones Folio Prize (2021); Lambda Literary Awards for both prose books
- Edited
- The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019
The red mark is 2019: In the Dream House, the memoir that won the Rathbones Folio Prize.
How Carmen Maria Machado Writes: Genre as a Way In
Machado borrows from horror, folklore and pulp, and uses their rules to say something about women’s lives. “The Husband Stitch” rebuilds the old campfire tale of the girl with the green ribbon as one woman’s life story, with a note in parentheses telling anyone who reads it aloud which voice to use for each character. “Especially Heinous” takes the episode titles of Law & Order: SVU and turns them into a ghost story about Benson and Stabler.
Form does much of the work. In the Dream House breaks one relationship into short chapters, each told through a different genre or trope, so that the reader sees the same events from many angles; the judges of the Folio Prize singled out its “short, sharp vignettes” and its broken timeline. Writing in the second person lets her address her younger self as “you” while the older narrator steps in to reflect.
She also writes back into the record. The memoir argues that abuse between women has been left out of the history of domestic violence, and her edition of Carmilla annotates a Victorian vampire story about desire between women. The same mix of body horror and buried history drives The Low, Low Woods, set in a Pennsylvania town that cannot remember what happened to it.
Watch
Carmen Maria Machado in conversation
In April 2022, for the Writers Speak series at Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Machado sat down online with fellow fiction writer Laura van den Berg to talk about her writing.
Frequently asked questions about Carmen Maria Machado’s books
How many books has Carmen Maria Machado written?
Three under her own name, all on this page: Her Body and Other Parties (2017), In the Dream House (2019) and The Low, Low Woods (2020). She also edited an annotated Carmilla and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019, co-wrote March Sisters (2019) and published the single story Bloody Summer (2022).
What are Carmen Maria Machado’s books in order?
Her Body and Other Parties (2017), In the Dream House (2019) and The Low, Low Woods (2020). Her next announced book is the story collection A Brief and Fearful Star.
Where should I start with Carmen Maria Machado?
With Her Body and Other Parties, and its first story, “The Husband Stitch”. If you prefer nonfiction, start with In the Dream House instead.
What is Carmen Maria Machado’s most famous book?
Probably In the Dream House (2019), which won the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction. Her debut, Her Body and Other Parties (2017), is just as well known: it was a National Book Award finalist and won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize.
What is In the Dream House about?
Machado’s relationship with a woman she met in graduate school, which became psychologically and physically abusive, much of it in a house in Bloomington, Indiana. She tells it mostly in the second person and in many short chapters, each shaped by a genre or trope, and sets it against the wider silence about abuse in queer relationships.
Was In the Dream House banned?
It was removed from book clubs and classrooms in one Texas district. At a Leander Independent School District board meeting in February 2021 a parent read a sex scene from it aloud. In December 2021 the district named it among 11 books no longer allowed in its book clubs or classrooms, while it remained in campus and digital libraries. Machado told the CBC: “I don’t think it’s really about age-appropriateness.”
Is Her Body and Other Parties horror?
Partly. The stories mix horror, fairy tale, science fiction and literary realism. The collection won the Shirley Jackson Award, a prize for psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic, as well as literary prizes such as the Bard Fiction Prize.
Is Her Body and Other Parties being adapted?
FX optioned the collection for television, with Gina Welch developing it. No series has been released.
Does Carmen Maria Machado have a new book coming out?
Yes. A Brief and Fearful Star, a collection of linked stories built around a returning comet called Solo 9, ranging from 19th-century Paris to the near future, has been announced by Knopf. In a November 2025 interview with WHQR it was said to be slated for 2027.
Is The Low, Low Woods a graphic novel?
Yes. It ran as a six-issue comic in DC’s Hill House Comics line from 2019 and was collected as a single volume in 2020. Machado wrote it; the artist Dani drew it.
Footnotes
- Carmen Maria Machado — Wikipedia
- In the Dream House — Wikipedia
- In the Dream House wins the Rathbones Folio Prize — Publishing Perspectives, 2021
- PEN America calls out Texas school district after banning eleven books — PEN America, 2021
- Author fights to keep her queer memoir on a Texas high school reading list — CBC, 2021
- Carmen Maria Machado keeps coming back — WHQR, 2025
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“In the beginning, I know I want him before he does.”
— Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch”, the first line of Her Body and Other Parties (2017)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations