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Queer as folklore: The hidden queer history of myths and monsters
A celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.
Queer as folklore travels across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.
Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward takes you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows and created safe spaces in underworlds. But these forgotten narratives tell stories of resilience that deserve to be heard.
Join any Pride march and you will see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads, drag queens in mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. These are not just they are queer symbols with historic roots. To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past.
Queer as folklore travels across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.
Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward takes you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows and created safe spaces in underworlds. But these forgotten narratives tell stories of resilience that deserve to be heard.
Join any Pride march and you will see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads, drag queens in mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. These are not just they are queer symbols with historic roots. To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past.
352 pages, Paperback
Published November 18, 2025
10 people are currently reading
12 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 8, 2026
“Queerness has been part of our collective stories since the existence of story itself.”
Queer as Folklore is one of those books that gently but firmly says: we have always been here. Broken into four sections - magical creatures; cursed beings and shapeshifters; the occult and supernatural; and contemporary folklore - Sacha Coward offers an accessible and engaging look at myths, monsters, and cultural figures through a queer lens.
Drawing from everything from Greek mythology and ancient folklore to modern superheroes and pop culture, Coward shows how these stories have been created and adopted by queer communities, weaponised against us, softened, hidden, and reclaimed. What comes through most clearly is not just representation, but survival - the ways queerness has persisted even when it wasn’t allowed to be named.
Growing up, I was always drawn to vampires and werewolves - to stories about transformation, secrecy, and living on the edges of society. Long before I had the language for it, I recognised something of my own otherness in these figures: the double lives, the fear of being discovered, the sense of not quite belonging. Reading this book shows why those myths mattered to me, and how often queerness has been coded into the monstrous or the magical.
Coward dedicates the book to “every person who has ever walked around a museum and wondered if they belong there,” and that line really stayed with me. Like many queer readers, I’ve spent years reading between the lines, searching for fragments of myself in stories that were never meant to centre us. This book doesn’t just argue that we belong in these histories - it shows that we have also helped shape them, and that we are entitled to tell our own stories and speak our own truths.
I read this over a number of weeks, dipping in and out. The structure makes it easy to pick up and put down, and each chapter stands well on its own. I’d highly recommend it to anyone curious about queer history, folklore, or the hidden meanings in stories you might think you already know.
Queer as Folklore is one of those books that gently but firmly says: we have always been here. Broken into four sections - magical creatures; cursed beings and shapeshifters; the occult and supernatural; and contemporary folklore - Sacha Coward offers an accessible and engaging look at myths, monsters, and cultural figures through a queer lens.
Drawing from everything from Greek mythology and ancient folklore to modern superheroes and pop culture, Coward shows how these stories have been created and adopted by queer communities, weaponised against us, softened, hidden, and reclaimed. What comes through most clearly is not just representation, but survival - the ways queerness has persisted even when it wasn’t allowed to be named.
Growing up, I was always drawn to vampires and werewolves - to stories about transformation, secrecy, and living on the edges of society. Long before I had the language for it, I recognised something of my own otherness in these figures: the double lives, the fear of being discovered, the sense of not quite belonging. Reading this book shows why those myths mattered to me, and how often queerness has been coded into the monstrous or the magical.
Coward dedicates the book to “every person who has ever walked around a museum and wondered if they belong there,” and that line really stayed with me. Like many queer readers, I’ve spent years reading between the lines, searching for fragments of myself in stories that were never meant to centre us. This book doesn’t just argue that we belong in these histories - it shows that we have also helped shape them, and that we are entitled to tell our own stories and speak our own truths.
I read this over a number of weeks, dipping in and out. The structure makes it easy to pick up and put down, and each chapter stands well on its own. I’d highly recommend it to anyone curious about queer history, folklore, or the hidden meanings in stories you might think you already know.
Displaying 1 of 1 review