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The Microgenre: A Quick Look at Small Culture
Everybody knows, and maybe even loves, a microgenre. Plague romances and mommy memoirs. Nudie-cutie movies, Nazi zombies, and dinosaur erotica. Baby burlesks, Minecraft fiction, grindcore, premature ejaculation poetry...microgenres come in all varieties and turn up in every form of media under the sun, tailor-made for enthusiasts of all walks of life.
Coming into use in the last decade or so, the term "microgenre" classifies increasingly niche-marketed worlds in popular music, fiction, television, and the Internet. Netflix has recently highlighted our fascination with the ultra-niche genre with hilariously specific classifications -- "independent supernatural dramedy featuring a strong female lead" - that can sometimes hit a little too close to home. Each contribution in this collection introduces readers to a different microgenre, drawn from a range of historical periods and from a variety of media. The Microgenre presents a previously untreated point of cultural curiosity, revealing the profound truth that humanity's desire to classify is often only matched by the unsustainability of the obscure and hyper-specific. It also affirms, in colorful detail, what most people suspect but have trouble fathoming in an increasingly homogenized and commercial West: that imaginative projects are just that, imaginative, diverse, and sometimes completely and hilariously inexplicable.
Coming into use in the last decade or so, the term "microgenre" classifies increasingly niche-marketed worlds in popular music, fiction, television, and the Internet. Netflix has recently highlighted our fascination with the ultra-niche genre with hilariously specific classifications -- "independent supernatural dramedy featuring a strong female lead" - that can sometimes hit a little too close to home. Each contribution in this collection introduces readers to a different microgenre, drawn from a range of historical periods and from a variety of media. The Microgenre presents a previously untreated point of cultural curiosity, revealing the profound truth that humanity's desire to classify is often only matched by the unsustainability of the obscure and hyper-specific. It also affirms, in colorful detail, what most people suspect but have trouble fathoming in an increasingly homogenized and commercial West: that imaginative projects are just that, imaginative, diverse, and sometimes completely and hilariously inexplicable.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published January 23, 2020
About the author
Anne Stevens
66 books11 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2025
This is such a nerd's delight of a book. Lots of tiny chapters on 'microgenres' of literature, music and more from 'The Premature Ejaculation Poem' to 'Anaesthesia Fiction', 'Nuclear Realism, 'Nudie Cuties' and 'Fan Fiction Microgenres'.
Not all the chapters are equally engaging but overall the level of scholarship and writing is high. These are brief introductions which give a short overview but also, in a number of essays, make some really interesting new claims and observations.
I highly recommend this as it's legitimately a really fun read.
Not all the chapters are equally engaging but overall the level of scholarship and writing is high. These are brief introductions which give a short overview but also, in a number of essays, make some really interesting new claims and observations.
I highly recommend this as it's legitimately a really fun read.
September 11, 2020
wonderful beach read
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews