Marisa Mercurio

Victorian Egyptomania! Gender-fluid bugs! Cults! And… lots and lots of transportation.

Not usually one for promoting donating to alma maters, but I genuinely had a wonderful experience with the faculty. They advocate for their grad students more than I experienced anywhere else. Support the English dept. here if you can.
tol-edo.org/english

ICYMI: Marisa Mercurio of HOWEVER IMPROBABLE (@marmercurio.bsky.social) joins to discuss Richard Marsh's THE BEETLE, a melodramatic Gothic horror about shape-shifting cultists and imperial anxieties that reads a bit like DRACULA's louder sibling!

ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2026/01/12/a...

Victorian Egyptomania! Gender-fluid bugs! Cults! And… lots and lots of transportation.

A Meal of Thorns 41- THE BEETLE with Marisa Mercurio If you read Dracula and thought: “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis and the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual and national anxieties are,” you&rsqu…

For the first 2026 episode of @mealofthorns.bsky.social, @marmercurio.bsky.social is our guest and guide for Richard Marsh's THE BEETLE, a melodramatic Gothic horror-mystery with a lot going on under the carapace:

A Meal of Thorns 41- THE BEETLE with Marisa Mercurio If you read Dracula and thought: “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis and the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual and national anxieties are,” you&rsqu…

If you read Dracula & thought “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis & the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual & national anxieties are,” you’re in luck! Editor, reviewer, & scholar @marmercurio.bsky.social talks us through Richard Marsh's THE BEETLE:

Critical Friends Episode 19: On Cosy Horrors In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland is joined by Shannon Fay and Marisa Mercurio to discuss horror, and especially its cozy variety.

😱 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS 😱

📚 With @marmercurio.bsky.social and Shannon Fay, on the flat affect of cosy horror.

🎢 "Horror is a series of, like, stasis, stasis, stasis, spike, right? And if it's not being delivered, then that becomes a generic problem for the novel."

Critical Friends Episode 19: On Cosy Horrors In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland is joined by Shannon Fay and Marisa Mercurio to discuss horror, and especially its cozy variety.

🎧 Also out with this week’s issue of @strangehorizons.bsky.social:🚨the latest episode of the Critical Friends podcast.🚨

This time I’m joined by @marmercurio.bsky.social and Shannon Fay to discuss horror, the gothic, and coziness: what can, should and do reviewers look for in these texts? And why?

Left cover of Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby featuring a female doll in 18th century dress sitting in a birdcage. Right REVIEWS Quote "Notably, during these years contestations of the nature of womanhood bubbled up to the surface of cultural discourse; Rushby’s intent on writing a feminist interpretation of mid-century life—and how it haunts us today—is therefore apt." reviewer: Marisa Mercurio 15 December 2025 Strange Horizons

The reviews are in!

Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby
reviewed by Marisa Mercurio

Link ⬇️
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

#speculativefiction #specfic #sff #bookreviews

Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby Scholarly analysis of an historical oddity may not be paramount to the success of a Neo-Gothic novel; but this context speaks to Slashed Beauties’s larger issue of flattening gender relations.

Splendid review to start the week at SH today - @marmercurio.bsky.social on the curious Neo-Gothic of Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby (@berkleypub.bsky.social).

“A novel filled with such potential should be a pleasure to untangle.”

A Small Town Is Fighting a $1.2 Billion AI Datacenter for America's Nuclear Weapon Scientists Ypsilanti, Michigan has officially decided to fight against the construction of a 'high-performance computing facility' that would service a nuclear weapons laboratory 1,500 miles away.

Ypsilanti, Michigan has officially decided to fight against the construction of a 'high-performance computing facility' that would service a nuclear weapons laboratory 1,500 miles away.

"When we embrace genAI without examining the domino effect it will have on library workers and users, we fail to do our jobs." @marmercurio.bsky.social networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

"When we embrace genAI without examining the domino effect it will have on library workers and users, we fail to do our jobs," writes @marmercurio.bsky.social for #FeedingTheElephant. How has the embrace of AI affect publishing, research, and teaching. Find out!
➡️ networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

Elementary is a Masterclass in Sherlock Holmes Adaptation In 2012, the cable network CBS introduced the world to a new Sherlock Holmes. And he was going stateside. Set in the present day, Elementary places Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) in New York City where …

My article with @crimereads.bsky.social on one of the best, longest-running, and somehow overlooked Holmes adaptations.
crimereads.com/elementary-i...

Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom

Exclusive: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication.

My latest.
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Let's get vegetable Gothic going as a subgenre. Bunnicula takes first spot.

Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield These beets aren’t destined for dinner plates.

Wednesday's review is the excellent @marmercurio.bsky.social on Margie Sarsfield's Beta Vulgaris. She goes in excited to discover the vegetable gothic, and finds surprises: "readers of Strange Horizons should know that Beta Vulgaris might not fulfill your expectations of a horror novel."

They're trying to kill Rumeysa Ozturk for writing a fucking op ed

A Spectre is Haunting Greentree by Carson Winter Carson Winter shapes his horror novella around the friction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Today at @strangehorizons.bsky.social, @marmercurio.bsky.social on Marx and horror in the Pacific Northwest.

“Carson Winter shapes his horror novella around the friction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

Thanks, Dan! (And sorry for the super late reply. Always appreciated!)