Caramelle & Carmilla

Caramelle & Carmilla - Paperback

$15.95
$15.95
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Caramelle & Carmilla
  • Caramelle & Carmilla
Caramelle & Carmilla - Paperback

Caramelle & Carmilla - Paperback

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu , Jewelle Gomez
$15.95
$15.95

Book Overview

Two vampire stories, two authors, two striking meditations on dependency and desire.

For readers of Octavia E. Butler, Tananarive Due, and Gwendolyn Christie, comes Caramelle, Jewelle Gomez's latest addition to the universe of The Gilda Stories. This short story offers a supernatural alternate history where vampires seek love, laughter, and blood in 1860s slavery America.

Inspired by a glimpse of affection in Joseph Le Fanu's 1872 classic vampire novella Carmilla, Caramelle follows two vampires who arrive at a way station on the Underground Railroad not to stalk their prey but to seek sanctuary, intertwining the haunting legacy of American slavery with gothic horror and the resilience of Black women.

In Carmilla, included here alongside Caramelle, Le Fanu serves the sensual, sapphic, and spooky packaged into the experience of girlhood in 19th Century Austria. This original vampire story predates Dracula and introduces the genre as reliant on themes of gender, sexuality, and race.

Gomez's foreword deftly links the two works by exploring the historical and cultural contexts that surround these two powerful iterations of the vampire genre.

"As in the past we still hold our freedom and our pleasure in our own strong hands. Hands made even stronger when holding on to the hands of others." -Jewelle Gomez

Caramelle & Carmilla is the first book in the new series Aunt Lute Colloquy, a publishing space dedicated to fostering feminist conversations across literary generations.
ISBN9781951874094
Author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu , Jewelle Gomez
PublisherAunt Lute Books
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedOctober 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages170
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Fiction Gothic Horror

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More by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Caramelle & Carmilla

Caramelle & Carmilla - Paperback

Caramelle & Carmilla - Paperback

By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Jewelle Gomez
About Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was a pioneer of Victorian ghost stories and Gothic fiction. His most famous works centered women and explored cultural taboos of sexuality, gender non-normativity, and mental illness, His life ended in 1873, when he supposedly "died of fright," his death seeming to take after the stories he wrote. A master of craft, his stories continue to haunt audiences generations later. Rosemary Valero-O'Connell is a cartoonist and illustrator born in Minneapolis, raised in Zaragoza, and currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in Comic Art from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2016, and has been making comics full time ever since. Her work has received two Eisner awards, four Ignatz awards, a Harvey, a Prism, a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, and a Printz Honor.Poppy Z. Brite is the longtime pen name of Billy Martin. Since beginning his career in the small-press magazine The Horror Show in 1985, he has published eight novels including Lost Souls, Exquisite Corpse, and the Liquor series, as well as several short story collections and assorted nonfiction work. Brite is also the editor of the erotic horror anthologies Love in Vein and Love in Vein 2. He lives in New Orleans with his husband, the artist Grey Cross, and their cats.
About Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez is a writer and activist and the author of the double Lambda Award-winning novel, THE GILDA STORIES (1991). Her adaptation of the book for the stage "Bones & Ash: a Gilda Story," was performed by the Urban Bush Women company in thirteen US cities. The script was published as a Triangle Classic by the Paperback Book Club. Her other publications include THE LIPSTICK PAPERS, FLAMINGOES AND BEARS, and ORAL TRADITION. She edited (with Eric Garber) a fantasy fiction anthology entitled SWORDS OF THE RAINBOW and selected the fiction for THE BEST LESBIAN EROTICA OF 1997 (Cleis). She is also the author a book of personal and political essays entitled FORTY-THREE SEPTEMBERS and a collection of short fiction, DON'T EXPLAIN. Formerly the executive director of the Poetry Center and the American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University she has also worked in philanthropy for many years. She is the former director of the Literature program at the New York State Council on the Arts and the director of Grants and Community Initiatives for Horizon and the President of the San Francisco Library Commission. She lives in San Francisco.

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