Always on
This project successfully funded on 30th May 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
DEAD PRETTY: Beauty in the Horror Genre
Nottingham, United Kingdom
Aim
The aim is to raise funds for the 1st print run of DEAD PRETTY, a book of collected essays on beauty in the horror genre.
DEAD PRETTY: Beauty in the Horror Genre is a collection of 25 essays exploring beauty within horror media.
Horror has always played with the idea of beauty. Preserving it. Destroying it. Punishing it. Turning it monstrous. It appears again and again: the woman at the mirror; the virginal final girl; the ageing body recast as grotesque; the outsider marked as excessive or other; the scarred, disabled, or altered body framed as spectacle; beauty that’s racialised, exoticised, withheld or denied altogether.
Beauty is never neutral. Cultural norms decide which bodies are admired, which are scrutinised, and which are treated as monstrous from the outset. Horror doesn’t invent these hierarchies. But it does reveal them.
This is the first full-length book from The Nottingham Horror Collective – an independent horror publishing project founded in 2020. What began as a DIY zine has grown into a small press platform for diverse, queer, thoughtful writing on the genre we love – expanding the conversation, challenging dominant readings, and bringing fresh critical perspectives to horror.
Independent publishing matters in this space. It allows us to commission writers who are often overlooked, publish arguments that don’t fit neat academic boxes, and approach horror without having to dilute its politics or complexity.
Visually, this will be classic TNHC – carefully art-directed, tactile, and beautifully-designed. We care as much about how our books and zines feel in your hands as what they say.
DEAD PRETTY is our next step up: a fully realised, next-level object that does justice to the ideas inside.
Backing DEAD PRETTY means supporting independent horror criticism and the people behind it.
The money we raise will go towards paying contributors, high-quality print production, gorgeous design (as always), and distribution.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made