Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath

by Leza Cantoral (Editor), Kathryn Louise, Patricia Grisafi

Archetypes are real. Muses are real. Writers are the channels of these spirits & if that sounds like witchcraft that's because it is. These stories gave me chills. Sylvia Plath & Lana Del Rey course through the veins of these dark, sexy, mind-bending, fantastical, romantic, & haunting tales. Authors from different genres came together in their love & passion for these muses.

The Blacklist: Kathryn Louise
Crazy Mary: Patricia Grisafi
Pipedreams: Devora Gray
And All the World Drops Dead: Max Booth III
Without Him (and Him, and Him) There is No Me: Laura Diaz de Arce
Going About 99: Christine Stoddard
The Lazarus Wife: Tiffany Morris
Stag Loop: Brendan Vidito
SP World: Lorraine Schein
A Ghost of My Own Making: Ashley Inguanta
Loose Ends: A Movie: Tiffany Scandal
Girls in the Garden of Holy Suffering: Lisa Marie Basile
The Gods in the Blood: Gabino Iglesias
The Land of Other: Farah Rose Smith
Sad Girl: Monique Quintana
Corinne: JC Drake
Sphinx Tears: Cara DiGirolamo
Rituals of Gorgons: Larissa Glasser
The Wife: Victoria Dalpe
Dayglo Reflection: Manuel Chavarria
Catman's Heart: Laura Lee Bahr
Panic Bird: Selene MacLeod
Because of Their Different Deaths: Stephanie Wytovich

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Poetry, Romance, Anthologies, Mental Illness

268 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 24, 2018

Reviews

[Michael Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite anthologies I’ve read in a while. Deeply cathartic, sometimes emotionally devastating stories written in a great mix of styles and genres. Some faithfully referenced the poetry and biographical details of Sylvia Plath, others delved into the lyrics and moods of Lana Del Rey’s music, and some forged their own paths. The best of them combined all of these elements into a synthesis greater than the sum of its parts. All of the stories were good, many were great. Tragedy Queens gets a strong recommendation from me

[Andrew Countryman · Rating 1 out of 5]

keep my mothers name out of your damn mouth…

going about 99, sad girl, & rituals of gorgons are redeemable. but the rest of these….

[Audra (ouija.reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story collection inspired by Sylvia Plath and Lana del Rey? Ummm, color me intrigued.

There is such a wide variety of unusual stories in this collection, and I loved that. The authors all took on the theme and gave it their own unique twist with Sylvia and Lana serving as more of spiritual guides for the stories rather than taking over the tale entirely. In the best stories, it is just like you can sense their influence.

My favorite thing about reading anthologies is uncovering voices I’ve never read before. This anthology definitely has that, but there were also a bunch of familiar names in here and all of them were interesting!

What I didn’t expect when I bought this is that it would be more of a horror collection than anything else, so that was an excellent surprise. Most of these stories are dark, often dealing with themes of loss and death. They are visceral and cutting and range from realism to sci-fi.

I definitely recommend this book for fans of horror stories that are off the beaten path.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chatted with editor Leza Cantoral about this book and more on Losing the Plot—listen here!!

Cathartic, psychedelic and brimming with torrential emotion, these expertly written stories are of their time and part of a timeless sad-girl canon pre-paved by women like Del Rey and Plath. One of the best anthologies I've read in a good while!

[exorcismemily · Rating 3 out of 5]

"All I want is my loneliness and my dreaming and my want to be realized." -Lisa Marie Basile

3.5⭐

I was so excited when I heard about Tragedy Queens! I adore Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey, and I love that so many authors were inspired by them. The idea for this anthology is amazing.

Unfortunately, my experience with reading it was kind of uneven. There are some amazing stories in here, but there are many that I couldn't connect with. I think I may have expected something different, and that led to me being a bit disappointed. Some of the stories seemed to just tuck a Sylvia or Lana quote into the story, and that counted as the inspiration.

I expected the stories to have deeper connections with the people who inspired them, and I just didn't feel it for most of these. My ratings run between 2⭐ and 5⭐ for each story, so it was all over the map. I appreciate that the stories were written by authors of all different genres, but I was hoping for the anthology to be darker and deeper as a whole.

My top 5 stories were Girls in the Garden of Holy Suffering by Lisa Marie Basile, Gods in the Blood by Gabino Iglesias, Sphinx Tears by Cara Digirolamo, Rituals of Gorgons by Larissa Glasser, and Because of Their Different Deaths by Stephanie Wytovich. In my opinion, these ones (and a few others) were what I was hoping for from this collection. These stories were captivating, bold, and haunting, much like the women who inspired them.

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short story collections are usually grab bags full of material that work for you and full of material that gloriously doesn't and this collection's no different. What makes it more interesting that most, though is how it captured the essence of its muses Sylvia Plath and Lana Del Rey without sticking too much to their actual work. For most stories (most of the successful ones anyway) it's like their essence permeates the narrative. Sylvia and Lana are haunting this book, if you will.

Among the stories I loved are Kathryn Louise's opener The Blacklist; Devora Gray's haunting Pipedreams, Brendan Divito's Stag Loop, Tiffany Scandal's Loose Ends: A Movie and JC Drake's Corinne. I won't lie, it was a shot in the dark for me. I wanted to familiarize myself with two women I didn't know, but it worked. It got me listening to Lana Del Rey at work all week. Fans of Lana and Sylvia should be all over it.

[Lisa of LaCreeperie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sigh...there is a reason I don't (for the most part) read modern books. I find that most modern authors lack subtlety and finesse.
I really wanted to enjoy this, as the concept is genius. But I found it severely missing the mark, even a little offensive. I'm no prude, but does everyone nowadays only "fuck". Or rather, is that the only word used for it these days? Perhaps it was a requisite for making it into this collection. 🙄
Not a spoiler per se, but if you have squeamish sensibilities or refrain from books with graphic gore, skip the story 'Stag Loop'. You have been warned.

Two stars for concept, and the first story was the most enjoyable.

[Ben Arzate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full Review

3.5 Stars

While I found several of the stories forgettable, I still recommend Tragedy Queens. There’s an incredible range of diverse types of stories and I think every reader will find a lot to enjoy in this anthology. The ones I enjoyed I believe are good enough to pick up this book and I believe that others who have more of an affinity for artists like Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath than I do will get even more out of it.

[Astrid Inge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Houd je van melancholie en darkness, van sterke vrouwen, Sylvia Plath en de muziek van Lana del Rey? Dan is dit je must read. Wat een triestheid en wat een kracht in elk verhaal. Hier word ik heel melancholisch en heel gelukkig van.

"Don't ask if I'm happy, you know that I'm not
But, at best, I can say I'm not sad" (uit Hope Is A Dangerous Thing, Lana del Rey)

"I desire the things which will destroy me in the end" (uit The Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath)

[Jeanine · Rating 5 out of 5]

eeee i was giddy when i found this and still giddy after finishing it...yes I am obsessed with LDR and the idea of a "queen of sadness" and apparently I am not alone in this sickness. I enjoyed all of the stories very much, with a few exceptions being that the writing was way obscure or it was more plath than lana. I am more into lana, but clearly after reading this need to venture into plath. I will read some ariel next.
There are 23 stories and was thinking of my favorite(s), there are 14 that stand out as favorites ...such interesting, dark and beautiful prose. Others were good too, entertaining, horrific, insane. But the 14 I can't get out of my head encompass tragedy, sadness, and melancholy...I want to keep reading them!

Looking back, there is one story I think that perfectly encompasses the escense of this anthology...for me at least or what I wanted to get out of it... and that is Girls In the Garden of Holy Suffering by Lisa Marie Basile. I think I could just highlight the entire story...but here is some of the beauty...

"I am in love with a sadness, simply because it is easier to translate it than to conquer it. And I am only good at replacing my sadness intermittently, with my body—because my body can transcend, if only for a moment. Into my body I pour a hundred elixirs and shapes and voids and wildnesses; I can make sacred my misery."

"I always come back to Sylvia. Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing, she tells me. It makes sense to me; I have nothing to want but the illusions of things, the script, the grandeur, the facade. Because what can be real that also fulfills me? I don’t know, I don’t know, I just don’t know if I want the chaos or the cure."

"Lana does a photoshoot for Vogue. It’s inspired by the idea of Melancholy Sexuality, which is something Sylvia knows well about, which is something so simple and clear that the fact that one captures it is reductive and gauche. But there is a difference between appropriating sadness and being sad, between the romanticizing of pain and pain itself, between death and the daydream of it. Lana may be heart-aching, and she may be obsessed by a world of beauty and youth, but she is no Sylvia. Sylvia sticks her head in an oven and kills herself, while her children sleep in the other room. Lana wears dresses in Italy. I wear dresses in Italy. My life is full of contradictions. I am been smashed to bits, and I am in love with my own sorrow. I am hurt so badly I want to die. But I also glamorize it; negligee and parfume are a distraction. But I am not Lana. I am not Sylvia. I am just a girl making sense, I am just someone who collects death and beauty. I have to let it pass through me, all of those sad girls, before I can rid myself of it. I have to say, come in, come in, be a friend, be a muse. Let me clean my hands in you. Let me learn how to let it go. Let me watch you suffer. Let me watch you transcend the minutiae. Let us be preternatural. Let’s walk into the garden. I wear the mask and the reality. Only now, I understand that my words are a product of the intersection of the two. It is a place that lets me toil without killing me. It is a place I think the other sad girls sometimes go."

[Alexandra Bowie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!

Out of the 24 short stories I loved almost every single one, they are inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath (though in my opinion more so Plath than Lana) and were written beautifully. I did find myself hoping that we would see some stories inspired by Lana's songs as I'm a huge fan. There was one story by Laura Diaz de Arce where the ending of the story reminded me of the song 'Ride' which I enjoyed. I also liked that some stories involved lesbian and transgender relationships.

I liked but didn't love four of the stories, and it's because I felt like they were stories that weren't really inspired by Plath or Lana but were just stories where the character would hear a Lana song or read a poem by Plath. And I thought that one line from a song or poem in the story felt disconnected.

I didn't enjoy three of them, they were well written and good stories, however, two I think were more just personal opinion that they didn't belong in this collection but somewhere else. And the other story the author didn't seem to be able to write a young female character.

I really enjoyed this short story collection and do recommend it! I will now be having a look at some previous work of these authors.

[Teresa Petro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is both riveting and visceral, and the stories do justice to their muses. A few stories were sci-fi, a few were timeless, and all of the stories were harrowing in some way. My favorites in this book were fantastical, dreamlike, and deeply cerebral. If I had to choose one word to describe the collection as a whole, it would be haunting.

[Nika · Rating 2 out of 5]

eh some stories were better than others. am a Sylvia Plath and Lana fan so I expected more but I appreciate the book.

[Paige Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.2 at least, pretty Lana-less

Love the concept and cover, but hardly Lana-inspired minus the first two (best) stories—unless you think feminine arrogance is associated with her? Strangely, half the stories seem written by the same person despite the semi-specific style. So many revolve around ghosts and cheating rich husbands with 2D “heroines” who don’t care about themselves beyond appearing old Hollywood.

Even when murder, drugs, and paranormal activity are afoot...everything borders on boring. The sentence structure is always the same, technically perfect but try-hard to be 1800s-quotable, like tobacco-stained fabric roses. Lots of pretty or creepy imagery, but more potential than execution.

Was hoping for some modernity like Lana’s hip hop-infused orchestral pop, but none besides one transgender runaway story that lacked romance or likable characters. And obviously that’s not very Lana-relatable beyond maybe a nod to “Mississippi South.” Lots of stories may use her song titles, but it’s like they ignored the lyrics and just liked the opening phrase.

As a side note, the formatting could be better if the author bios were next to their work instead of a hodgepodge at the end. And the reason I don’t give this less stars is because there are some good edgy topics topics covered like sexual assault and unabashed revenge, interesting ideas like an afterlife carnival and lovers’ pact suicide, or just lots of little lines that could inspire stories of their own.

[Lillian · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there were a couple knockout stories in here- Crazy Mary and Sphinx Tears especially- this anthology usually fell into the tropes of Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath rather than truly exploring their worlds. Some of the stories, like Corinne and Dayglo Reflection, reeked of misogyny somewhere deep inside, while many of them, like Because of Their Different Deaths and Dayglo Reflection (again), were just poorly written. The biggest problem was the editor, who missed typos throughout and fundamentally didn't understand how"its" and "it's" worked, because "it's" was always used even in egregiously incorrect places. That's like, the number one criteria for being an editor.

It was a sloppy job from beginning to end.

[olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

i skipped most of the stories. Most of them boring and predictable. Only two or three were memorable.

[sasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only a few of these I liked. The rest were full of obnoxious, unlikable characters. I felt like every single story was trying so hard to be quotable, dark, and impactful, but they fell flat. I was just left annoyed at the authors for writing these. I enjoy Lana’s music but the thing about her music is that you don’t have to retain the impact and story she tells. It’s easy to just listen to it as a song. But when you’re reading a short story that vividly describes an abusive relationship, or a suicidal state, it’s hard to not feel negatively affected by that. A lot of these stories also seemed to try to glamorize abuse and suicide, etc, like Lana has been accused of doing. I think everyone has the right to express their feelings as they choose, but these stories are not for someone in a dark mental state. They are not for the impressionable. Again, some, I enjoyed- like the first one, “The Blacklist” - campy, fun, and full of revenge. But the overwhelming majority of these stories did nothing for me.

[Kamryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this interesting anthology of short stories purely because of Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath on the front cover. They feature a wide range of topics, all controversial, tragic, and jarring.

The collection is a bit eclectic, and honestly, none of the pieces stand out to me as profoundly moving. They work efficiently together, but would not stand separately.

Most of them picked a controversial topic or focus, but the topic was more important than any other aspect of storytelling.

I don’t regret buying this volume, but I won’t remember any of the pieces in a year. That feeling is certainly different from when I listen to a Lana Del Rey song or read Sylvia Plath.

[Laila Collman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is at once spellbinding and disturbing, like a poisonous dark liquor you can’t stop sipping. Each tale was unique and yet they all blended so well together, aesthetically harmonious in their allusions to the most infamous song lyrics or music video imagery of Lana Del Rey and the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Any fan of Shirley Jackson or Welcome to Night Vale would enjoy this!

*My only critique is that there were some grammar mistakes that keener proofreading could have fixed- but even so, they didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of these stories.

[Becky Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this anthology because it does exactly what it says on the cover. Violent, sexy, sad girl sh*t. Perfect reading for my trip to Vegas. I preferred the stories that were less literal to the poet and the singer, but that’s just me. If you’re into either of the two, you’ll probably like this collection.

This review was originally published on my blog.

[Tiffany Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't usually review books that I'm in, but this anthology is truly everything the title promises: lush prose, abstract tragedy, beautiful revenge. I loved every story and am so honoured to share this space with these amazing writers.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melancholic and bloody, raging and mournful, there’s so many things going on in this anthology, but it’s all wonderful work. I’ve been looking forward to reading this one for a while, and nothing disappointed. Excellent from first to last.

[Nayi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a compilation of very interesting little stories and some very rare ones.
I loved some very much, others less but I still give them 5 stars for the great variety.
Now I want to read some sylvia plath for all the references that are mentioned.
In conclusion I loved it 💖

[Bridgette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't often read short story collections. I'm always left feeling muddled and overfull. Some of these I loved, some I didn't care for. Overall, it is a lovely poignant collection with some very strong female characters. Sad and strange and poetic; worthy of a read through.

[Eimi Capote · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved! it is everything you expect it to be, very plath and lana and i love the spooky elements some of the stories have. The language is assessable which is very hard to do with this kind of extravagant writing.

[Sarah Budd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this! So much talent in here, each story was really different, something in there for everyone. I hope to see a lot more stories form these writers in the future!

[M. B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, this collection wasn't for me, but I would give higher ratings to some of the individual stories, particularly "Stag Loop," "Loose Ends: A Movie," and "The Land of Other."

[Jennifer Pullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique collection of stories organized in a fascinating way, beginning with surrealism, and ending on the fantastical. Dark and fascinating.

[Mila Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stories, subpar editing.

[India Mackinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this body of work doesn’t hold a candle to its muses, it was a treat to get back into short fiction. It reminded me that I have as much fun writing short stories as I’m sure these authors did writing their addition to this anthology.