Claire Oshetsky > Status Update
Claire Oshetsky
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So I figured out why I seem to be uncomfortable with my books being labeled “weird girl” fiction, even though I’m in such terrific company. It’s because I think of my protagonists as NORMAL. They're reacting to an irrational world in a deeply rational way. They aren’t weird. The circumstances they must endure, however commonplace, are what is “weird,” and my protags fight back the best way they know how. fwiw
— Apr 28, 2026 11:56AM
So I figured out why I seem to be uncomfortable with my books being labeled “weird girl” fiction, even though I’m in such terrific company. It’s because I think of my protagonists as NORMAL. They're reacting to an irrational world in a deeply rational way. They aren’t weird. The circumstances they must endure, however commonplace, are what is “weird,” and my protags fight back the best way they know how. fwiw
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Matt
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Apr 28, 2026 12:28PM
Who better fits the genre in your opinion? Sounds like books I’d like too
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Matt wrote: "Who better fits the genre in your opinion? Sounds like books I’d like too"This is a tricky question because “weird girl lit” is a reader-led category and I’m not sure what the writers whose books are regularly assigned to it would think of the label in relation to their work.
Writers who are regularly mentioned as writing “weird girl lit” include Otessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Jen Beagin, Eliza Clark, and many others, but yeah, I think these writers don’t necessarily have a lot in common except that their protagonists are unusually noncompliant. What that character trait means to the story and its interpretation seems to vary a lot depending on the author. Also the degree of “literary” quality assigned to these books can vary a lot.
To me, though, “weird girl” implies that the author deliberately wrote their protagonist as weird, or irrational, or antisocial. The label works better for writers working in a style closer to social realism, and it makes more sense when the book presents a stable world view that scaffolds the story. If a novel defines “normal” in a stable way, then “weird” becomes a meaningful category, as behavior that is not “normal” as defined within the novel.
I think the label works less well with hard surrealism, which is written on purpose to resist easy real-world mapping, and with books where the reader is dependent on the protagonist’s world view--where there is no “normal” strictly defined for the world of the novel that exists outside of the protagonist’s world view--and this is where I think my books live.
Totally see why this label would be perhaps reductive or simplistic as an author! I am a lover of Chouette and Poor Deer (as well as some of the other authors you mentioned) and as a Gen-Z I think I’m the target demographic for “Weird Girl Lit.” I think the label targets readers who have felt like outsiders at some point or another then finds books with characters that may share the POV of being misunderstood or as you mentioned non complying. Although the labeling of “weird girl lit” is IMO meant to reclaim or empower the reader’s POV, I think it perpetuates the idea that introspection or individuality is an oddity that must be soothed. Idk if this makes sense it’s 1 am lol
jac I think the way you identify with the “weird girl” identity is exactly the way I want my books to be read. What feels off to me is when readers ‘other’ my protagonists as what is “weird” in the story, vs. my feeling, that they are operating in a rational way, responding to an irrational (weird) world that surrounds them and threatens them.
so, like, I’m trying to write: “weird world, sane girl” lit :-)
