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.