In a time when monsters can be found in the pages of plenty of children’s books, it’s clear that we have reentered the era of the vampire. Vampires have had a long literary history that has often used monstrosity as a metaphor for queer communities or left marginalized characters out of the larger canon. But today’s readers will find that modern vampires are all about embracing their identities.

Vampires of Color

Vampires prominently reentered the pop culture consciousness in the previous decade, appearing on screen in popular shows based on book series such as L.J Smith’s The Vampire Diaries, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy. Many writers who grew up witnessing this revitalized appreciation for vampires recognized a troubling omission: vampires of color were a rarity.

Tigest Girma, author of the YA debut Immortal Dark (Little, Brown, Sept. 3), didn’t recognize the racial disparity “as early as I’d like,” but the centering of white characters still made an impact. “When you constantly see a story from one perspective, you believe that’s the only story that should exist,” Girma told PW.

Similarly for Angela Montoya, author of A Cruel Thirst (Joy Revolution, Dec. 17), with maturity came a sharper perspective on the vampire canon’s centering of whiteness. “Growing up, I assumed the creation of vampires stemmed from Eastern Europe,” Montoya said. “It wasn’t until I was older and dove into tales from my own culture that I realized there are various versions of vampire-like mythology in many cultures across the globe.”

Patrice Caldwell, author of Where Shadows Meet (Wednesday, Apr. 2025), “grew up right in the [boom] of paranormal YA books” and was eager to write her own. When Caldwell wanted to break into the canon earlier in her career, she was told the door on vampires had since closed. “All the passes were like, ‘This is so great, but the genre is dead.’ And I was so frustrated by the fact that the genre is dead before we get to do it.”

That isn’t the case this time around, as the new era of the vampires reflects how culturally diverse the genre’s readers are.

For Hayley Dennings, anti-Blackness is cooked into the core of vampire lore in her debut novel This Ravenous Fate (Sourcebooks Fire, Aug. 6), a tale of two Black girls on opposite ends of a vampire-human war being waged in 1926 Harlem. “I see so much of [the lore in my book] as a metaphor for anti-Blackness in the way that it spreads in really traumatic, awful ways, and how it continues through various generations,” Dennings said. “[It also addresses] the portrayal of sexuality and how for Black girls especially, it’s often super demonized.”

In Girma’s Immortal Dark, no white characters appear at Uxlay University, the vampire academy where protagonist Kidan attends in search of answers about her missing sister.

“Vampires represent a lot of things––beauty, ego, strength, sacrifice,” Girma said. “You could spin a vampire tale into anything, which is what I love most. I chose to focus on how vampires are manifestations of human darkness.”

For A Cruel Thirst, which pulls from Aztec/Mexica mythology with a new twist, Montoya said, “The second I started really thinking about the world I could create with Latin American vampires at the helm, I became obsessed with the idea.”

Having such a variety of vampiric offerings from diverse creators offers young people of color powerful representation that all readers should have access to.

“Fantasy is the most desirable genre,” Girma said. “Where else can you be powerful beyond belief or fall in love during epic battles? It’s where you go to feel fearless and become ready to conquer your day to day. I think young readers need this source of joy and courage.”

And as vampires continue to grow more diverse, Caldwell said, “I'm ready to Black the whole canon of paranormal romance.”

A Queer Canon

The subtext of many classic vampire stories such as Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novel Carmilla offers a notable cross-section of vampires and queer history. Carmilla’s seductive tactics and intimate relationship with same-sex characters has been studied for their queer undertones. But the book also deems its queer-coded vampire as monstrous by nature, villainizing her queerness by attaching her behavior to a literal monster. Embracing queer identity in today’s vampire canon acts as a subversion of these stories that once warned readers of queerness as something to be feared.

“I wrote This Ravenous Fate because people deny our existence, and I don’t want that to happen anymore,” said Dennings, whose story centers on two Black lesbians. “I want more Black girls falling in love in a story fully centered on them. Putting them on the page is resistance to misogynoir and homophobia, and it was really important for me to do that.”

Kellan McDaniel, author of Till Death (MTV Books, Mar. 2025) said, “I think being queer is rad, and I’m really happy for the queer youth who get to explore themselves nowadays, especially through books.” For McDaniel, Till Death was an opportunity to explore what it means to be othered, through the experiences of human Howard and vampire George, both gay protagonists. “There is something to being the other, and being slightly outside of society, but also being able to see with new eyes, coming out and seeing beyond the veil of what straight cisgender society feeds you. And so vampires have these enhanced senses too,” McDaniel said.

The othering of vampires offers writers and readers nuanced ways to discuss navigating a world where queerness is deemed a threat. And in other vampiric universes such as David Ferraro’s Regency-set novel A Vile Season (Page Street YA, Oct. 22), “queerness is the standard”—quite a shift from the subtext of Carmilla 150 years ago.

“The good thing about monsters in horror is that they can represent a lot of things to a lot of people,” Ferraro said. “Traditionally vampires have been kind of [about] sexuality and repression. So, a vampire can be different things to different people, which is great, because then you can tell different stories with it.”

A New Generation

Today’s modern vampire offers a window into a world where more diverse and marginalized characters can be a hero or a monster, this time with agency.

“I definitely see [this moment] as a reclamation,” Dennings said. “Especially seeing how vampires were portrayed as harmful to marginalized identities. It’s cool to reclaim those stereotypes and turn them into something more beautiful.”

At the center of these vampire stories is hope for a new generation, to see themselves at the core and not the sidelines of the story.

“It’s really meaningful to me to put queer people and stories and bodies and histories out into the world,” McDaniel said. “And mostly, I hope that these monsters really speak to the teens who need them.”

As the canon continues to expand, writers recognize that the past exclusion of diverse creators was “limiting ourselves,” Caldwell said. “The nuances that people are bringing into fiction is just wild! I'll never stop. I love monsters, and I'll be writing about them until the day I die.”

Montoya said of the future of the canon, “My hope is that publishing sees this [shift]. Truly sees this—and buys into the fact that there is a large readership that is hungry for books by POC with characters who are POC. We want fresh takes on old tropes!”

Marginalized creators may just be stepping into the spotlight, but they recognize that they’ve always had a hand in the genre. “Who better to fit into a vampire canon?” Caldwell said. “They’re monsters. They’re outsiders, and they create this found family. You’re talking about a queer person. You’re talking about a Black person. To me, it’s like we’ve always been there.”