Her Body and Other Parties — Carmen Maria Machado (2017)

Carmen Maria Machado's debut collection — mixing horror, fantasy, fairy tale, and queer romance — is the most celebrated genre-blending short fiction debut of the 21st century. Its first story, The Husband Stitch (the story of the woman with a ribbon around her neck), is both a feminist horror fable and a devastating examination of marriage, desire, and female bodily autonomy. It proved that genre fiction could carry literary seriousness without sacrificing imaginative freedom.