Margaret Killjoy is an American author and musician. She has published fiction novels in the steampunk and folk horror genres, and is best known for her two-book ''Danielle Cain'' series. Killjoy is involved in several musical projects across genres including black metal, neofolk, and electronica. She founded the feminist black metal band Feminazgûl in 2018.
Killjoy's fiction writing includes queeranarchiststeampunk and folk horror.[2] Killjoy published What Lies Beneath the Clock Tower, a steampunk interactive novel, in 2011.[4] In 2017, Killjoy published the first of two books in the Danielle Cain series, which features a group of genderqueer, anarchist demon hunters in the American heartland. In the first novella, The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, the group is hunted by a demon that appears in the form of a stag.[2][5] The second book in the series, The Barrow Will Send What It May, follows members of the same group as they run from the events of the first book.[5]The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award in 2017.[6][7]The Barrow Will Send What It May was nominated in the 31st Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBTQ science fiction and fantasy category.[8] Killjoy contributed the short story "We Won't Be Here Tomorrow" to A Punk Rock Future, a 2019 anthology of speculative science fiction and fantasy.[7]
Killjoy has also edited and written non-fiction works, including the 2009 book Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction, a collection of interviews with anarchist authors including Ursula K. Le Guin and Alan Moore.[9] She also was an editor of SteamPunk Magazine, which was in print from 2007 to 2016.[9][10]
Killjoy founded the feminist black metal band Feminazgûl in 2018.[1] She released the band's first EP, The Age of Men Is Over, as a solo project the same year. Joined by Laura Beach as lead vocalist and Meredith Yayanos as violinist and theremin player, the band released its first full-length album, No Dawn for Men, in 2020.[2]
Killjoy hosts the anarchist survivalist podcast Live Like the World Is Dying[11] and launched her new podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff on May 2, 2022.[12]
