NEW books

from “Austin’s favorite horror author” —Birdhouse Books

preorders open

Beneath the Bluebonnets:
Tales of Terror by Texas Women

NOW available

A “chapbook of the weird”
from Rapture Publishing!

NOW available

Named a Most-Anticipated Horror Book of 2025 by Paste Magazine!

“HAGEMANN MIGHT BE THE BEST HORROR WRITER IN AMERICA.”

—Daniel Kraus, author of Whalefall and Angel Down

“Mother-Eating gleefully penetrates and butchers all you thought was possible in fiction. It is a literary impalement. Perverted, shocking, and unprecedented. Jess Hagemann is one of the most singular and distinct voices I’ve encountered since first reading authors like William S. Burroughs and Georges Bataille. There is no literary equivalent to this raw, uncompromising masterpiece. It truly exists in its own superior class.”

—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

appearances

April 4

Austin Book Trail | Birdhouse Books (ATX)
author signing 12:00-3:00 p.m.

Free event

May 16

Greater Austin Book Fest | Central Library (ATX)
vendor table

Free event

May 26

Beneath the Bluebonnets | Rosette (ATX)
reading and signing

RSVP

May 28

Beneath the Bluebonnets | First Light Books (ATX)
reading and signing

Free event

June 5-7

StokerCon | Pittsburgh, PA
festival attendee

Tickets

headcheese by
jess hagemann

Buy the book

From sexual fetish to the clinical diagnosis of Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Headcheese makes the first cut, peeling back the epidermis to peer inside the minds and hearts of 26 people navigating the topography of flesh.

Winner of a 2019 IPPY Award in Horror!

“Reading Headcheese is like realizing the chainsaw was the hero of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and that nothing brings us closer to our true selves than understanding what we'd cut away. Jess Hagemann does for dismemberment what Ishmael did for whales—revealing the whole world inside the tiniest details.”

—Newsweek

“A provocative and ingeniously assembled novel with enough debauched imagination—and perverse reality—to satisfy even the most morbidly curious reader. If this book was a Google search, you’d read it in incognito mode.”

—Katie Rife, A.V Club

About jess

Jess Hagemann’s debut novel Headcheese won a 2019 IPPY Award in Horror. Her sophomore novel Mother-Eating was named a “Most-Anticipated Horror Book of 2025” by Paste Magazine and made Bloody Disgusting’s list of Best Horror Books of 2025. That same year, Rapture Publishing issued a standalone chapbook of her short story “Resurrection.” In 2026, she will be novelizing a movie for Encyclopocalypse Publications. Jess received her MFA from the Jack Kerouac School, and is the former recipient of a teaching fellowship at McNeese State University and a writing residency at Dear Butte. She lives in Austin.

More at www.jesshagemann.com.

Jess Hagemann, Austin horror author

other publications

2020

“Mistook in Manor,” Southwest Review

“The Purple,” HorrorGirl Problems

2014

“To Have and to Hold,” NPR Illinois

“Exoskeleton,” under the gum tree

2013

“Crane,” Your Everyday Heroes

“Study of Retinoblastoma Homolog in C. elegans,” Utter Magazine

“The Red Pearl,” Looseleaf Tea

“That Sainted Gash,” Almost Five [Quarterly]

“Veiled,” Doorknobs & BodyPaint

2012

“May I Touch Your Meat? Jan Svankmajer, Birth Trauma, and the Gesture Toward Touch,” Bright Lights Film Journal

“Things to Save,” Inquiring Mind

“Candice,” Devilfish Review

“Room for Saltwater,” The Oklahoma Review

“Overgrown!” Nerve Lantern

“Taboo Blue,” Five [Quarterly]

“On Blasphemy,” Esque Magazine

“Sheer Like Gauze,” Kweli Journal

2011

“On Ecology,” Gambling the Aisle

“Off the Dome: An Interview with Ronaldo V. Wilson,” Bombay Gin

“The Cardigan and the Carnalval,” Fiera Lingue

2010

“MySpace: Begin,” Pank Magazine

“On Breasts and Testicles,” Lethologica

2009

“Static,” “Castro Lauds Elections,” & “To My Fellow Cannibal Christians,” Re:Visions

“Fixtures,” Spires Magazine

in the news

Get in touch.

Jess is available for conferences, visiting writers’ weekends, and other speaking engagements.