What is Weird Girl Lit? Before I explain this to you please note, I did not coin this phrase.Though I sure wish that I did because the tag, Weird Girl Lit is on point. Weird Girl Lit is a relatively recent critical label for a strand of literary fiction that is mostly by women and centers protagonists who are strange, alienated, obsessive, or socially maladjusted in ways that feel authentic rather than quirky/cute. These are books where the narrator is often unreliable, detached, or deeply odd in their inner life. They tend to reject warmth and relatability as literary virtues. The prose can be flat, clinical, or darkly funny. The protagonist isn’t trying to be likable, and the author isn’t asking you to root for her in a conventional way. Weird Girl Lit can include body horror, obsession, fixation, grief, numbness, emotional dys-regulation, or a passive drift through life rather than a driving plot. The dark humor that infuses the plot never softens, regardless of how challenging the content is. This genre is demonstrated in the works of Otessa Moshfegh in her book, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” As well as Mona Awad’s, “We Love You Bunny” and of course, Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”.

So who’s this author who writes Weird Girl Lit? Her name is Kate Folk and prior to “Sky Daddy” her debut novel, Kate published a short story collection, “Out There” (2022) which was named best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, the Chicago Review of Books and Jezebel magazine. “Out There” has also been translated into Spanish and Korean. Folk has also written a screenplay for Hulu in 2020. “Sky Daddy” debuted in 2025 and prior to this during 2019-2021 Folk was a Stegner fellow at Standard University. Folk is a fresh out of the gates and she is laser focused on the impacts tech has on our lives and does an exceptional job exacting melancholy, ennui and bittersweet essence from her characters and infusing this into her readers. More on Kate Folk! Her first short stories were published in, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, Grants,The Baffler among publications. An eclectic writer, Folk, has published essays in The New York Times Magazine, The Book Review and LitHub. Currently, Folk lives in SanFrancisco which is a great spot to observe micro cultures and craft brilliant narratives. I’m sold and I’m a fan. Who wouldn’t enjoy a smart and straight-forward woman, but why did Kate Folk write this very weird and heartwarming book?

From interviews that I’ve read and/or listened to Folk wanted to elevate wild and non-traditional women—she stated that trad wives and girls consume enough oxygen and space and wanted to give wild women their due. Folk taps into and expands a reader’s compassion by centering a super niche private secret. In this case an obscure neurosis—objectophilia or objectum sexuality which is a condition when an individual has a strong attraction and feelings of love and commitment to certain items, structures or fixations. In this case airplanes. Linda falls in love with them and seeks sexual experiences during actual flight and believes the plane she will marry will choose her as its bride by claiming her and its life in a plane crash. Pretty weird and definitely memorable. In some ways this tension draws a reader into a perspective unlike their own and the reader’s inexperience makes them curious and vulnerable to a character like Linda’s outcome. She is very flat and neutral as a character and as Linda reveals her neurotic fixation to people she is accepted and forms connections and friendships for the very first time in her burgeoning adult life.This story while odd is entirely heartwarming. No one wants to see someone live and die lonely and isolated even while society is figuring out a massive loneliness epidemic. Folk’s cast is people at their weirdest and worst and people make their way back to better and best. Pretty satisfying and yet weird.

At the political level, Folk chooses a weird female protagonist to counter the current political moment for women as women are faced with becoming trad or trophy wives and are rejecting feminism and freedoms women have fought, lobbied and won for sisters past and present. That sisterhood has become increasingly polarized and has become submissive to patriarchal rules and goals. By letting girls go wild and discover common ground (even when they are markedly different) Folk dramatizes and achieves an example of reconnection.I was very touched witnessing women who had zero things in common care about and help each other grow. Let’s see if Sky Daddy gets adapted and what the takeaway delivers. How weird do characters have to be for people to access compassion and catharsis? We’ll have to see but Weird Girl Lit definitely offers sites and works to visit along the way.

What else makes Sky Daddy weird? Tons and lots of odd juxtaposition… A 20-something aloof woman works as a content moderator and specializes in hate crimes and harassment. She watches that fall into this themed vertical for a minimum of 8 hours daily. This is Linda and she is a pro and enjoys the decisive action of passing or removing behaviors committed by humans at their absolute worst. Linda has no fiends to speak of and lives in an illegal apartment—a converted garage owned by a Chinese family who speak minimal English. Linda harbors a peculiar secret—she experienced her first orgasm at 13 while on a plane flying with her unhappy family to an undesirable vacation. That orgasm and the psycho emotional context in Linda’s life locks her into a fixation for airplanes. Linda lusts after airplanes and her passenger behavior gets pretty weird.. That’s reason enough to classify Sky Daddy as weird but Folk collages much more into her narrative.

A weird girl doesn’t know that she’s weird until she makes some friends. Who better to befriend other than another coworker because content moderation requires degrees of emotional repression, extreme non-disclosure, and a degree of tolerance of one’s fellow human and their eccentricities. Folk crafts a perfect little potion for weirdness in the ingredients of individual character’s lives. Karina, Linda’s co worker default friend invites her to a Vision Board Besties group during which the women share their vision boards and desires that they wish to manifest in their lives. Initially the women wish for career advancement, financial wealth, husbands, children, and vacations. Linda however displays a lot of airplane content and an airline CEO or pilot. She’s able to hide the dirty details from the group. Although Sky Daddy wouldn’t be as popular if some of Linda’s secrets aren’t revealed. Be assured you’ll learn everything that you think that you should know, but just not here. For now, just know that Linda accelerates her plane obsessions, has peculiar sex, and unearths some deep daddy problems. She also discovers what real friendship and loyalty are in a very circuitous way that involves transparency and acceptance. It’s ideal—women witness women and acknowledge the individual right to choose and live according to one’s choices. Choices are not political—the’re just choices as long as they don’t bring harm to others. Ideal for this moment and as I mentioned oddly satisfying and cathartic. Linda does it her way. Karina does it her way and though to some it may be weird, it’s heartwarming and made me cry. Remember Weird Girl Lit let’s girls and women do life THEIR OWN WAY which is not patriarchally designed or directed. Enjoy!