Sometimes, you just pick your poison and pray.​
Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment. But when exotic dancer Emmy Joiner sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, she meets mysterious, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss.​
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But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. But while Emmy’s slowly strangling, its price may be more than she’s willing to pay.​Shifting between the green-bright cypress cathedral and the dreamland of a dance club, Broadbent’s unforgettably-voiced debut confronts the brutal realities of poverty in the South, with a sapphic tale both sultry and sinister, gritty and gothic.​​
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Undertaker Books, April 2024
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Imadjinn Award Finalist, Best Horror Novel, 2025
Haunted Book Club Awards, Best Novella, 2024
Praise for Ink Vine
"A stunning debut with a narrative voice so strong, you'll feel the swamp breathing down your neck. Eerie and very moving."
Tim McGregor, author of Eynhallow and Wasps in the Ice Cream
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​"Elizabeth Broadbent combines a steamy love story with important observations about desperation, fear, and acceptance. Ink Vine, with its elements of dark fantasy and botanical horror, reminded me of True Blood!"
Christi Nogle, author of the Bram Stoker Award winning first novel Beulah
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"Ink Vine is a lush and deliciously queer Southern Gothic romance about desire and the things we will do to sate it. Broadbent's richly drawn characters and smart. evocative prose give new meaning to the phrase 'blossoming love.' Emerald's longing—for acceptance, for love, for something more—haunts every word and sets the stage for a beautiful narrative about acceptance, self-discovery, and the power of connection."
Jolie Toomajin, editor of Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic
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"Ink Vine will draw you in and reward you with strange beauty, stark and gentle at once. Like a swamp. There are dangers here, but also great rewards, if one is brave enough. I, for one, am looking forward to reading more from Elizabeth Broadbent and warmly recommend this enthralling novella."
Victoria Lilly, The Lesbian Review
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"Broadbent paints the words into a gorgeous setting where she places her broken characters within, a juxtaposition between a dying town and the vibrant but dangerous swamp she’s been warned about all her life. She knows this world well and the dark fantasy/horror that comes to life between the covers seethes with life, conflict, and dark threads that threaten to pull Emmy’s world into the depths. Recommended reading and a fine new author to watch."
David Sims, Cemetery Dance​