This thesis explores the figure of the sapphic vampire in Carmilla (1872) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, The Blood of the Vampire (1897) by Florence Marryat, The Gilda Stories (1991) by Jewelle Gomez, and Fledgling (2005) by Octavia Butler. I argue that these texts present the sapphic vampire as the embodiment of the death drive and display ambiguous familial/sexual relationships in order to challenge heteronormative constructs of family. I utilise Lee Edelman’s arguments from No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive to analyse vampiric, queer kinship as a future that does not focus on the child, and Kath Weston’s Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship to unpack the concept of the chosen family and its value for queer people who desire kin, examining the way familial structures are broken down and biological ties rendered secondary to chosen ones. In Chapter One I analyse the scenes in which the vampire feeds, unpacking the use of breastfeeding imagery to show the tension between maternal roles and sapphic relationships inherent in the texts. I show how the narratives respond to idea of love and lust, as well as their troubled relationship with post- menopausal women. Chapter Two considers how, lacking a biological family of her own, the sapphic vampire creates familial bonds through recruitment or reproduction. Given the correlation these texts create between queerness and vampirism, I argue that the family building within these narratives presents alternatives to heteronormative constructs of kinship. Throughout I compare the contemporary texts to their Victorian counterparts, tracing the ways in which the depictions of queer kinship that the Victorian texts had to eradicate could be celebrated in those of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. I will explain the significance of what has or has not changed, and how this affects or is representative of shifts in attitude towards queer people and the families that they choose. This thesis demonstrates the power of the desire that the literary sapphic vampire feels, and the value of the family she chooses.