The article focuses on semantic, structural and linguo-cultural characteristics of the names of new literary genres which appeared in the English language at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. The author studies the specifics of the notion of ‘genre’ and compares the speech genres definition offered by M.M. Bakhtin with literary genres. Describing peculiarities of lexical innovations which are used to name contemporary literary genres, the author emphasizes their culturally specific character and stresses the necessity of their further systematic investigation.