Background/purpose: As teachers of the future, pre-service English teachers' perceptions towards literary genres were crucial as their thoughts and experiences during their teacher training program would be decisive on their use of literature in their future teaching professions. Therefore, the objective of this qualitative explanatory case study is to explore how pre-service English teachers feel about studying various genres of literature in their English literature courses and the challenges they face, and to present suggestions for using literary extracts more efficiently in ELT classrooms. Materials/methods: Twenty-nine pre-service English language teachers participated to the study via answering open-ended questions and participating follow up semi-structured interviews. Results: Results illuminated that pre-service English teachers had certain preferences regarding the specific genres of literature that they read in their literature classes. Moreover, participants also mentioned certain challenges that they faced while reading literature in English. The most pronounced ones were unknown and Old English vocabulary, complex sentences, long texts, historical and cultural elements, and figurative and literary language. Conclusion: It is concluded that literature courses for ELT students need to be tailored for the future needs of English teachers.