Best of
Queer-Lit

2017

Lie With Me


Philippe Besson - 2017
    We drive at high speed along back roads, through woods, vineyards, and oat fields. The bike smells like gasoline and makes a lot of noise, and sometimes I’m frightened when the wheels slip on the gravel on the dirt road, but the only thing that matters is that I’m holding on to him, that I’m holding on to him outside.Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he’s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a gorgeous boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Without ever acknowledging they know each other in the halls, they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.Dazzlingly rendered in English by Ringwald in her first-ever translation, Besson’s powerfully moving coming-of-age story captures the eroticism and tenderness of first love—and the heartbreaking passage of time.

Nature Poem


Tommy Pico - 2017
    For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He’d slap a tree across the face. He’d rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he’d rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole. While he’s adamant—bratty, even—about his distaste for the word “natural,” over the course of the book we see him confronting the assimilationist, historical, colonial-white ideas that collude NDN people with nature. The closer his people were identified with the “natural world,” he figures, the easier it was to mow them down like the underbrush. But Teebs gradually learns how to interpret constellations through his own lens, along with human nature, sexuality, language, music, and Twitter. Even while he reckons with manifest destiny and genocide and centuries of disenfranchisement, he learns how to have faith in his own voice.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities


Chen Chen - 2017
    Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.In the HospitalMy mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend.But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, shortskeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday.My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend.Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonablepigeons. No one had the time & our solution to itwas to buy shinier watches. We were enamored withwhat our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital& I didn’t want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale,bad plot, great wifi in the atypical café. My mother was in the hospital& she didn’t want to be her friend. She wanted to be the familygrocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn’t trust my fatherto be it. You always forget something, she said, even whenI do the list for you. Even then.

Mean


Myriam Gurba - 2017
    Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Mean turns what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, funny, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would cut off our breasts. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean because we like to laugh. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being mean to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being mean is more exhilarating.Being mean isn't for everybody.Being mean is best practiced by those who understand it as an art form.These virtuosos live closer to the divine than the rest of humanity. They're queers.Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. She's the author of Dahlia Season (2007, Manic D) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Wish You Were Me (2011, Future Tense Books), and Painting Their Portraits in Winter (2015, Manic D). She has toured with Sister Spit and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She lives in Long Beach, where she teaches social studies to eighth-graders.

Portrait of the Alcoholic


Kaveh Akbar - 2017
    Each word in this little book might rise up from somewhere deep in the earth, but they turn into stars." - Nick Flynn"In Islam prayer is not transactional, poetry is not divorced from the quotidian and portraiture is embraced only in the abstract. And yet here in Kaveh Akbar's book, entreaty is earnest, aimed at the human and particular more often than the divine but at the same time the language and form elevate themselves to the fevered register of desperation. Yes, sure, fine, you would think that a Muslim writing about being a drunk would have to adopt unconventional approaches, but drunkenness in the Islamic literary tradition is a long and time-honored metaphor. For what? Abandonment to God, a cessation of the self--but not so here; no. Here it's real, it's coarse, it's dangerous. The reason we Muslims do not pray for things is that it is similarly dangerous for one to call God's attention onto oneself. But for Kaveh Akbar, whose very name means 'poetry, ' it is a risk every poem takes with gusto. And speaking purely for myself, these poems give me life because 'for so long every step I've taken/ has been from one tongue to another.' Be careful, little brother. God's got His eye on you now." - Kazim Ali

A Place Called No Homeland


Kai Cheng Thom - 2017
    In these fierce yet tender narrative poems, Thom draws from both memory and mythology to create new maps of gender, race, sexuality, and violence. Descended from the traditions of oral storytelling, spoken word, and queer punk, Thom's debut collection is evocative and unforgettable.Kai Cheng Thom is a trans writer and performance artist whose work has been published in Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Asian American Literary Review, and xoJane. She writes regularly for Everyday Feminism.

Autopsy (Button Poetry)


Donte Collins - 2017
    As the book unfolds, the reader journeys alongside the author through grief and healing. Named the Most Promising Young Poet in the country by the Academy of American Poets, Collins's work has consistently wowed audiences. Autopsy propels that work onto the national stage. In the words of the author, the book is a spring thaw -- the new life alongside the old, the good cry and the release after.

What About the Rest of Your Life


Sung Yim - 2017
    Equal parts grim and buoyant, here is an intimate portrait of trauma, family, addiction, and body. What About the Rest of Your Life exposes the harrowing terrain where there is no boundary between love and abuse. Unapologetically raw, Yim reinvents the recovery narrative through an immigrant's lens.PRAISE FOR WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE:“So achingly beautiful I want to sing. I want to set things on fire. I want to put this book in your hands and say, ‘Here. You have to read this. Right goddamn now.’” -Megan Stielstra, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life“Never before has a book made me fall in love so quickly. What About the Rest of Your Life signals a courageous, crucial, and authentic new voice in literature." -Jenny Boully, Book of Beginnings and Endings"Sung Yim has absorbed and chronicled the new unsettled America in a memoir that vibrates with grief as it attempts to uncover the nexus of masked identities in the Midwest. Theirs is the voice of a generation who is left with the pieces of a disassembled culture. What About the Rest of Your Life is a sustained movement of life, its rawness, gaping holes, and found joys."-Re'Lynn Hansen, author of To Some Women I Have Known“Read this book built from dopamine and the hollows of its absence, this book I’m obsessed with. It will gut you and it will refill you." -Elissa Washuta, My Body Is a Book of Rules“This book is fucking brilliant.” -Glenn Taylor, A Hanging at Cinder Bottom“The kind of book that gets you somewhere new, somewhere more honest and shot through with the hard emotion of living. A striking debut.” -T Fleischmann, Syzygy, Beauty: An Essay"Sung Yim has written an enthralling memoir. It's powerful, vulnerable, and deeply pleasurable. It's a harrowing house fire of a book. Everything that Sung Yim burns up with their excellent prose becomes sanctified, gutted, and glorious."-David Stuart MacLean, The Answer to the Riddle Is Me

The Bi-ble: An Anthology of Essays on Bisexuality


Lauren NickodemusLaura Clay - 2017
    We’re called fence-sitters, greedy, promiscuous, incapable of decisions or monogamy, or simply dismissed as non-existent like a stubborn urban legend. Bisexuals suffer both the abuse incurred for existence and the erasure that claims nonexistence: a half-life, a state of being and not being, simultaneously too gay and not gay enough.Because of this and many other factors, the statistics for bisexual wellbeing are bleak – we are more likely to suffer from mental health issues, more likely to be closeted, at higher risk of domestic abuse and assault from partners, and even at higher risk of conditions like heart disease and addiction. It is time to dig into these issues and step out of the liminal space – into a full life where our voices and stories can be heard, and our identities declared valid.So was born The Bi-ble, a collection of original essays and personal narratives giving platform to the thoughts and experiences relevant to bisexuals today. This book is not just for bisexuals, though we hope it will unite and inspire those of us who identify as such. It is also an invitation to sharing and understanding, an open book, so to speak, extending a discussion to other communities in the hope of learning more about each other and the beautiful, multifaceted, endlessly complex and individual world of sexuality.

Fresh Start


Nicole Pyland - 2017
    She’d lost people she’d loved, her credibility, and a part of her life. To get it back on track, she returns home to live with her mother and has all but given up on any hope at a normal life.Hannah Granger had been off exploring the world and finding herself, only to return home to lose her mother and a lot of what she’d found out about herself while away.When the two women meet, they discover they can help find what they’d lost and uncover more of what they could have in their lives as they attempt to navigate a complicated situation and deal with the baggage they both bring with them.

Peter Darling


Austin Chant - 2017
    Neverland is his real home. So when Peter returns to it after ten years in the real world, he’s surprised to find a Neverland that no longer seems to need him.The only person who truly missed Peter is Captain James Hook, who is delighted to have his old rival back. But when a new war ignites between the Lost Boys and Hook’s pirates, the ensuing bloodshed becomes all too real – and Peter’s rivalry with Hook starts to blur into something far more complicated, sensual, and deadly.

full-metal indigiqueer: poems


Joshua Whitehead - 2017
    Using binary code and texts from classics of the English language such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Joshua Whitehead unravels the coded "I" to trace the formation of a colonized self and reclaim representations of Indigenous texts.Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit member of the Peguis First Nation.

Caroline's Heart


Austin Chant - 2017
    They say it's impossible to bring back the dead, yet Cecily's resurrection spell is nearly complete and grows more powerful by the day. But when a cowboy she barely knows is fatally injured, the only way to save him is by sacrificing an essential piece of the resurrection spell—and all possibility of seeing her lover again.

Ghost Lights


fantakoi - 2017
    but then he and his best friend Robin get lured into a place of their past.Slowly, they start remembering that they might have known each other for far longer than they thought, and that they weren't always human...

Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology


Joamette GilHannah Lazarte - 2017
    The book is over 160 pages long, black and white, and contains 15 original stories blending fantasy, drama, humor, and romance.Cover by Ashe Samuels

Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live


Sacha Lamb - 2017
    Ian is just like Avi, but he is also all sunshine, optimism, and magic. All the things that Avi doesn't know how to deal with...yet.A romantic, #ownvoices fairy tale for trans boys.

Octopus Pie, Volume 5


Meredith Gran - 2017
    The award-winning webcomic series comes to a close in this final laugh-filled, heart-rending installment.

Jem and the Holograms: The Misfits


Kelly Thompson - 2017
    On the ropes and desperate to get back on top, they're forced to consider the worst case scenario...A MISFITS REALITY TV SHOW. Though it promises the chance to get them back in the spotlight, it comes with a heavy, privacy-destroying price.

Before I Step Outside [You Love Me]


Travis Alabanza - 2017
    Every piece within the book is written whilst on a tube, a bus, walking, being harrassed, stared at, looked at and surviving. This collection of work is designed to be taken outside. To be read in public. To be shown in spaces. To be seen.

Handmade Holidays


'Nathan Burgoine - 2017
    Refusing to give up completely, Nick buys a Christmas tree, and then realizes he has no ornaments. A bare tree and an empty apartment aren’t a great start, but a visit from his friend Haruto is just the ticket to get him through this first, worst, Christmas. A box of candy canes and a hastily folded paper crane might not be the best ornaments, but it’s a place to start.A year later, Nick has realized he’s not the only one with nowhere to go, and he hosts his first “Christmas for the Misfit Toys.” Haruto brings Nick an ornament for Nick’s tree, and a tradition—and a new family—is born.As years go by, Nick, Haruto, and their friends face love, betrayal, life, and death. Every ornament on Nick’s tree is another year, another story, and another chance at the one thing Nick has wanted since the start: someone who’d share more than the holidays with him.Of course, Nick might have already missed his shot at the one, and it might be too late.Still, after fifteen Christmases, Nick is ready to risk it all for the best present yet.

Fusion


Diana Kane - 2017
    Catherine is an accomplished neurosurgeon looking for a fresh start in a new city. A chance meeting between the two imprints the doctor in Alexis' mind, with thoughts of Catherine pushing to the forefront months after they meet. When life places the pair in the same city, Alexis is unable to deny her attraction to Catherine. As the pair become closer, Alexis finds herself falling for Catherine, despite knowing that her feelings will never be reciprocated. Can the pair navigate through life and maintain their friendship or does fate have something else in store?Recommended for 18 years or age or older. F/F romance. Contains some strong language and explicit adult situations. 101,800 words.

Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation


H. Melt - 2017
    Featuring poetry and interviews, this collection is a testament to the power of trans poets speaking to one another—about family, race, class, disability, religion, and the body. This anthology includes a range of trans experiences and poetics, expanding the possibilities of what it means to be both trans and a writer in the twenty-first century.

What Runs Over


Kayleb Rae Candrilli - 2017
    Unfurling and unrelenting in its delivery, Candrilli has painted “the mountain” in excruciating detail. They show readers a world of Borax cured bear hides and canned peaches, of urine-filled Gatorade bottles and the syringe and all the syringe may carry. They show a violent world and its many personas. What Runs Over, too, is a story of rural queerness, of a transgender boy almost lost to the forest. The miracle of What Runs Over is that Candrilli has lived to write it at all."When Roethke said 'energy is the soul of poetry,' he might have been anticipating a book like What Runs Over, which is so full of energy it practically vibrates in your hand. Here, Candrilli’s speaker sticks their tongue 'into the heads / of venus fly traps just to feel the bite,' then later, burns holy books in the backyard and rolls around in the ashes until they become 'a painted god.' This is the verve of an urgent new poetic voice announcing itself to the world. As Candrilli writes: 'This is what I look like / when I’m trying to save myself.'"-Kaveh Akbar

Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility


Reina GossettMiss Major Griffin-Gracy - 2017
    Trans visibility is touted as a sign of a liberal society, but it has coincided with a political moment marked both by heightened violence against trans people (especially trans women of color) and by the suppression of trans rights under civil law. Trap Door grapples with these contradictions. The essays, conversations, and dossiers gathered here delve into themes as wide-ranging yet interconnected as beauty, performativity, activism, and police brutality. Collectively, they attest to how trans people are frequently offered “doors”—entrances to visibility and recognition—that are actually “traps” accommodating trans bodies and communities only insofar as they cooperate with dominant norms. The volume speculates about a third term, perhaps uniquely suited for our time: the trapdoor, neither entrance nor exit, but a secret passageway leading elsewhere. Trap Door begins a conversation that extends through and beyond trans culture, showing how these issues have relevance for anyone invested in the ethics of visual culture.

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016


Frank Bidart - 2017
    His pages represent the human voice in all its extreme registers, whether it’s that of the child-murderer Herbert White, the obsessive anorexic Ellen West, the tormented genius Vaslav Nijinsky, or the poet’s own. And in that embodiment is a transgressive empathy, one that recognizes our wild appetites, the monsters, the misfits, the misunderstood among us and inside us. Few writers have so willingly ventured to the dark places of the human psyche and allowed themselves to be stripped bare on the page with such candor and vulnerability. Over the past half century, Bidart has done nothing less than invent a poetics commensurate with the chaos and appetites of our experience.Half-light encompasses all of Bidart’s previous books, and also includes a new collection, Thirst, in which the poet austerely surveys his life, laying it plain for us before venturing into something new and unknown. Here Bidart finds himself a “Creature coterminous with thirst,” still longing, still searching in himself, one of the “queers of the universe.”Visionary and revelatory, intimate and unguarded, Bidart’s collected works are a radical confrontation with human nature, a conflict eternally renewed and reframed, restless line by restless line.

Since I Laid My Burden Down


Brontez Purnell - 2017
    An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.” —Michelle Tea, author of Black WaveDeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?A raw, funny, and uninhibited stumble down memory lane, Brontez Purnell’s debut novel explores how one man’s early sexual and artistic escapades grow into a life.

Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing


Charif Shanahan - 2017
    In poised yet unrelenting lyric poems, Shanahan—queer and mixed-race—confronts the challenges of a complex cultural inheritance, informed by colonialism and his mother’s immigration to the United States from Morocco, navigating racial constructs, sexuality, family, and the globe in search of “who we are to each other . . . who we are to ourselves.” With poems that weave from Marrakesh to Zürich to London, through history to the present day, this book is, on its surface, an uncompromising exploration of identity in personal and collective terms. Yet the collection is, most deeply, about intimacy and love, the inevitability of human separation and the challenge of human connection. Urging us to reexamine our own place in the broader human tapestry, Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing announces the arrival of a powerful and necessary new voice.

Tremontaine: The Complete Season Two


Ellen Kushner - 2017
    Mind your manners and enjoy the chocolate in a dance of sparkling wit and political intrigue.

In Full Velvet


Jenny Johnson - 2017
    Characterized by formal poise, vulnerability, and compassion, Johnson's debut collection is one of resounding generosity and grace.Jenny Johnson is a recipient of the 2015 Whiting Writers' Award, and the 2016 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Felt in the Jaw


Kristen N. Arnett - 2017
    A young dancer suddenly loses language while her family struggles to understand their new roles. A mother endures a horrifying spider bite while camping with her daughters in the backyard. A family reunion goes sour when a group of cousins are left to their own devices. In these ten stories, outward strength is always betrayed by deep vulnerability: these are characters so desperate for family and connection that they often isolate themselves--and sometimes, it's the world isolating them.

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer


John Lorinc - 2017
    Any Other Way is an eclectic and richly illustrated local history that reveals how these individuals and community networks have transformed Toronto from a place of churches and conservative mores into a city that has consistently led the way in queer activism, not just in Canada but internationally.From the earliest pioneers to the parades, pride and politics of the contemporary era, Any Other Way draws on a range of voices to explore how the residents of queer Toronto have shaped and reshaped one of the world’s most diverse cities.Any Other Way includes chapters on: Oscar Wilde’s trip to Toronto; early cruising areas and gay/lesbian bars; queer shared houses; a pioneering collective counter-archive project; bath house raids; LBGT-police conflicts; the Queen Street art/music/activist scene; and a profile of Jackie Shane, the trans R&B singer who performed in drag in both Toronto and Los Angeles, and gained international fame with her 1962 chart-topping single, ‘Any Other Way.’

Eyes Too Dry: A Graphic Memoir About Heavy Feelings


Alice Chipkin - 2017
    And from Alice’s perspective as a primary support person in particular, there was almost nothing at all. In a world that tells us to 'keep calm and carry on' the authors are offering a narrative that is vulnerable, honest and uncertain. They hope to add new ways to talk about, visualise and relate to these complex emotions.

Silk Poems


Jen Bervin - 2017
    This poem, written from the perspective of the silkworm, explores the cultural, scientific, and linguistic complexities of silk written inside the body.

The Inheritance of Shame


Peter Gajdics - 2017
    Kept with other patients in a cult-like home in British Columbia, Canada, Gajdics was under the authority of a dominating, rogue psychiatrist who controlled his patients, in part, by creating and exploiting a false sense of family. Juxtaposed against his parents’ tormented past — his mother’s incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, and his father’s upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary — Gajdics’ story explores the universal themes of childhood trauma, oppression, and intergenerational pain. Told over a period of decades, the book shows us the damaging repercussions of conversion therapy and reminds us that resilience, compassion, and the courage to speak the truth exist within us all.

The Last Cigarette on Earth


Benjamin Alire Sáenz - 2017
    He loved heroin, ecstasy, the sad musicof the bars. He said he loved you too. You arethinking of the night you met him. Late October night, the breeze as soft as his black eyes. He wasso hungry for trouble. You were so hungryfor anything that resembled love. Your fingertracing the tattoos on his chest, you dreamedof living in the prison of his arms. But you refusedto live in the prison of his deadly nights. Youcan’t survive without the morninglight. You repeat this again and again:He’s a man, not an illness. Tattoos and prison.Novels and poems. A bird can love a fish but they can’tlive in your apartment. He called again last nightand left a message that was meant to wound.He said: I want to know what you meant whenyou said I love you. You said: I love you. I meant I love you.He said: I want to know what you meant whenyou said goodbye. You said: Goodbye. I meant goodbye.You whispered his name in the dark.Benjamin Alire Sáenz in 2013 won the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Lambda Award for his book Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. His young adult novel Dante and Aristotle in Paradise was a 2013 Printz Honoree. He lives in El Paso, Texas.

Poet in Spain


Federico García Lorca - 2017
    Poet in Spain invokes the "wild, innate, local surrealism" of the Spanish voice, in moonlit poems of love and death set among poplars, rivers, low hills, and high sierras. Arvio's ample and rhythmically rich offering includes, among other essential works, the folkloric yet modernist Gypsy Ballads, the plaintive flamenco Poem of the Cante Jondo, and the turbulent and beautiful Dark Love Sonnets--addressed to Lorca's homosexual lover--which Lorca was revising at the time of his brutal political murder by Fascist forces in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Here, too, are several lyrics translated into English for the first time and the play Blood Wedding--also a great tragic poem. Arvio has created a fresh voice for Lorca in English, full of urgency, pathos, and lyricism--showing the poet's work has grown only more beautiful with the passage of time.

Good Stock Strange Blood


Dawn Lundy Martin - 2017
    The listening to the smoke as if fills and weeps inside the chest, choking strength out hands weighted, dangling. We wonder where else it lives before it fills the body up. We assume it comes inside through the hole that promises invasion.Lundy Martin is author of A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering and DISCIPLINE, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award.

LGBTQ Stats: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer People by the Numbers


Bennett Singer - 2017
    Deschamps and Singer—whose previous books and films on LGBTQ topics have won numerous awards and found audiences around the globe—provide chapters on family and marriage, workplace discrimination, education, youth, criminal justice, and immigration, as well as evolving policies and laws affecting LGBTQ communities. A chapter on LGBTQ life around the globe contrasts the dramatic progress for LGBTQ people in the United States with violent backlash in countries such as Russia, Iran, and Nigeria, which have discriminatory laws that make same-sex activity punishable by prison or death.A lively, accessible, and eye-opening snapshot, LGBTQ Stats offers an invaluable resource for activists, journalists, lawmakers, and general readers who want the facts and figures on LGBTQ lives in the twenty-first century.

Live Through This: Surviving the Intersections of Sexuality, God, and Race


Clay Cane - 2017
    With our deep misunderstanding of racial identity, the murder of transgender women increasing at an alarming rate and the battle of faith and sexual orientation at churches across the country, we are in a cultural war of ideologies. Overwhelming prejudices have constricted our basic capacity for compassion and understanding.Live Through This is a collection of intimate essays about one man's journey to self-acceptance when his faith, sexuality, and race battled with societal norms. These insightful writings will plant seeds of consideration and inspire readers to stretch beyond stereotypes. By reading stories about the demographics that live on the fringe of traditions, we gain a deeper awareness of our cultural climate and how we can improve it, starting with ourselves.

Escape to Pirate Island


Niamh Murphy - 2017
    A MAP. A MUTINY. You can’t run away from yourself… The year is 1720 and two young women are about to find themselves in more trouble than they could ever have imagined possible.Cat Meadows is a smuggler who’s built her reputation on the backs of unsuspecting souls.Lily Exquemelin has been left nothing by her father but his troubles and his treasure map.Forced to make a desperate escape, they each find themselves on a Trans-Atlantic adventure that will pit them against pirates, mutineers, lost treasure, and each other!Can they learn to trust one another and escape the clutches of their would-be captors or will their past’s finally catch up to them? Find out in this swashbuckling, romantic adventure! This book is for anyone who loves: Lesbian Pirates Lesbian Romance Young Adult and New Adult Fiction Action Adventure Stories Exciting stories with Strong Female Lead Characters Historical Fiction Rollicking Adventures with Sapphic Romance

Lena: Poems


Cassie Pruyn - 2017
    We've read elegies before, but not like this. A lush and unsparing first book, Lena asks readers to understand love-crucially, a first love, an erotic love-in the context not of a love lost but instead of an identity gained: we must consider not only "was she worth it?," but also "who has she made me?" Pruyn lets us feel what lovers feel-the magnetism, the physicality, the tenderness, the rage, the wondering-with language both musical and visceral. In these poems, the landscape is a character in itself; the past is as tangible as the present. Pruyn takes us to the "Lost Love Lounge," we ride in a "car / red as a dragon," and we observe the beloved "stick herself in the belly with a needle" in the way "she used to attach her cufflinks." This is love and grief raised to the highest power; it is a debut not to be missed.

Field Theories


Samiya Bashir - 2017
    the whitebody s idealized reflection) with live Black bodies. Woven through experimental lyrics is a heroic crown of sonnets that wonders about love, intent, identity, hybridity, and how we embody these interstices. These poems span lyric, narrative, dramatic, and multi-media experience, engaging their containers while pushing against their constraints. Albert Murray said, The second law of thermodynamics ain t nothin but the blues. So what is the blue of how we treat each other, ourselves, and the world, and of how the world treats us?"

The Cowherd's Son


Rajiv Mohabir - 2017
    Mohabir's inheritance of myths, folk tales, and multilingual translations make a palimpsest of histories that bleed into one another. A descendant of indentureship survivors, the poet-narrator creates an allegorical chronicle of dislocations and relocations, linking India, Guyana, Trinidad, New York, Orlando, Toronto, and Honolulu, combining the amplitude of mythology with direct witness and sensual reckoning, all the while seeking joy in testimony.The cowherd's son --Holi lovesport --A body of myths --Touch me not --Vivah at the Durga temple --Relief --Paper lantern --Coolitude --Indenture --Diabetes prayer --Rum and coca-cola --Blind man's whilst --El dorado, 1998 --Bulbul --Sita --Temple in the sea --Ode to Richmond hill --Wound --A prayer at Nauraat --Deepak raga --Butchering a hen --Your mother prays in the Metropolitan Museum of Art --Mantra --Holi --Light the city --Cow minah: Aji tells a story --Mynah --My name is a map --Mysterious alembics --Bound coolie --The river-son's betrayal --Bismillah --Fall --Chamber music --Malhar raga --Change --Henna --ift from a grandmother --Tuberculosis --A letter from nana to nani --Fade --Back-home games in Florida --Standing on a Brampton driveway before the snow --Haunting --Emptying in the sea --Dirge for Kamal --Orbit of exterior wildfires --Unwitting pilgrim.

Spectr: Series 2, Volume 1


Jordan L. Hawk - 2017
    Unfortunately, after the events of Fort Sumter, the other agents of SPECTR view him more as a ticking time bomb than a co-worker. The one bright spot is Caleb and Gray's boyfriend, federal exorcist John Starkweather. But John has problems of his own. Charleston is in the grip of an outbreak of demon possession, and the human members of SPECTR have been pushed to the brink. When a mysterious entity begins to hunt Gray, the trio will find themselves face-to-face with a creature whose existence will change everything they believed to be true.

Swansong (The Magpie Ballads #2)


Vale Aida - 2017
    Dervain Teraille—once his lover and confidant—is in the hands of the Council, and will not scruple to reveal all he knows. If Savonn does not defeat him, he faces his own utter destruction.Meanwhile, Hiraen and Iyone Safin struggle to defend their city from Queen Marguerit of Sarei. But they, too, are caught up in Savonn's spiderweb of intrigue, and it is only a matter of time before their own secrets are dragged into the light.

Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community


John Chaich - 2017
    Designed by Todd Oldham and edited by John Chaich, this 192-page, hardcover, 8 x 10-inch book features full-color spreads of each artist's work, along with intimate details of selections and artist studios, as well as an introductory essay by Chaich, who curated the exhibition of the same name that inspired this book. To further examine how queerness informs their work in fiber and textiles, or vice versa, the artists are interviewed by makers and thinkers from the worlds of dance, design, fashion, media, music, museums, scholarship, and more--many members of the LGBTQ community themselves, and otherwise passionate allies. Smart yet playful, critical yet celebratory, the resulting dialogues are as colorful, challenging, personal, and universal as the works discussed and talents showcased. "Queer Threads" is not just an exploration of fiber art and crafts, but also a celebration of the creativity, diversity, and vibrancy of contemporary queer culture.

Eerie Crests


Bell - 2017
    He was about to graduate highschool. He was Willow Grove’s star baseball player. He had good friends. Overcoming things from the past, You’d think, for once, the universe was kind to Dallas. That is, until one day, before an important highschool match, his best friend Malek starts planning to move away for college. In an attempt to make Malek stay with him, Dallas makes a terrible mistake. Something lurks in the quiet town of Blue Crests.

Queer Game Studies


Bonnie Ruberg - 2017
    Immersion in new worlds, video games seem to offer the perfect opportunity to explore the alterity that queer culture longs for, but often sexism and discrimination in gamer culture steal the spotlight. Queer Game Studies provides a welcome corrective, revealing the capacious albeit underappreciated communities that are making, playing, and studying queer games.These in-depth, diverse, and accessible essays use queerness to challenge the ideas that have dominated gaming discussions. Demonstrating the centrality of LGBTQ issues to the gamer world, they establish an alternative lens for examining this increasingly important culture. Queer Game Studies covers important subjects such as the representation of queer bodies, the casual misogyny prevalent in video games, the need for greater diversity in gamer culture, and reading popular games like Bayonetta, Mass Effect, and Metal Gear Solid from a queer perspective. Perfect for both everyday readers and instructors looking to add diversity to their courses, Queer Game Studies is the ideal introduction to the vast and vibrant realm of queer gaming. Contributors: Leigh Alexander; Gregory L. Bagnall, U of Rhode Island; Hanna Brady; Mattie Brice; Derek Burrill, U of California, Riverside; Edmond Y. Chang, U of Oregon; Naomi M. Clark; Katherine Cross, CUNY; Kim d’Amazing, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; Aubrey Gabel, U of California, Berkeley; Christopher Goetz, U of Iowa; Jack Halberstam, U of Southern California; Todd Harper, U of Baltimore; Larissa Hjorth, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; Chelsea Howe; Jesper Juul, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; merritt kopas; Colleen Macklin, Parsons School of Design; Amanda Phillips, Georgetown U; Gabriela T. Richard, Pennsylvania State U; Toni Rocca; Sarah Schoemann, Georgia Institute of Technology; Kathryn Bond Stockton, U of Utah; Zoya Street, U of Lancaster; Peter Wonica; Robert Yang, Parsons School of Design; Jordan Youngblood, Eastern Connecticut State U.

My Ariel


Sina Queyras - 2017
    Any Greek allusionIs Tragic; the foldsOf your skin deepen and freeze.Your marble feetAre not heavy with meaning,Your handsWill never hold, or soothe.Don't bother cutting out the heart,It was long broke. What betrayalsWere coiled like serpents In your ovaries? I despise a viper,The viper tries but the viperLies.Sina Queyras was born in Manitoba and grew up on the road in western Canada. She has since lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, and Calgary. Most recently, she is the author of the poetry collection MxT, which received the QWF Award for poetry, the Pat Lowther Award, and the ReLit award for poetry. She has taught creative writing at Rutgers, Haverford, and Concordia University in Montreal, where she currently lives.

After Silence: A History of AIDS through Its Images


Avram Finkelstein - 2017
    Cofounder of the collective Silence = Death and member of the art collective Gran Fury, Avram Finkelstein tells the story of how his work and other protest artwork associated with the early years of the pandemic were created. In writing about art and AIDS activism, the formation of collectives, and the political process, Finkelstein reveals a different side of the traditional HIV/AIDS history, told twenty-five years later, and offers a creative toolbox for those who want to learn how to save lives through activism and making art.

Threshold


Joseph O. Legaspi - 2017
    The collection meditates on passageways and what it means to arrive at, and pierce through, thresholds—between countries, past and future, and the threat and security of love.

Novena


Jacques J. Rancourt - 2017
    Novena is a collection that invites prayer not to symbols of dogmatic perfection but to those who are outcast or maligned, LGBTQ people, people in prison, people who resist, people who suffer and whose suffering has not been redeemed. In Novena, the Virgin Mary is recast as a drag queen, religious icons are merged with those who are abolished, and spiritual isolation is scrutinized in a queer pastoral.

Lemon & Salt


Claudie Arseneault - 2017
    Puns included!https://www.patreon.com/posts/lemon-s...

The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans- Medicine


Eric Plemons - 2017
    While facial surgery was once considered auxiliary to genital surgery, many people now find that these procedures confer distinct benefits according to the different models of sex and gender in which they intervene. Surgeons advertise that FFS not only improves a trans- woman's appearance; it allows her to be recognized as a woman by those who see her. In The Look of a Woman Eric Plemons foregrounds the narratives of FFS patients and their surgeons as they move from consultation and the operating room to postsurgery recovery. He shows how the increasing popularity of FFS represents a shift away from genital-based conceptions of trans- selfhood in ways that mirror the evolving views of what is considered to be good trans- medicine. Outlining how conflicting models of trans- therapeutics play out in practice, Plemons demonstrates how FFS is changing the project of surgical sex reassignment by reconfiguring the kind of sex that surgery aims to change.

Wild


Hannah Moskowitz - 2017
    His support system is longtime girlfriend Jordan Jonas, who's sweet, sarcastic, and entirely virtual. They've been talking for years but still have never met in person. Because Jordan, it turns out, was still waiting for the right time to tell him that she's Deaf. The revelation brings them closer together, and Zack throws himself into learning sign language and trying to navigate their way through their different cultures. But with the stress of a tumultuous relationship, a new language, a sick mother, and his uncertain future, there's going to be a breaking point...and it might be out there in the Tennessee wild. From the author of critically-acclaimed books like TEETH, BREAK, and A HISTORY OF GLITTER AND BLOOD comes a story about what happens when love takes you off the beaten track...way, way off.

Prayers for My 17th Chromosome


Amir Rabiyah - 2017
    

No Dictionary of a Living Tongue


Duriel E. Harris - 2017
    The poems here take many forms--prose, lyric, epigram, narrative, dialogue fragment, song, musical score, fairy tale, and dictionary entry. An elegant use of sound couples with a keen and roving intelligence and a fierce commitment to social justice to create a unique and powerful collection of poems.

The Bee Charmer


Ali Spooner - 2017
    Croix needs to decide on which direction her life should take. Does she continue her life alone, as a trapper and trader, or does she start over and try to fit into a town surrounded by strangers? When she arrives in Seattle to trade her furs, a young widow, Marissa, catches Nat’s attention. Can Marissa be the chance of having the best of both worlds? Will the call of the wild and all that is familiar or, will the call of love capture Nat’s heart?

Secret of the Princess


Milk Morinaga - 2017
    Fellow student Miu witnesses the accident, and Fujiwara begs her not to tell. In exchange, she'll do whatever Miu wants. It turns out that what Miu wants is to date Fujimaru! Although this wasn't an arrangement that either girl expected, the two soon discover that breaking the vase may have been destiny's way of bringing them together.

Farfall


J.C. Owens - 2017
    Rebellion. Two men drawn together by a bond that may change the land forever... Captain Andon Grazon, the poor son of a prostitute, shares a rare bond with Ceris, the only wild-born griffon in the land to bond with a human. He and Ceris are part of the flight corp at Farfall, where he is treated like an outsider and abused by the noble-born riders at the base. When his only friend is killed on patrol, the loss has Andon spiraling down into darkness. The misery of his life leaves him cold and withdrawn, unable to interact with others, and isolated from everyone except Ceris. But after Captain Daren Phalnir and his wing of riders arrive to replace Farfall's lost griffon wing, the powerful and charismatic man brings complications Andon does not need. He doesn't trust the man, no matter how respectful he might seem. Andon has many secrets, and the closer Daren comes to them, the greater the danger to Andon...and to his heart. After Captain Daren Phalnir arrives at Farfall with Gretnel, his grif, he remains wary. The border base's reputation is anything but pleasant—a place where griffons are considered mere property of the throne, little more than animals. Then he meets a legend: Ceris, the only wilds born griffon to imprint on a man, and her rider, Andon Grazon. Andon is a compelling mystery, keeping Daren at arm's length, remaining hostile, aggressive, and very, very alone. At least until Ceris and Gretnel mate...and discover they may share a true bond, the rarest in existence. Andon's isolation stirs Daren's curiosity and his compassion. He begins to uncover a dark secret, with Andon and Ceris at the center—a secret that may just reach all the way to the throne... Reader note: contains intense emotional elements. Reader Discretion Advised.

NPC Tea Issue Two


Sarah Millman - 2017
    Soon they find out that a lack of customers and caddies upon caddies of rotting tea are the least of their worries, when a type of banned magic rears it’s ugly head and threatens to destroy the entire city. Bryn, Oz and Hannah must unite if they are to save their business – and ultimately the city itself.An 8 issue series, NPC Tea escalates from slice of life comedy into an epic fantasy, twisting typical RPG and fantasy stereotypes into a modern day setting. It’s about what happens when there are no more dungeons to crawl, when magic needs to be organized, and when orcs, elves and men try to live peacefully side by side – a balance that’s harshly tested when an entire city is threatened with destruction…

Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time


K.M. Szpara - 2017
    A trans man discovers that becoming a vampire has more consequences than he had expected.First published in Uncanny Magazine.

Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge


Melissa Adler - 2017
    Taking the publication of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemologies of the Closet as emblematic of the Library's inability to account for sexual difference, Melissa Adler embarks upon a detailed critique of how cataloging systems have delimited and proscribed expressions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in a manner that mirrors psychiatric and sociological attempts to pathologize non-normative sexual practices and civil subjects.Taking up a parallel analysis, Adler utilizes Roderick A. Ferguson's Aberrations in Black as another example of how the Library of Congress fails to account for, and thereby "buries," difference. She examines the physical space of the Library as one that encourages forms of governmentality as theorized by Michel Foucault while also allowing for its utopian possibilities. Finally, she offers a brief but highly illuminating history of the Delta Collection. Likely established before the turn of the twentieth century and active until its gradual dissolution in the 1960s, the Delta Collection was a secret archive within the Library of Congress that housed materials confiscated by the United States Post Office and other federal agencies. These were materials deemed too obscene for public dissemination or general access. Adler reveals how the Delta Collection was used to regulate difference and squelch dissent in the McCarthy era while also linking it to evolving understandings of so-called perversion in the scientific study of sexual difference.Sophisticated, engrossing, and highly readable, Cruising the Library provides us with a critical understanding of library science, an alternative view of discourses around the history of sexuality, and an analysis of the relationship between governmentality and the cataloging of research and information--as well as categories of difference--in American culture.

Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic


Tobi Hill-MeyerDaemyn Edward Hamilton - 2017
    A genderqueer sissy fantasizes alone about connection in their hotel room. A trans woman adjunct professor and sex worker is hired for a sex party held by her college’s philosophy department. A trans boy has a Craigslist hookup with a queen embarked on detransition. A bodiless AI announces its gender, takes a lover, and works to revolutionize the world. Presented here are thirty stories—edited and with an introduction by Tobi Hill-Meyer—that offer revolutionary erotic fantasies by trans people, about trans people, and for trans people at the crossroads of history, biology, anxiety, and love.

Desire: A Memoir


Jonathan Dollimore - 2017
    He writes honestly and movingly about his teenage attraction to risk and danger; of accidents and escapes; of curiosity as a flight from boredom; of suicidal depression and ecstasy; and, beneath all, of the life of desire haunted and torn by loss.For more than thirty years Jonathan Dollimore has been one of contemporary culture's most influential critics of politics, literature, and sexuality. Desire: A Memoir, a hybrid of autobiography, meditation and philosophical reflection, explores the existential sources of his writing.

NPC Tea Issue Three


Sarah Millman - 2017
    Soon they find out that a lack of customers and caddies upon caddies of rotting tea are the least of their worries, when a type of banned magic rears it’s ugly head and threatens to destroy the entire city. Bryn, Oz and Hannah must unite if they are to save their business – and ultimately the city itself.An 8 issue series, NPC Tea escalates from slice of life comedy into an epic fantasy, twisting typical RPG and fantasy stereotypes into a modern day setting. It’s about what happens when there are no more dungeons to crawl, when magic needs to be organized, and when orcs, elves and men try to live peacefully side by side – a balance that’s harshly tested when an entire city is threatened with destruction…

Sweet Velocity


Rachel Moritz - 2017
    LGBTQIA Studies. Winner of the 2015 Besmilr Brigham Women Writers Award. Rachel Moritz's powerfully sweet SWEET VELOCITY delivers a lived-in world�material, object- oriented and also lyrically distinctive. The song here treats a serene, sometimes bemused, engagement with life passages�the essentials of coming into and going out of the world, of bringing about and of letting go. But Moritz's song, like the Dickinsonian one, also abrades the conventions it observes. Poetry is the result. An eccentric system. [S]tops of flow before the animal.Rachel Moritz's poems are a presence, and in being so they reflect all that is absent from them. Absorbed by their language and their mystery, I think of Wallace Stevens who writes about the 'Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.' As Moritz writes, this is the magic of poetry: 'Something transparent, / we know, / still contains.' In SWEET VELOCITY, the nothing that is appear as footnotes that act the way light does when casting a shadow: people, reflections, and observations appear, cohering at thresholds but not fully coming into view. There are silhouettes of a mother, a child. And there is everything else that comes into these poems as the space that surrounds them. Moritz's poems are exquisitely crafted reminders that our inner self is a 'figment of making.' There is such sweet velocity in following how her figments subtly transform through the lines of her language, which seem to mark and erase at the same time. Exquisite!�Kirstin Prevallet

Shadows


Jackie McLean - 2017
    Then the enquiry take on a more sinister form. There are similarities with a previous murder, and now a woman connected to them both has gone missing too. For Donna, this is becoming personal, and with the added pressure of feeling watched at every turn, she is convinced that Jonas Evanton has returned to seek his revenge on her for his downfall. Fearing they may be looking for a serial killer, Donna and her new team are taken in a horrifying and unexpected direction. Because it’s not a serial killer – it’s worse. Moving from Dundee to the south coast of Turkey and the Syrian border, this is a fast paced novel about those who live their lives in the shadows, and those who exploit them.

Dear All,


Maggie Anderson - 2017
    Maggie Anderson negotiates the perceptions and self-deceptions we live with and, through both humor and surprise, finds a way to bear them.

Proprietary: Poems


Randall Mann - 2017
    His new collection, Proprietary, depicts with the insights of a longtime insider the culture of corporate America, in which he’s worked for years, intertwined with some of his tried-and-true subjects, including gay life in the wildly disparate worlds of San Francisco and northern Florida.

You and I Shall Be as Radiant


Benjanun Sriduangkaew - 2017
    She is one of the last survivors of a world bereaved by empire, and to bring her sister back she will overcome anything: ancient ghosts, a genocidal army—or her own sister’s wishes.

Unfathoming


Andrea Cohen - 2017
    The voice in Unfathoming strives to upend the title: to both acknowledge mystery, and with wile and grace, comprehend it."

Colin Is Changing His Name


John Andrews - 2017
    These poems are an elegy to what is given up and an ode to what is discovered. In crisp lines and haunting images, Andrews' voice rings true. - Sandy Longhorn

Through Your Blood


Toby Campion - 2017
    Refreshingly frank, perceptive and funny, these poems are psalms of identity, broken tradition and desperation sung from the back lanes of a Midlands city.Born and raised in the Midlands, Toby Campion is a UK National Poetry Slam Champion and a World Poetry Slam finalist. Recipient of the Silver Wyvern Award and First Place in the Poetry on the Lake Prizes 2017, awarded by Carol Ann Duffy, Toby has performed his poetry on stages across the UK, from Glastonbury Festival to London’s Royal Albert Hall, and in countries around the world, including America, Italy, Spain, Albania and South Korea. His debut play, WRECK, won the Fifth Word Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright 2015.Toby’s poetry has been selected to represent the UK at numerous international conferences and events including Capturing Fire: International Queer Poetry Summit, the 18th Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, the Paris Poetry World Cup and Next Generation Speaks. Director of UniSlam and Resident Artist at Camden’s prestigious Roundhouse, Toby was one of the first resident poets of the River Thames.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers


Cat FitzpatrickAyse Devrim - 2017
    No experience is required. Choose from twenty-five preset post-realities! Rejoice at obstacles unquestionably bested and conflicts efficiently resolved. Bring denouement to your drama with THE FOOLPROOF AUGMENTATION DEVICE FOR OUR CONTEMPORARY UTOPIA.

Some Say: Poems


Maureen N. McLane - 2017
    McLane’s Some Say revolves around a dazzling “old sun.” Here are poems on sex and death; here are poems testing the “bankrupt idea / of nature.” Some Say offers an erotics of attention; a mind roaming, registering, and intermittently blocked; a mortal poet going “nowhere fast but where / we’re all going.” From smartphones to dead gods to the beloved’s body, Some Say charts “the weather of an old day / suckerpunched” into the now.Following on her bravura Mz N: the serial: A Poem-in-Episodes, McLane bends lyric to the torque of our moment—and of any moment under the given sun. Some Say encompasses full-barreled odes and austere lines, whiplashing discourse and minimal notations. In her fifth book of poems, McLane continues her “songs of a season” even as she responds to new vibrations—political, geological, transpersonal, trans-specific. Moving through forests and cities, up mountains, across oceans, toward a common interior, she sounds out the ecological mesh of the animate and inanimate. These are poems that make tracks in our “unmarked dark” as the poet explores “a cosmos full / of people and black holes.” From its troubled, exhilarated dawns to its scanned night sky, Some Say is both a furthering and a summation by a poet scouring and singing the world “full // as it always was / of wings / of meaning and nothing.”

ABO Comix: A Queer Prisoners Anthology (issue #1)


ABO ComixSirbrian Spease - 2017
    All of the profits go back to the contributors/prison abolition organizations.

Recombinant


Ching-In Chen - 2017
    Drafting and growing multiple discourses, this text urges the reader to investigate female and genderqueer lineages in the context of labor smuggling and trafficking. Its syntactical utterances create a music that is masterful in these poems’ fractured words and experimental representation of page and praxis. Voices from various communities interact with each other to create what Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan calls an assertion of diasporan realities where multi-directional, heterogeneous modes of representation challenge conventional representation via photographs; newspaper articles; maps; city directories; records of immigration, birth and death; as well as scholarly research and archaeological records. recombinant is a work of insistence, a refusal of erasure, a proof of shared memory through the rewriting and remixing of historical remnant.