Loving in the War Years


Cherríe L. Moraga - 1983
    This new edition—including a new introduction and three new essays—remains a testament of Moraga's coming-of-age as a Chicana and a lesbian at a time when the political merging of those two identities was severely censured.Drawing on the Mexican legacy of Malinche, the symbolic mother of the first mestizo peoples, Moraga examines the collective sexual and cultural wounding suffered by women since the Conquest. Moraga examines her own mestiza parentage and the seemingly inescapable choice of assimilation into a passionless whiteness or uncritical acquiescence to the patriarchal Chicano culture she was raised to reproduce. By finding Chicana feminism and honoring her own sexuality and loyalty to other women of color, Moraga finds a way to claim both her family and her freedom.Moraga's new essays, written with a voice nearly a generation older, continue the project of "loving in the war years," but Moraga's posture is now closer to that of a zen warrior than a street-fighter. In these essays, loving is an extended prayer, where the poet-politica reflects on the relationship between our small individual deaths and the dyings of nations of people (pueblos). Loving is an angry response to the "cultural tyranny" of the mainstream art world and a celebration of the strategic use of "cultural memory" in the creation of an art of resistance.Cherríe Moraga is the co-editor of the classic feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back and the author of The Last Generation. She is Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University.

Odd Girl Out


Ann Bannon - 1957
    With Odd Girl Out, Bannon introduces Laura Landon, whose love affair with her college roommate Beth launched the lesbian pulp fiction genre.

Two Serious Ladies


Jane Bowles - 1943
    Copperfield at a party. Two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves, they go in search of salvation: Mrs. Copperfield visits Panama with her husband, where she finds solace among the women who live and work in its brothels; while Miss Goering becomes involved with various men. At the end the two women meet again, each changed by her experience. Mysterious, profound, anarchic and very funny, 'Two Serious Ladies' is a daring, original work that defies analysis.

Meaty


Samantha Irby - 2013
    Every essay is crafted with the same scathing wit and poignant candor thousands of loyal readers have come to expect from visiting her notoriously hilarious blog.

Life on Mars


Tracy K. Smith - 2011
    What Would your life say if it could talk?                                                            —from “No Fly Zone”With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like “love” and “illness” now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Dark Between Stars


Atticus Poetry - 2018
    In his second collection of poetry, The Dark Between Stars, he turns his attention to the dualities of our lived experiences—the inescapable connections between our highest highs and lowest lows. He captures the infectious energy of starting a relationship, the tumultuous realities of commitment, and the agonizing nostalgia of being alone again. While grappling with the question of how to live with purpose and find meaning in the journey, these poems offer both honest explorations of loneliness and our search for connection, as well as light-hearted, humorous observations. As Atticus writes poignantly about dancing, Paris, jazz clubs, sunsets, sharing a bottle of wine on the river, rainy days, creating, and destroying, he illustrates that we need moments of both beauty and pain—the darkness and the stars—to fully appreciate all that life and love have to offer.

Virgin


Analicia Sotelo - 2018
    These poems devour and complicate tropes of femininity--of naivete, of careless abandon--before sharply exploring the intelligence and fortitude of women, how "far & wide, / how dark & deep / this frigid female mind can go." At every step, Sotelo's poems seduce with history, folklore, and sensory detail--grilled meat, golden habaneros, and burnt sugar--before delivering clear-eyed and eviscerating insights into power, deceit, relationships, and ourselves.Blistering and gorgeous, Virgin is an audacious act of imaginative self-mythology from one of our most promising young poets.

Some Trees


John Ashbery - 1956
    S. Eliot, Stephanie Burt writes that Ashbery is “the last figure whom half of the English-language poets alive thought a great model, and the other half thought incomprehensible.” After the publication of Some Trees, selecting judge W. H. Auden famously confessed that he didn’t understand a word of it. Most reviews were negative. But in this first book of poems from one of the century’s most important poets, one finds the seeds of Ashbery’s oeuvre, including the influence of French surrealists—many of whom he translated—and abstract expressionism.

Happiness, Like Water


Chinelo Okparanta - 2012
    Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.

Please Love Me at My Worst


Michaela Angemeer - 2021
    Written during the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine, the book is a reflection of what it means to yearn for people who are unavailable and how important it is to focus on self-love and healing.

The Goodmans


Clare Ashton - 2018
    But Abby has a secret. Best friend Jude Goodman is the love of her life, and very, very straight. Even if Jude had ever given a woman a second glance, there’d also be the small problem of Maggie – she would definitely not approve. But secrets have a habit of sneaking out, and Abby’s not the only one with something to hide. Life is just about to get very interesting for the Goodmans.Things are not what they used to be, but could they be even better?97,600 words

Edge of Glory


Rachel Spangler - 2017
    Elise Brandeis doesn't need a training partner, especially an unorthodox has-been snowboarder with an attitude. But Elise has already lost a full season to injury, and she's struggling to make the Olympic ski team. Can teaming up with Corey give her the edge she needs to go for gold, or will the snowboarder's infuriatingly cocky smile and rock hard abs prove a distraction she simply can't afford?Both champions brace themselves for the run of a lifetime. Putting their broken bodies on the line, they fight the competition, the clock, and the frozen terrain for one more chance at glory. But this time, as they ride the razor's edge between victory and defeat, the stakes are steeper than any mountain they will ever face when legacies and hearts collide.Rachel Spangler is the Golden Crown Literary Society and Rainbow Award-winning author of ten lesbian romance novels and novellas. She lives with her wife and son in Western New York.

The Complete Collected Poems


Maya Angelou - 1994
    For the first time, the complete collection of Maya Angelou's published poems-including "On the Pulse of Morning"-in a permanent collectible, handsome hardcover edition.

Transformations


Anne Sexton - 1971
    The fairy tale-based works of the tortured confessional poet, whose raw honesty and wit in the face of psychological pain have touched thousands of readers.

Sunsets and Shades


Erica Lee - 2019
    While her alter ego, Laurel Lake, loves happy endings and epic love stories, Kinsley has a more cynical view of the world.Grace Harper is a hopeless romantic hanging on every word of the lesbian romance novels she reads. She believes her happy ending is right around the corner if she can just move on from the ex who cheated on her. When Grace's childhood best friend, Leah, suggests that she comes to Philly to get space from her ex, it seems like the perfect opportunity to start over, especially since Leah's roommate is none other than Laurel Lake - Grace's favorite romance author. Grace quickly learns that people aren't always how they appear online and is disappointed to find that Kinsley Scott is nothing like Laurel Lake. She's rude and vulgar and, unfortunately, irresistibly sexy. There is also much more to her than meets the eye, and as the two grow closer, her tough exterior is quickly stripped away, revealing much more than Grace ever bargained for.67,000 words