An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

    Jackson is already the star of the Emerson College student newspaper when she nabs a coveted night internship at Boston’s premiere newspaper, The Boston Lede. The job’s simple: do whatever the senior reporters tell you to do, from fetching coffee to getting a quote from a grieving parent. It’s grueling work, so when the murder of a prominent Boston businessman comes up on the police scanner, Madison races to the scene of the grisly crime. There, Madison meets the woman who will change her life forever: prominent socialite Dahlia Kennedy, who is covered in gore and being arrested for the murder of her family. The newspapers put everyone they can in front of her with no results until, with nothing to lose, Madison gets a chance – and unexpectedly barrels headfirst into danger she never anticipated.

    LGBTQIA Studies. Through intertwined threads of autofiction, lyric science writing, and the tale of a newly queer Hawaiian volcano, Sabrina Imbler delivers a coming out story on a geological time scale. This is a small book that tackles large, wholly human questions--what it means to live and date under white supremacy, to never know if one is loved or fetishized, how to navigate fierce desires and tectonic heartbreak through the rise and eventual eruption of a first queer love."When two galaxies stray too near each other, the attraction between them can be so strong that the galaxies latch on and never let go. Sometimes the pull triggers head-on wrecks between stars--galactic collisions--throwing bodies out of orbit, seamlessly into space. Sometimes the attraction only creates a giant black hole, making something whole into a kind of missing." In vivid, tensile prose, DYKE (GEOLOGY) subverts the flat, neutral language of scientific journals to explore what it means to understand the Earth as something queer, volatile, and disruptive."Sabrina Imber's DYKE (GEOLOGY) is not only gorgeous, it is wildly transformative. It contains sentences that mimic the Earth itself: craggy, pitted, alive. There is so much movement, a momentum that sweeps readers along sentence by sentence. The structures Imbler builds are deeply affecting, deeply moving. The heart of it sits exposed, bare and beating, pulsing and insistent. This writing is very queer, very loving, very painful, very poignant. It is revolutionary work."--Kristen Arnett"You'll feel every moment of this book, words twisting, colliding, rooting in the body. With a gentle ferocity that builds from the inside out, I was swept by Imbler's story of navigation, displacement, and the violent marvels of the natural world."--T. Kira Madden"A dazzling work, striking and rich, Imbler's geology reminds us what it means to be alive."--Randa Jarrar"DYKE (GEOLOGY) holds strata of meaning and feeling veined with anger, horniness, and shame, studded with outcrops of facts and nuggets of nerd jokes. All of this together is what makes the sum of Sabrina Imbler's ranging, folding, stacking sentences an effortful pleasure to traverse, even when they dig down into pain. Like a lasting mythology, DYKE (GEOLOGY) offers ways to feel through indirection what it's hard to know head-on. Like good science, it recognizes the mediated ways that power shapes both knowledge and desire, what we're able to find and what we want to be true. Like any landscape, it repays attention and doesn't stop at the surface, but lives in the relationships among history and chemistry, the open air and the hot heart of the Earth."--Kate Schapira"Imbler queers the history of the world here--a thrilling summer romance set to geological time, unlike any I know, spanning the globe and the history of humanity and the space between two dyke hearts. Play in the waves of this mind and emerge renewed."--Alexander Chee

    government spies can turn on your phone and use the microphone to listen to your conversations? ... that lesbian and gay relationships are illegal in 78 countries and can be punished by death? ... that Amnesty recently recorded the highest number of executions globally for more than 25 years? Through short stories and poetry, twenty-five leading authors and illustrators explore the top human rights issues facing young people today. Now is the time to take a stand and make a difference. Full list of contributors: Tony Birch, John Boyne, Sita Brahmachari, Kevin Brooks, Kate Charlesworth, Sarah Crossan, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos, Ryan Gattis, Matt Haig, Frances Hardinge, Jackie Kay, AL Kennedy, Liz Kessler, Elizabeth Laird, Amy Leon, Sabrina Mahfouz, Chelsea Manning, Chibundu Onuzo, Bali Rai, Chris Riddell, Mary and Bryan Talbot, Christie Watson and Tim Wynne-Jones.

    Unlike celibacy, which people choose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are.” (www.asexuality.org)This is an anthology of 17 true stories by real people about asexuality -- the invisible orientation that everyone's heard of, but few actually talk about or understand. Whether you’re a newly-discovered asexual, someone who’s known they’re asexual for years, the friend or family of someone asexual, or someone who’s just intrigued by asexuality in general, you’re sure to find something in this anthology that interests you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy a selection of personal experiences, insights, and anecdotes from asexual writers around the world! The contents of this book include:Foreword by Victoria Beth (AVEN Project Team)"My Self-discovery, Thus Far"—Rebecca Nesor shares her experience as a 21st century asexual teenager, which involves an amusing anecdote about phone shopping and Minecraft. "A Geeky Love Story"—Suma walks us through the romantic tale of how sie joined a comics group looking for friendship and good times, and ended up falling in love."Growing Up"—Phil Dalton offers a series of vignettes stretching over 30 years, from his childhood to the present day, about his attempts to fit into a sexual society."Coming Out"—Melissa Keller explains why she has chosen not to come out to her friends and family, and explores the struggles that many asexual people face when coming out."Being 'Normal' Is Overrated Anyway"—Ren describes how she discovered she wasn’t as “normal” as she’d thought, and how she’s come to embrace her asexuality."Finding Grace"—Betty Badinbed reflects on the 20+ years of relationships—brief and lengthy, platonic and romantic, failed and successful—which have helped her hone her gray-ace identity."Black Women Can Be Asexual Too"—Gabriella Grange explores her experiences as a black asexual young woman, including a sweet story about a handsome cellist and their shared passion for philosophy."Fixing What Isn’t Broken"—Emma Hopwood shares a humorous piece of prose poetry about how tough it is to be asexual in a sexual world."I Just Don’t Get It"—Jennifer Dyse offers insight into how hard it is to navigate school and relationships as an asexual, and the dangers that can come from trying too hard to be “normal.”"An Asexual Teen"—Kaya Brown ruminates on her experiences as an asexual teen, on coming out to her mother, and on dealing with distrust from adults who don’t understand asexuality."Dream Guy"—Cionii shares a poem about inner beauty."It’s All Asexual To Me"—Jarrah Shub describes how learning about her asexuality early in her teenage years has helped her be more self-assured and happy with who she is."When I Grow Up"—Shannon Brown debunks the myth that “everyone wants to have sex,” and describes the various ways she’s come out to her high school friends."Just A Small Town Boy"—Cameron explains how growing up in a small town shaped his knowledge of sexuality, and how discovering asexuality has helped him better understand himself.

    Feminist, political, and activist writers alike will present their ideas for a paradigm shift from the “No Means No” model—an approach that while necessary for where we were in 1974, needs an overhaul today.Yes Means Yes will bring to the table a dazzling variety of perspectives and experiences focused on the theory that educating all people to value female sexuality and pleasure leads to viewing women differently, and ending rape. Yes Means Yes aims to have radical and far-reaching effects: from teaching men to treat women as collaborators and not conquests, encouraging men and women that women can enjoy sex instead of being shamed for it, and ultimately, that our children can inherit a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished. With commentary on public sex education, pornography, mass media, Yes Means Yes is a powerful and revolutionary anthology.

    . . . Using the language of the elemental world, he delineates a complex human intersection and transmutes cruelty into its opposite—a potent, lifegiving remedy.”—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun HomeFirst published in 1999, Exile & Pride established Eli Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. With this critical tenth-anniversary edition, the groundbreaking publication secures its position as essential to the history of queer and disability politics, and, through significant new material that boldly interrogates and advances the original text, to its future as well. Clare’s writing on his experiences as a genderqueer activist/writer with cerebral palsy permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation, and yet Exile & Pride is much too great in scope to be defined by even these two issues. Instead it offers an intersectional framework for understanding how our bodies actually experience the politics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the heart of Clare’s exploration of environmental destruction, white working-class identity, queer community, disabled sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, coalition politics, and his own gender transition is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible for everyone.Blending prose and theory, personal experience and political debate, anger and compassion, Exile & Pride provides a window into a world where our whole selves in all their complexity can be loved and accepted.An award-winning poet and essayist, Eli Clare is also the author of The Marrow’s Telling.

    In What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people's experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.By sharing her experiences as well as those of others--from smaller fat to very fat people--she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and 13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe their fat patients as awkward, unattractive, ugly and noncompliant; and in 48 states, it's legal--even routine--to deny employment because of an applicant's size.Advancing fat justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will require work from all people. What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.

    Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:PicturesWordsStories about things that happened to meStories about things that happened to other people because of meEight billion dollars*Stories about dogsThe secret to eternal happiness**These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

    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.

    Written between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, with examinations of anxiety, death, first loves, and first lusts, Graffiti extends a hand to those undergoing the trials and uncertainty of teenagehood, and assures them they're not alone.

    He takes us through his transition into identifying as male, and how he went on to marry his wife and become an adoring stepfather of two children. Alternately bemused and exasperated when he feels compelled to explain all this, Cooper never loses his sense of humor. �"Ten Things People Assume I Understand About Women But Actually Don’t,” reads one chapter title, while another proffers: �"Sometimes I Think the Whole of Modern History Can Be Explained by Testosterone.”A brilliant collage of letters, essays, interviews (with his brother, with his wife, with the parents of other transgender children), artwork, and sharp evocations of difficult conversations with old friends and puzzled bureaucrats, Real Man Adventures will forever change what you think about what it means to be a man.

    Twenty-Three Leading Feminist Writers on Protest and SolidarityWhen 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump's America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.Featuring essays by REBECCA SOLNIT on Trump and his "misogyny army," CHERYL STRAYED on grappling with the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's loss, SARAH HEPOLA on resisting the urge to drink after the election, NICOLE CHUNG on family and friends who support Trump, KATHA POLLITT on the state of reproductive rights and what we do next, JILL FILIPOVIC on Trump's policies and the life of a young woman in West Africa, SAMANTHA IRBY on racism and living as a queer black woman in rural America, RANDA JARRAR on traveling across the country as a queer Muslim American, SARAH HOLLENBECK on Trump's cruelty toward the disabled, MEREDITH TALUSAN on feminism and the transgender community, and SARAH JAFFE on the labor movement and active and effective resistance, among others.

    Her nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience. McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other. "One of the most provocative and insightful writers of our generation." -Aura Bogado, Colorlines "A fierce voice among a generation of queer and trans folk of color." -Janet Mock, New York Times Bestselling Author of "Redefining Realness" "Tough-love activism at its best-straightforward, challenging, whip-smart, and uncompromising." -Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine

    Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughts—always adroit, often acerbic—on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation.Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula’s blog, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her wonder at it.   On the absurdity of denying your age, she says, If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub. On cultural perceptions of fantasy: The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of? On her new cat: He still won’t sit on a lap…I don’t know if he ever will. He just doesn’t accept the lap hypothesis. On breakfast: Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime. And on all that is unknown, all that we discover as we muddle through life: How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.