Lez Liberty Lit: In the Dictionary Like a Dumpster Fire

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Hi there and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!

The latest Lambda Literary finalists have been announced!

Harlem Renaissance literature is undergoing a resurgence.

In Quebec, the Jardin de LA Connaissance is a garden made of stacks of old books, rotting into the earth.

“How much of Du Maurier’s sexuality is visible in Rebecca? The narrator repeatedly casts herself as an androgyne. She offers herself to Maxim as ‘your friend and your companion, a sort of boy.’ The full heat of her desire is for Rebecca. She speculates about what her body might have looked like: her height and slenderness, the way she wore her coat slung lazily over her shoulders, the colour of her lipstick, her elusive scent, like the crushed petals of azaleas,” writes Olivia Laing on 80 years of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Clothes in comic books are getting better thanks to artists who are women, queers, and people of color.

“Dumpster fire” is in the dictionary. And so are emojis.

Complaining about language is fun, okay?

Lylas is a queer zine obsessed with sisterhood beyond gender.

Writing doesn’t have to make you happy.

Carleton, a Canadian university, is looking for a chair for the study of the conjuring arts.

Here are some suggestions on where to start reading lesbian and bisexual YA.

Here are seven literary-themed tarot decks.

How did 18th century’s literary women relieve domestic distress? With opiates.

Mary Wollstonecraft deserves a statue.

Read these nine Afrofuturist books. Read these six feminist zines. Read these feminist books in March. Read these small press books. Read these books to your cat. Read books about books. Read this queer crime fiction. Read these 10 books by living women.

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Ryan Yates

Ryan Yates was the NSFW Editor (2013–2018) and Literary Editor for Autostraddle.com, with bylines in Nylon, Refinery29, The Toast, Bitch, The Daily Beast, Jezebel, and elsewhere. They live in Los Angeles and also on twitter and instagram.

Ryan has written 1142 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. I love this column so much! This was the perfect thing to wake up to.

    There’s all kinds of titles on the Lambda list which are now on mine ~~~ although I would love to see either more categories or broader ones now – for instance including non-binary and ace literature.

    I would like to posit that clothes in comics are costumes…meaning that they are clothes chosen to support or enhance the meaning of the story. But I also feel this about all clothes sooooo…and frequently wonder what meaning we are either consciously or unconsciously choosing to convey through our clothes/costumes (former costumier:p….)

  2. Also Maggie Stiefvater drew a tarot set based on her own Raven Cycle trilogy???? And they’re beautiful!?!

    Swooooon…

    • Wait, scratch the word trilogy. Apparently although I can read, I can’t count past 3, especially when I’m excited.

  3. Yay, the Lambda lit awards! I’m actually going to be in New York at the time of the ceremony … I would love to go! ?

  4. I just read this letter this morning from a two-spirit writer who is withdrawing from the Lambda Literary Award nominations. It’s well worth a read.

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