Melissa Febos on “Body Work,” Medieval Women, and First Drafts
“The process of writing for me is the great work of life. It is the nexus where everything that matters to me intersects.”
Gretchen Felker-Martin on “Manhunt,” Martyrdom, and the Unimportance of Being Valid
“Manhunt is really my attempt to show the utility and the importance of existing in discomfort.”
A Mile in Her Jackboots: Writing TERFs as a Trans Author
The challenge of writing about human monsters is that you have to confront the ways in which they’re exactly like you are.
Grace Lavery on Her New Memoir “Please Miss,” Sex Writing, and the Trans Glamour of Nicole Kidman
“When one is trying to write about sex, if you’re doing it right, something happens in the prose that is unpredictable and kind of wild.”
Morgan Thomas On Weaving Genderqueer History Into Their Debut Short Fiction Collection “Manywhere”
“I was really interested in writing about specifically Southern and genderqueer characters, in part because I felt like I hadn’t seen myself in both the literature and in the sort of ‘mythos’ of the South. So I wanted to fill in that gap.”
Malinda Lo on Her Historic National Book Award Win and Lesbian Literature’s History and Future
Malinda Lo talks about writing queerness in different genres, butch/femme dynamics in literature, and the gay Macy’s of the 1960s that didn’t make it into her book.
Charlie Jane Anders on Trans Speculative Fiction and Rethinking ‘Hope’
In this Autostraddle interview, Charlie Jane Anders discusses her new collection of short stories, “Even Greater Mistakes.”
Holigay Gift Guide: What To Buy for Book Lovers (Other Than Books)
If it’s too much pressure to pick out a book for your literary pal, consider a creative display shelf, a customizable book planter, pressed flower bookmarks, and other presents that are bookish but not books!
Malinda Lo Won a National Book Award for “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” — And I Yelled
Malinda Lo’s National Book Award win for Last Night at the Telegraph Club comes at a particularly crucial moment for LGBTQ+ YA as a genre.
Things I Read That I Love #323: Pulp Fiction With a Hint of Social Justice
Topics include witchcraft consumerism, Kidz Bop, delivery workers in NYC, Ozy Media, abuse in the guardianship industry, Succession, documentaries and the hunt for a sober buzz!
The Book That Helped Me Leave Religion: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”
The first sentence of “The Books of Bokonon” – the fictional foundational text of Bokononism, the religion Kurt Vonnegut invented for his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle – reads as follows: “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”
The Book That Made Me A Slut: Andrea Lawlor’s “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl”
Trans people love to joke about having been every letter of the acronym but Paul is all of them at once. He is the ultimate non-binary fantasy — or at least my ultimate non-binary fantasy.
The Book That Made Me Get Sober: Leslie Jamison’s “The Recovering”
Reading The Recovering was like reading a diary full of thoughts I would never have been brave enough to write down. I felt something I’d only ever felt once before, when I kissed a girl for the first time and a million tiny moments from my life suddenly snapped into place. I felt a corner of my brain relax, like it’d been trying to work out a code and had just been given the key. Oh, this is what I am. That explains it.
How and Why I Wrote Bang!: A Masturbation Sex-Ed Book for Everyone
I made Bang! Masturbation for People of All Genders and Abilities because it profoundly made sense to me, because there was a gaping hole in that plastic wall where there should have been some acknowledgement of pleasure, consent, or the emotions of sex. Bang! was designed to fill this gap with emotionally-aware, positive sex-ed. While we had been taught about the vas deferens and fallopian tubes, we had never been taught how to even talk about sex with a partner. I made Bang! because I thought it needed to exist.
Leah Johnson Is the Toni Morrison of Queer YA, It’s Time We Get Real About That Fact
“I just want people to know that at the core of every book I write, I want to center black girls in their wholeness and show that you can be flawed. You can be scared. You can be beautiful.”
EXCLUSIVE Excerpt: Meet Toni, One of the Main Characters in Leah Johnson’s Latest Novel “Rise to the Sun”
Leah Johnson’s new novel “Rise to the Sun” follows two Black queer girls falling in love at a music festival — here’s an exclusive excerpt!
Kristen Arnett on “With Teeth,” Lesbian Motherhood, and Sagittarius Chaos
“I want to read stories about dykes not acting right. I want to read about people being messy. So I want to write about that too.”
“We Are Watching Eliza Bright'”s Sixsterhood Is a Collective Narrator of Queer Possibility: An Interview with A.E. Osworth
When queer voices — especially those of trans people, and Black and brown people — are so frequently ignored or actively silenced, centering a narrator made up of them turned out to be an active effort.
Talking with Alison Bechdel about Feminist Martial Arts, Lockdown, and Her New Book “The Secret to Superhuman Strength”
“My bookish exterior perhaps belies it,” write Alison Bechdel in The Secret to Superhuman Strength, “but I’m a bit of an exercise freak.” That is, it turns out, an understatement. Alison Bechdel shares her process of writing this latest book over the last ten years, collaborating with her partner, and the “huge blossoming of lesbian culture.”
Which Lesbian Pulp Book Cover Are You?
Find out what mid-20th century gay stereotype you’d be!