“Dead in Long Beach, California” and the Inevitability of Grief
Venita Blackburn’s debut novel is a masterful feat of storytelling.
“Brainwyrms” Is the Perfect Twisted Novel for Clive Barker Queers
There’s an undeniable playfulness in the way Alison Rumfitt presents sex, kink, and violence, but there’s also a seething rage underneath it all.
Embracing the Dark Pleasures of Dystopian Literature: 10 Novels That Inspired Me To Write My Own
“I worked on this book between 2019 and 2023, years not exactly known for… incredible progress. In many ways, letting myself slip into another, imaginary world — albeit a worse one — was how I made sense of it all.”
Consider This: Listening to an Audiobook While Doing a Jigsaw Puzzle
I have unlocked a new level of intellectual heaven: listening to an audiobook while doing a jigsaw puzzle.
“Alice Sadie Celine” Is a Delectable Queer Sex Novel With a Wicked Sense of Humor
If you’re less into slow-burn and more into the narrative equivalent of a wildfire, this one’s for you.
The U.S. Occupation of Hawaiʻi Haunts the Pages of This Extraordinary Short Fiction Collection
It’s beautifully constructed from start to finish, and while the stories will get under your skin, it’s a welcome invasion.
“Here Are All My Favorite Delusions, I Hope You Like Them”: Talking to Gabrielle Korn About Queer Dystopian Novel “Yours For The Taking”
“I feel like so much of the theme of ‘straight women idealizing women’ just came from my dark times in women’s media. This idea that if you have a space that’s just women that it’s somehow superior — that just became so funny to me!”
“Survival Takes a Wild Imagination” Shows How the Labor of Liberation Makes Us Better
Through her newest collection of poetry, Fariha Róisín explores her experiences as a queer, Muslim, Bangladeshi woman trying to heal from a childhood of abuse and the pain of generational trauma.
The Top 12 Queer Novels of 2023
I thought it would be fun to do a ranked list of the 12 queer novels that stood out to me this year. And by “fun,” I mean pleasurably agonizing.
Short Fiction Collection “Girlfriends” Presents Expansive, Nonlinear View of Transition and Dysphoria
The trans women in Girlfriends often find themselves stuck in the spiderweb of someone else’s drama or self-implosion.
Sapphic Yearning, Horror, and K-Pop Blend Perfectly in “Gorgeous Gruesome Faces”
I’ve never really been a horror girlie, but in recent months, I’ve found myself intrigued by YA books that have a horror element.
LGBTQ Fiction Sales Are Up, but We Still Urgently Need Creative Ways To Fight Book Bans
What does the LGBTQ book landscape look like right now? It’s complicated.
Things I Read That I Love #333: Erewhon, Melrose Place, The Bowel Unit, Blurred Lines and Crosswords
Ruby Tandoh on selling the seaside, nobody knows what’s happening online anymore, Caity Weaver looks for Tom Cruise near the airport, Patricia Lockwood takes her husband to the Bowel Unit, a journey through the annals of “Blurred Lines,” we ask if crosswords can be more inclusive and more longreads for your weekend.
“Yours for the Taking” Review: Matriarchy Won’t Save Us
The novel explores queer romance, corporate feminism, and reimagined community at the end of the world.
Avery Dame-Griff Is Archiving the Trans Internet
“The history of trans life online is one of sedimentation, with each subsequent change leaving its remains behind to settle and eventually solidify into a mass of images, text, and memory on which new communities are built.”
65 of the Best Queer Books of 2023
Particularly impressive categories this year include memoir/biography, horror — queer and trans horror writers are appropriately giving us their all these days — and comics.
Sex Scenes Belong in Novels: An Interview with Author Ruth Madievsky
“I’ve been working on a new novel which is — you guessed it — about women behaving badly. Or, as my beloved Goodreads prudes will probably think of it: ‘disgusting women being disgusting.’ Put it on my tombstone, bitches.”
Queer Desire Is Feral in K-Ming Chang’s Bloody, Spitty “Organ Meats”
Here is an expansive tale of inherited and constructed mythology, queer magic, and gothic girlhood.
Author Mac Crane on the Eroticism of Basketball and Writing Queer and Trans Pleasure
“Basketball is extremely hot, and I wanted that to come through in the book.”
Edgar Allan Poe’s Wildest Story Inspired Fall of the House of Usher’s Scariest Moment
There’s something so intimate and terrifying about mouth horror.