Lez Liberty Lit: A Cute Panopticon
Why literature is so self-aware, living like an artist, caring for others without destroying yourself and more.
LGBT literature
Lez Liberty Lit: What’s Up With Reading Lists
What is Afrofuturism, readings on climate and clean energy transition, a new anthology of radical trans poetics and more.
What Is Queer Fiction? An Interview with Patty Yumi Cottrell
The first time I encountered a book with queer characters must have been James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. At the time I remember feeling afraid of its intensity. Now it’s one of my most returned-to books along with Lydia Davis’ The End of the Story.
Kamala’s First Novel Zigzags Is Out Today!
Ultimately, Zigzags was fueled by the nostalgia of all the places I’ve loved and left and missed. There’s a lot of flirting and parties and witty banter, but it’s very much about the necessary and heartbreaking recognition of when it’s time to move on.
As School Season Begins, Fight for Trans Representation in Public Libraries
The public library is in the unique position to pick up where public education leaves off—to succeed where public education fails. It’s time we start rethinking what a library can be.
Lez Liberty Lit: Running on Queer Time
What do we do with unthinkable thoughts in the time of covid? Plus: how crime fiction enables police brutality, zines and self-discovery, celebrating the Clueless anniversary, every book you’ll want to read for the next five months and more.
Lez Liberty Lit: Just Say No to a Coronavirus Novel
The problem with new anti-racist book clubs, 50 Black-owned bookstores to support, writing good sex scenes and more.
Crafting The Narrative Of Abuse
Narratives of violence and abuse are so familiar in our history and culture that we hardly notice them. Corinne Manning shares what it took to notice and transform these narratives in their own fiction and their story collection, We Had No Rules.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Motivated By Drive (Or Fear)
Is there a difference between drive and fear? Where are the abortion memoirs? What fall books should you definitely read?
Lez Liberty Lit: Likability Is Dehumanizing
Why likability is a lie, a new edition of Colonize This!, the publisher reissuing queer genre fiction from the 60s to 90s, abandoning books and more.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Cussing Like No One’s Listening
Writing and money, machines learning from our texts (and replicating our power structures), whether books are clutter and more.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Checking Out These Hot Literary Rivalries
Getting real about the financial realities of writing, creative forces of subculture, K-pop, the branded ephemera of Frida Khalo, and shedding books to survive academia.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Investigating Creative Sustainability
A website that generates short stories based on phone numbers, the feminist Western, financially sustaining a creative life, books to read before “The L Word” comes back, and more.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Writing Honestly About The Body
“Why are we so quick to conclude that marginalized writers’ work is autobiographical?” Plus books about love triangles, a secret lesbian code, why you need to start writing letters to trans people in prison and more.
Lez Liberty Lit: Imagining a Safer Future
Still mourning Mary Oliver. Plus why “books” are not a personality, the mood of reading, feminist bookstores to support right now and more.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Full of Its Past Selves
A humble argument for not counting how many books you read. Plus: Lin-Manuel Miranda saved a bookstore, Mari Kondo doesn’t actually want you to get rid of all your books, and more.
Lez Liberty Lit: Creative Metabolism
The creative process, insomnia, books to read in 2019 and more.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Going South
Finding queer southern lit, how the queer writers of the ’60s and ’70s shape Patrisse Cullors’s political work, the best of 2018 book lists and more.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Toxic
The word of the year, the curiosity crisis in schools, the art of seeing, and more.
Lez Liberty Lit: Against Prison Book Bans
Limiting access to books in prisons is bad for everyone, what happens when you wreck a library book, the best time to write, and more!
Queer Books Across America: Incredible Lesbian and Bisexual Novels and Memoirs Set in Every State
In August, Book Riot published a list of the Best Books Set In Every State, and I thought to myself, as I so often do, “What if we did a list like this, but for queer women?”