I cried a bunch while reading Edge of the World (out May 6, 2025). A profoundly topical collection, Alden Jones’s latest anthology collects sixteen* autobiographical pieces about travel from writers loosely connected by their complicated American-ness and LGBTQ+ identities. I appreciated Jones’s intentions in titling the anthology—in hoping that “the contents undermine the idea ofRead More
A Rapidfire History of Queer Women’s Spaces: A Place of Our Own by June Thomas
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! This year, I’m doing the 2024 Read Harder Challenge—well, I should hope I am, because I’m the one running the challenge and writing the newsletter this time! (You can subscribe if you want recommendations plus weekly updates on my reading, though some of itRead More
Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words by Boel Westin, translated by Silvester Mazzarella
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! A queer, iconoclast, anti-fascist, anti-war comic artist, and joyfully adventurous woman, the Tove Jansson brought to life by Boel Westin’s considered pen is a complicated, innovative creative in resolute pursuit of independence—in both her art and romances. Meticulously researched but rarely dry, this isRead More
Making The Future Gay: The Five Things I Checked out From the Queer Liberation Library
Recently, a nonprofit in Massachusetts put out an exclusively queer book collection on Libby called the Queer Liberation Library (also known as QLL). Their mission is simple: by providing queer people with diversity-focused literature and resources, QLL is building a future that is undeniably queer. This collection of e-materials is available to anyone with an email address,Read More
Understanding the Japanese Internment Camps: Displacement by Kiku Hughes
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! “And keep drawing, too. Draw what you see, what happens here. It’s important. They can scare us, but they can’t make us forget.” In this simply illustrated yet poignant graphic novel, Kiku Hughes reimagines herself as a teenager who is pulled back in timeRead More
A Genre-Defying Queer Black Memoir: The Black Period by Hafizah Augustus Geter
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! In 2023, I was a judge for the Nonfiction category of the Lambda Literary Awards. One of the books I read—the one that ended up winning for the category—was The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin. This is a brilliant, expansive book thatRead More
A Queer Abolitionist History: The Women’s House of Detention by Hugh Ryan
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Since the days of lesbian pulp fiction, Greenwich Village has been seen as a gay hub, a refuge for queer people from all over the country. In this book, Hugh Ryan shows that part of the reason for that is because from the 1920s to 70s, it heldRead More
Carolina reviews The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo
I’ve always felt drawn to queer history; there is a certain comfort in seeing parts of you echoed throughout history, reminders that we have always existed. I’ve always felt attracted to these historical ghosts, found in the coded language of long-gone poets and in unearthed love letters written in candlelit secrecy. Vito Russo’s classic TheRead More
Danika reviews Be Gay, Do Comics!: Queer History, Memoir, and Satire from the Nib
Be Gay, Do Comics is an anthology with more than 30 contributors, all discussing some aspect of queer life. This was a refreshingly diverse and thought-provoking collection. Most anthologies in this vein that I’ve read have played it pretty safe: they’ve usually been very white, and mostly focused on gay cis men, with the overarchingRead More
Danika reviews Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home. Audre Lorde is a name that looms large in lesbian literature, in Black history, and in her legacy in poetry.Read More