Sal Jiang is one of the most consistently captivating yuri manga artists creating today, and the recent English translation of her delightful workplace comedy Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko! sees her continuing her streak of lez-gazey* character designs and plots rooted in cosmopolitan Japan’s lesbian culture. The story starts with high-femme Ayaka eyeballing the older HirokoRead More
Lesbians, Vampire Hunters, and Dark Academia: The Book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee
Rejoice, lesbian Blade fans! Annie Summerlee’s latest novel is a vampire-killer thriller that richly evokes the dank shadows, steel blades, simmering tensions and artfully moody gloom of the iconic film, amongst others. But with the singular improvement of lesbian leads! Operating out of a deliciously gothic ruined convent, vampire hunter Rebecca spends her days nerfingRead More
Jewish Sapphic Lit from Manhattan’s Lower East Side
For the majority of the twentieth century, Manhattan’s Lower East Side was an enclave of affordable housing (e.g. tenements) that housed lively immigrant cultures as well as many queer folk feeling the crunch of capitalism’s unceasing demands. Today, I’m discussing three books written by or recollecting the memories of queer Jewish women who lived andRead More
The Necessity of Movement: Cannon by Lee Lai Review
Cannon by Lee Lai is one of the best graphic novels I’ve read this year—a masterclass in building tension through narrative and illustration. The story starts at what seems to be a point of maximum tension, with the eponymous character standing in the carnage of a destroyed restaurant or cafe. We do not know which it is, where we are, or why it’s comeRead More
Femme Fatales, Homicidal Housewives and Errant Employees: The New Lesbian Pulp edited by Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz Review
I love pulp fiction. I love reading it, reading about it and I especially love books collecting it. After all, I came to sapphic literature through Radclyffe Hall (by way of Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness), and Mabel Maney. In fact, I originally began visiting the Lesbrary after coming across Danika’s writing on lesbian pulp fiction andRead More
Wishes and Curses: The Well by Jake Wyatt and Choo
Written by Jake Wyatt and illustrated by the mononymous Choo, The Well is a 2022 graphic novel that takes the emotional and narrative beats of a Grimm fairytale and frames them in an East Asian inspired low fantasy setting. With a main plot built on allegory and archetypes that is grounded by a delightful romantic B-plot, theRead More
Cosmology and Reinvention: Little Deaths all in a Row by Elizabeth Earley Review
Elizabeth Earley’s essay collection Little Deaths all in a Row (out September 16th) is a deeply vulnerable, deeply personal cosmology constructed from recollections of working hospice care, practicing Reiki, formative childhood experiences, and a myriad of sexual and romantic experiences spanning her life so far. She meshes these memories into a collage of concepts from cognitive science, biology, physics to try and address questions about intimacy,Read More
An Unexpected Love Story in Paris: Love Languages by James Albon Review
When two women from two different countries with two different languages meet in a third liminality neither of them are entirely comfortable with, they find themselves sharing food, stories, and a friendship that slowly grows into a Parisian romance for the ages. Exhausted, nearly burned-out office worker Sarah and lifelong itinerant, current-au-pair Ping are anRead More
A Literary Love Story of the Moment: Liquid by Mariam Rahmani Review
This novel has been a hard one to write a review for. Mostly because of the upheavals happening, and my subsequent desire to try and locate the text as best as I can in the current moment. Because, reader, it truly is a novel for the times, of the times. So here is the earliestRead More
Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing edited by Alden Jones Review
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