new queer books 2021

75 of the Best Queer Books of 2021

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Welcome to the best queer books of 2021! It’s always a joy to put together this list and marvel at the amazing LGBTQ+ work that writers and artists are putting out. This year was particularly great for nonfiction, so I’ve expanded that category from the usual five to eight books. The literary / contemporary fiction section is similarly eight instead of five books; there is consistently so much good stuff to choose from there that I can’t bear to narrow it down to five. 2021 was also a great year for queer horror, so you might notice this year it’s its own category instead of being combined with fantasy. Now, onto the books!

Comics / Graphic Novels and Memoirs

Historical fiction, literary / contemporary fiction, memoir / biography, middle grade, mystery / thriller, science fiction, young adult contemporary / historical, young adult science fiction / fantasy / horror.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

Bechdel’s graphic memoir is, superficially, about fitness and exercise. But more profoundly it’s a meditation on the interwovenness of the body and mind, the search to escape the prison of your own ego, and the profound power of nature. The art is classic Bechdel: precise, detailed, realist, and full of movement. Check out this Autostraddle interview with Bechdel about the book.

Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu

Queer BIPOC elder representation shines in this graphic novel about Kumiko, a bisexual Japanese Canadian woman in her 70s who finds death has come too early for her. She intends to fight it. Xu’s art is exact and generous as it takes care to depict an elderly woman with dignity and to create an affectionate portrayal of East Vancouver.

Stone Fruit by Lee Lai

This alternately joyful and heartbreaking graphic novel in gorgeous blue-shaded watercolor tackles themes of family and vulnerability. Bron and Ray are a couple who enjoy their role as the weird queer aunties to Ray’s 6-year-old niece. At the same time as their intimate connection falters, both Ray and Bron reach out to their sisters, attempting to mend those relationships.

Red Rock Candy Baby by Shira Spector

Formally innovative in a way that is reminiscent of Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters , Spector’s unique graphic memoir covers an eventful ten years of her life. During that time, she struggled to get pregnant, her father was diagnosed and passed away from cancer, and family and partner relationships changed. The story begins in stark black ink; Spector slowly introduces color until it explodes into a full, bright palette.

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle

A dark feminist horror comic with a sapphic romance subplot and vintage horror aesthetics, Squad is a clever blend of The Craft and Buffy with a werewolf focus. Becca is the new girl at a posh school and is amazed when the popular clique recruits her. Surprise: They’re a werewolf pack.

The Unbroken by C.L. Clark

This dark, gripping military fantasy novel is concerned with colonization and racism, based on France’s occupation of North Africa. A soldier and a princess — both complex, fallible characters in their own right — each grapple with the emotional and practical horrors of empire, as well as with each other.

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

This novella is a beautifully layered and fragmented tale about surveillance, stories, belonging, and what makes a life worth living. It follows Amina, an extrasensory human, and how aer life changes after a chance encounter with a mysterious visitor to the city ae is tasked with watching.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

A queer reimagining of the story of the Ming dynasty founding emperor, Parker-Chan’s novel bursts with lyricism and heart. Zhu Chongba is a young boy given the fate of greatness. But it is he who perishes in a bandit attack, leaving his sister — fated to nothingness despite her intelligence and capability — behind.

The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart

The second installment of the Drowning Empire epic fantasy series, The Bone Shard Emperor follows Lin as she assumes the throne amidst less than ideal circumstances. A unique magic system, alternating perspectives, and an action-packed last quarter make for a satisfying novel that avoids the middle book syndrome so many fantasy trilogies fall into.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

An epic fantasy rooted in India’s mythologies and history, this smartly written and fiercely imagined novel tells the story of an imprisoned princess and a maidservant with forbidden magic. They become unlikely allies in the quest to save the empire from the princess’s traitorous brother.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

A deliciously creepy and disorienting tale, Khaw’s haunted house story set in Japan centers a group of old friends from Malaysia with a history of ghost hunting. They have rented a Heian-era mansion; legend has it that an abandoned bride was buried in the house’s walls and a girl has been sacrificed every year since then to keep her company.

Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper

Body horror competes with the terrors of big pharma in this invigorating futuristic horror story about a lesbian named Yaya who discovers she has a vagina dentata. She assumes it is a side effect of an experimental medication her mother took when she was pregnant, but when a pharmaceutical company comes after her she realizes it might be a new experiment altogether.

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Rocklyn’s gothic horror fantasy debut is deeply immersive and deeply weird, with lyrical writing that belies the foulness of the content. Iraxi is a survivor and refugee on an arc fleeing a flooded kingdom; she is also pregnant and might be about to give birth to a monster.

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Rumfitt’s terrifying gothic haunted house tale succeeds in bringing to life the terrors of fascism while also illuminating British trans life. The story centers on three friends who are forced to return to a haunted house they spent a horrifying night in three years ago.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Themes of monstrosity, anti-Black racism, memory, and the co-opting of activism dominate this exceptional story about Vern, a character who escapes to the forest from an oppressive cult. There she gives birth to twins, but continues to be haunted and hunted by her past as she undergoes a strange metamorphosis.

The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne De Bourgh by Molly Greeley

Taking a minor character from Pride and Prejudice , Greeley’s compassionate novel portrays Anne De Bourgh as a woman manipulated into taking laudanum and gaslit into believing she is ill and incapable. Her life changes when she flees the grips of her family’s control, establishes a new life in London, and discovers lesbian love!

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Set in medieval England, Matrix tells the enthralling story of Marie, who arrives as a new nun at an abbey with the mission of leading it back to prosperity. Themes of collective sisterhood, queer sexuality in a gender-segregated environment, religious visions, female power, and feminist leadership all feature in this unique and lively tale.

Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks

This novel is a wildly weird masterpiece that would be at home in half of the categories on this list. It’s here in the historical fiction category because it is deeply 90s: a reimagining of tween girl series like the Babysitters Club, a brutally honest novel about a queer and trans coming of age and disordered eating, a choose your own adventure/video game style surreal journey through the body, and an intellectual adult reflection on all of this.

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton

A contemporary directionless trans woman writes fan letters to the lead/songwriter of a fictional 60s band a la The Beach Boys. The musician’s life turns out to intersect with hers in unforeseen ways, including their shared trans identity. Thornton brilliantly employs the epistolary form to bring the reader into the world of the LA 60s pop music scene while insightfully establishing the contrasts and similarities between the two women’s lives.

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Although this dreamlike Great Gatsby retelling includes a magical aspect, the focus is on the experience of being a queer adopted Vietnamese immigrant socialite in the American jazz age. Daisy’s friend and occasional narrator Jordan from the original novel is the focus here as Vo creates a fascinating character study of her and her precarious place in 1920s rich white American society.

The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine

With keen observation and lush characterization, Alameddine weaves a story about conflict and refugees centering an Arab American trans lesbian doctor named Mina. Mina goes to Lesbos to help at the Syrian refugee camp, but she finds herself suffocated by the helplessness she feels in the face of the crisis. The novel is both a celebration and a tragedy.

With Teeth by Kristen Arnett

Peering beneath the skin of an attempt to have a perfect queer family, Arnett’s latest novel looks at a number of messy entities: lesbian motherhood, a challenging kid, and a troubled marriage. The protagonist Sammie, her wife Monika, and their son Samson are rich and fully realized. The result is a candid, darkly funny, brash, and simultaneously warm and tense novel. Read the interview with Kristen Arnett on Autostraddle by Drew Gregory.

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Full of dark humor, food, and religion, Broder’s tale is about a deeply unhappy woman who has replaced Judaism with calorie counting. Then she meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at a frozen yogurt shop and wants to feed her. Kate Gorton reviews the book in full on Autostraddle .

Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie

Skye is a queer Black woman nearing forty who loves her no-strings-attached life. But it turns out she can’t do without relationships once she returns to her hometown of Philadelphia and meets a kid who tells Skye she is one of the eggs Skye donated in her twenties. With a keen sense of place and community, McKenzie creates a moving story of midlife transformation.

We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth

An incisive response to GamerGate, Osworth’s debut novel makes use of a clever first person plural narrative point of view as it investigates internet trolling, sexism in video game culture, voyeurism, fandom, and “sixterhood.” The excellently paced action takes place in both real life — aka meatspace — and in a massive multiplayer online role playing game made by the studio that Eliza works for. On Autostraddle, check out this author interview as well as a full review by Kate Gorton.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

As Drew Gregory’s review on Autostraddle declares, Peters’ debut novel “is for trans women—the rest of you are lucky to read it.” The story is about three women — two trans and one cis — who are entangled in a kind of love triangle involving a breakup, a detransition, and an accidental pregnancy. It is as emotionally true as it is intellectually stunning.

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett

Plett’s trademark skills at authentic characterization, evocative setting, and insight into the lives of trans women are on full display in this superb collection of short stories. The stories crackle with quiet complexity as they cover topics like a woman returning to her Mennonite roots while visiting a lover and another leaving the Portland’s queer utopia to transition in New York’s anonymity.

Blue Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu

SJ Sindu’s sophomore novel is epic in terms of scale, theme, and prose. Moving from Tamil Nadu to New York City and spanning a decade, this story explores faith; ethnic, gender, and sexual identity; and global interconnectivity through the life of Kalki. Kalki is a person born with blue skin and believed to be the reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu; but just as he is supposed to come into his power, he begins to question it.

The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcom Belc

The topics of conceiving, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are explored from the perspective of a trans masculine nonbinary parent in this perceptive memoir in lyric essays. Using documents such as birth certificates and childhood photographs, Belc investigates how these experiences clarified his gender and opened up new ideas of parenthood and family.

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

Acclaimed lesbian musician Brandi Carlile tells the story of her life so far, including growing up in a financially poor but musically rich family, tension between her queer sexuality and Christian faith, 15 years of touring, six albums, and raising two kids with her wife. The memoir is poignant, engaging, and inspiring.

Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

Subtitled “a Black Spirit Memoir,” this fierce, tender book is written in Emezi’s trademark eloquent and insightful prose. Through letters to Emezi’s friends, lovers, and family, they explore their creative journey to writerhood; their gender and body; mental health; hunger for success; spiritual, emotional, and romantic relationships; and more.

A History of Scars by Laura Lee

Lee delves into her legacy of trauma as the queer kid of Korean immigrant parents, as well as topics as diverse as mountain climbing, sexuality, cooking, writing, Alzheimers, and being a student. Her writing is vivid, raw, and intimate.

The One You Want to Marry by Sophie Santos

In her refreshingly honest voice, comedian Sophie Santos traces the winding path through many different identities: tomboy, emo theater kid, pageant queen, sorority sister, and, finally “calm” lesbian. In her review for Autostraddle , Analyssa calls the memoir “quite funny [as] Santos rips through stories that are awkward, painfully relatable or even deeply embarrassing.”

Almost Flying by Jake Maia Arlow

The delight and chaos of an amusement park make a fitting setting for this heartwarming story about a middle grader named Dalia who ends up on a trip with her soon-to-be stepsister Alexa, Alexa’s secret girlfriend, and Dalia’s new friend Rani. Keeping Alexa’s secret makes Dalia realize she might have the same one herself: she has a crush on Rani.

Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea by Ashley Herring Blake

Blake has an excellent track record with compassionate and complex queer middle grade books and her latest novel is no different. After one of Hazel’s moms dies in an accident, she is left with anxiety and a mama who hasn’t settled anywhere for more than a few months. An unexpectedly long stop in a small town known for a legendary mermaid changes everything.

The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan

This Irish novel-in-verse about 11-year-old bookish Stevie was published in North America this year and what a gift. It’s a quiet, thoughtful character study of a girl learning that she likes girls (through books and a helpful librarian!) and sharing her revelations with her mom.

A Touch of Ruckus by Ash Van Otterloo

This ghost hunting story set in the forest features a queer girl, Tennessee, and her nonbinary crush/friend, Fox. Secret keeping, rural queer experiences, mental health, and the pressure to stifle yourself to keep the peace are all explored with compassion and insight.

Artie and the Wolf Moon by Olivia Stephens

When eighth grader Artie discovers she comes from a long line of werewolves, she is thrilled to join a new community, where she finds a new friend and crush. But she also learns some scary news: vampires are the real threat in the woods! Stephens’ paranormal graphic novel is full of unique lore and world-building as well as warm themes of family, community, and human-animal relationships.

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia

The first book in a new historical series called Harlem Renaissance Mysteries features a fascinating Black sapphic character with a traumatic past. In Louise Lloyd’s first case (reluctantly taken), she investigates the murders of several local Black women.

Journey to Cash by Ashley Bartlett

Cash’s past as a drug dealer and police informant comes back to haunt her just as she’s moving on in the last installment of Bartlett’s authentically queer millennial crime series. Diving as always into morally grey waters, this book hinges on Cash’s ex-girlfriend returning from her disappearance with news that Cash’s ex-business partner wants to kill them both.

The Final Child by Fran Dorricott

In this chilling psychological thriller, a woman who escaped a serial killer kidnapping as a kid is reminded that the past is not far behind her when a journalist wants to interview her about the experience. It’s a welcome addition of sapphic characters and lesbian romance subplot to a genre sorely lacking in both.

Warn Me When It’s Time by Cheryl A. Head

The sixth book in the Charlie Mack Motown Mystery series, this exciting novel with compelling Black lesbian representation follows private investigator Mack and her team as they attempt to track down a hate group. They are hired by the children of an imam who was killed in a recent arson at his mosque. As the Mack team investigates, they discover the group’s roots go much deeper than they thought.

Unbreakable by Cari Hunter

This engaging well-paced mystery follows two parallel storylines that eventually intersect with a bang. In one, a doctor is held at gunpoint and forced to treat the serious injuries of her abductor. In the other, detective sergeant Safia Faris is on a murder case that turns out to be much less straight forward than it seemed at first.

What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna

This hilarious and informative guide to “perimenopause, menopause, and other indignities” is chock full of what you need to know, with an explicit emphasis on including those whose experiences are often left out of reproductive health discussions. There are also illustrations by Archie Bongiovanni! Kaelyn reviews the book on Autostraddle, calling it “fun and refreshing.”

We Are the Babysitters Club edited by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks

The artistic and prose work in this anthology is as engaging formally as it is in content: graphic pieces and comics mix with essays on topics like fashion, disability, race, and friendship. The legacy of The Babysitters Club is critiqued as well as celebrated. Check out the Autostraddle roundtable on the book!

The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye

Bolding taking on the rise of trans misogyny specifically and transphobia generally in the U.K., British trans feminist Shon Faye focuses her work on how the actual material oppression that trans people face is being ignored. Her socialist feminist arguments are as convincing as they are refreshing.

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

This enthralling and revelatory blend of memoir, reporting, and critique examines the stifling narratives of girl- and womanhood that women grow up with. Febos also sets out to replace the harmful values with ones that prioritize women’s health, happiness, and freedom. Read a full review by Luna Adler on Autostraddle.

Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai

Sins Invalid, a queer disability justice performance project, is the subject of this empowering and revolutionary book. The history of the organization’s art and activism is explored and expanded on as Kafai shares the wisdom and lessons disabled, queer, and trans people of color have for collective survival. She also looks at what disability justice is capable of.

On Freedom by Maggie Nelson

The concept of freedom, as Nelson notes, can be alternately enlivening and nihilistic as it continues to dominate the four areas she investigates: art, sex, drugs, and climate. Moving between analyzing pop culture and critical theory to discussing her own lived experience, Nelson asks many thought-provoking questions that defy easy answers.

Our Work Is Everywhere by Syan Rose

This genre-bending anthology about queer and trans resistance packs a big punch for a short book. It moves between interviews, essays, conversations, and more, all accompanied by Rose’s intricate, expansive illustrations. Containing both rage and celebration, the book explores topics such as Black femme mental health, sex worker activism, and queer fat performance art.

The Care We Dream of edited by Zena Sharman

This unique anthology collects essays by Sharman on topics such as queering health and kinship as well as fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and interviews with health care workers and researchers on the LGBTQ+ healthcare they dream of. As the subtitle declares, the feast of content is truly “liberatory and transformative.”

Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam

Punk in content and form, Abi-Karam’s second poetry collection is a vision and a call to action for a thriving queer abolitionist future. Desire and rage, protest and sex, coexist as the poems embody how to be “an accomplice to radical action.”

The Good Arabs by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

Investigating how we might love under the circumstances of social injustice, sorrow, and disaster, this collection of verse and prose poems is thoughtful and lyrical. El Bechelany-Lynch looks at bodies and identities — Arab, trans, queer — as well as places and times: humid Montreal summer’s, Lebanon during the 2015 garbage crisis, and the aftermath of the Beirut explosion.

The Renunciations by Donika Kelly

Kelly’s heartbreaking and affecting collection is concerned with trauma, survival, and resilience, particularly in response to childhood sexual abuse. The poems have incredible movement and innovative formal play, such as using parentheses to convey what cannot be expressed.

Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Wildly weird and magical, Lozada-Oliva’s novel-in-verse is about a young Latinx poet, Melissa, who resurrects Tejano pop star Selena. The resurrection leads her on a journey through a spirit world populated by her own shadow self, karaoke, and a dead celebrity prom. Featuring themes of fandom, grief, queer identity, and loneliness.

Magnified by Minnie Bruce Pratt

Love, loss, grief, and communism in her life with Leslie Feinberg dominate this collection as Pratt lingers on the tiniest of details. As the title implies, these details of both nature and caretaking for an ill loved one are enhanced to breathtaking and heartbreaking effect. Check out this Autostraddle interview with Pratt about the book.

For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes

This sweet, feel-good BDSM debut romance by and about a trans woman is a very welcome addition to LGBTQ+ romance. April is a wonderfully crafted character: a nurturing type of mommi with a side of nerdiness, intelligence, and relatable insecurity. Her love interest, Dennis, is equally nerdy, as well as matching her mommi with cute dad vibes.

Night Tide by Anna Burke

An affecting enemies-to-lovers story that tackles privilege and chronic illness, Night Tide features two women who went to veterinary school together. They’ve tended to push each other’s buttons, sometimes bringing out the worst in each other. When circumstances find them working at the same vet clinic together, the result is an emotionally vivid and intimate love story.

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole

This Anastasia retelling is a delightful fairy tale story of queer Black love between a long lost princess and the private investigator tasked with tracking her down. With steamy sex scenes, delicious slow burn chemistry, and exciting travel adventures (featuring fun tropes like there’s only one bed!), How to Find a Princess is a big winner.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

McQuiston’s swoony rom com is full of optimism, humor, queer found family, dirty NYC sensory details, and lusty queer love. Also: a clever time travel twist that presents, shall we say, unique obstacles for the couple’s happily ever after. Read Heather’s glowing review for Autostraddle .

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

A delicious mix of romance and late 20s coming of age tale, Rogers’ debut follows Grace, an over-achieving grad student who gets impulsively married in Vegas to a woman she just met. The result of this uncharacteristic move is a tender, authentically messy story about the benefits of letting go of a strictly controlled life.

A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus

In this extraordinary collection of short stories, Angus takes the often trod thematic path of trans characters and transition and presents them in a completely new, surprising, and thought-provoking way. The stories blend keen observations on future life with fabulist, magical elements as well as details of the natural world.

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Aoki’s joyful science fiction fantasy features donuts, queer alien love, curses, and bargains for the soul. Infused with musicality, the novel tells the story of trans runaway Katrina, an extraordinary violin player, and Shizuka, who needs to make a violin prodigy like Katrina sell her soul.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

The first book in Chambers’ new Monk and Robot series displays her trademark optimism, warmth, unique world-building and rich characterization. An agender traveling tea monk meets a robot, who asks an age old question: “What do people need?”

Future Feeling by Joss Lake

Future advanced technology and witchcraft come together in this wickedly funny, inventive, and eloquent satire about two trans guys, their mutual resentment, and the other trans guy who gets stuck in the crossfire. Themes include trans kinship, magic, social media, human connection, and jealousy.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

The sequel to 2019’s A Memory Called Empire , this show-stopping space opera absolutely lives up to the intricate world-building, bubbling action, and intimate characterization its predecessor exemplified. In this installment, Mahit and Three Seagrass face off against an unknown alien enemy, a last resort diplomatic envoy. Read this excerpt on Autostraddle !

Love is for Losers by Wibke Brueggemann

This sex-positive novel in diary format is a true romantic comedy: biting, sharp humor and a swoony slow burn queer romance. At first 15-year-old Phoebe is convinced falling in love is for the birds. But while volunteering at a thrift store, Phoebe meets Emma, who might just disprove all her theories.

Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar

Two very different Bengali queer teen girls, popular Hani and academic overachiever Ishu, fall in love in this delightful take on the fake dating trope. Hani’s friends don’t believe she’s bisexual if she’s only dated guys and Ishu needs a boost in popularity to meet her goal of becoming head girl — the situation is perfect for a fauxmance. Too bad they’re catching feelings!

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson

There is a remarkable depth and fierce honesty to Johnson’s characters in this summertime tale of queer Black love set at a music festival. Olivia and Toni’s stories investigate loss, grief, isolation, and the healing power of music. Read Carmen’s interview with Johnson , where she declares “Leah Johnson is the Toni Morrison of queer YA.” You can also read an excerpt of Rise to the Sun right here on Autostraddle!

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Lo’s colorful, captivating historical YA is set in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown. Two teen girls, Lily and Kathleen, risk everything for their love, at the same time as the so-called Red Scare threatens Chinese Americans like Lily and her family. Now a National Book Award winner !

The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe

This novel is both a page-turning thriller and a deeply moving account of going through and healing from trauma. Nora is the daughter of a con artist who, along with her new girlfriend and ex/BFF, is held hostage at a bank during a robbery. In order to survive, Nora might have to brush off her old skills.

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Ace of Spades is YA’s answer to the new popularity of dark academia, with queer (bisexual girl and gay boy) Black characters to boot! Àbíké-Íyímídé deftly examines the interweaving of class, queerness, and Black identity in this heart-racing horror mystery thriller where two Black students at a predominantly white private school are targeted by an anonymous texter revealing their secrets to the world.

To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames

A chilling queer feminist horror thriller, To Break a Covenant is set in a wonderfully realized creepy town called Moon Basin, which is known for being haunted after a mine explosion killed 16 people. Residents of the town are experiencing spooky, peculiar phenomena like night terrors and hearing strange voices. Four teen girls decide to take matters into their own hands, descending into the mine to learn the truth.

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron

Bayron’s sophomore novel is a contemporary fantasy deeply influenced by Greek mythology, a fascination with plants, and a dedication to complex queer Black representation. Briseis is a young woman with a strange and dangerous power that allows her to make any plant blossom instantly with her touch. When she and her moms leave Brooklyn to spend the summer at a dilapidated rural estate, she discovers the true depth of her power.

The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta

Syd is an agender teen baker who gets into a big ol’ mess after baking a batch of magical brownies after being dumped. It turns out everyone who eats them breaks up, including the owners of the queer bakery where Syd works. Can Syd fix it before it’s too late? This cozy magical realist story is a delightful love letter to queer love and community.

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

Themes of magic, family, asexuality, and traditional storytelling dominate in Lipan Apache author Darcie Little Badger’s delightful and uplifting second YA novel. A Lipan girl named Nina collides with Oli who is from the land of spirits and monsters. But some people will do anything to keep them apart. This is a wholesome, elegantly written read guaranteed to warm your heart!

Let’s talk books in the comments! What were the best queer books of 2021 according to you? Have you read any of the ones featured on this list? Did I leave off any of your favourites? Any queer reads coming out in 2022 you’re looking forward to? Please share!

Known in some internet circles as Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian, Casey Stepaniuk is a writer, librarian, and new parent. She writes for Book Riot and Autostraddle about queer and/or bookish stuff. Ask her about cats, bisexuality, libraries, queer books, drinking tea, and her baby. Her website is Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian . Find her on Twitter , Litsy , Storygraph Goodreads and Instagram .

Casey has written 122 articles for us.

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The Best Queer Reads for Pride Month and Beyond

From gripping novels to tender memoirs, dive into the standout LGBTQ+ literary releases of the year.

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Let’s face it: between the alarming rise of anti-trans legislation in the United States and a recent resurgence of anti-gay “grooming” rhetoric among ultra-conservative politicians, 2022 has been a particularly stressful year to be part of the queer community. At the same time, with more than 10% of American millennials and over 20% of Gen Z adults—a significant all-time high—identifying as LGBTQ, there’s no denying we’re living in an increasingly queer world, homophobic backlash be damned. In that light, perhaps it stands to reason that 2022’s queer literary landscape is more varied, vibrant, and crowded than ever before. Whether you’re looking for post-apocalyptic horror or a Bachelor send-up for the ages, there’s a new release by an LGBTQ author that’ll be sure to scratch whatever itch you have. Read on for our 41 favorite queer reads out this year.

Harmony Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy by Rachel Krantz

About five years ago, Rachel Krantz entered into her first non-monogamous romance. It was brand-new territory for her, so she did what any underpaid internet writer in the 21st century would do: she exhaustively documented every aspect of her relationship in hopes of eventually using the whole experience as writing material. Her archival impulses have paid handsome dividends—both for Krantz and for the rest of us. Both a memoir and a meticulously researched taxonomy of all the ways a person can be non-monogamous, Open is a sexy, moving, and unputdownable read.

Tor Nightfire Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Felker-Martin’s unapologetically trans debut novel—a post-apocalyptic horror story that offers a refreshingly queer riff on the tired “gender apocalypse” trope—has generated a lot of controversy, mostly among people who think that criticizing J.K. Rowling’s public displays of bigotry somehow amounts to a hate crime. What you won’t learn from the kerfuffle is what the book is about: a group of trans women and men who must harvest the organs of feral cis men in order to avoid suffering the same fate—all while outrunning murderous TERFs, billionaire survivalists, and their own inner demons.

Other Press (NY) Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada

A dark yet tender hybrid of metafiction and magical realism, Bad Girls tells the story of a makeshift family of trans sex workers—one of whom is Sosa Villada herself—in Córdoba, Argentina. When their matriarch discovers an abandoned baby crying in the cold, the girls adopt him and raise him as their own.

Amistad Press Greenland by David Santos Donaldson

In Donaldson’s formally adventurous debut novel, Kip Starling, a young queer writer in Brooklyn, is writing a book about Mohammed el Adl, a young Egyptian man who in the early 20th century was E.M. Forster’s secret lover. At any rate, that’s what Kip is supposed to be doing—and he only has three weeks until the manuscript is due to his publisher. But as the parallels between Mohammed’s life and Kip’s own loom increasingly large, Kip begins to lose his grip on where the past ends and the present begins.

Hanover Square Press So Happy for You by Celia Laskey

When Ellie asks her childhood best friend Robin—now a marriage-skeptical queer academic—to be the maid of honor in Ellie’s upcoming wedding, Robin reluctantly agrees. But as the festivities creep ever closer, Robin grows increasingly convinced that someone in the bridal party is out to get her. Following Laskey’s widely acclaimed 2020 debut Under the Rainbow , So Happy for You is a campy yet scathing indictment of the marriage industrial complex and the fraught intricacies of female friendship.

Flatiron Books Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

When Leah finally returns home from a catastrophic ocean-floor mission, her wife Miri is ecstatic—until Miri begins to suspect that Leah may have come back, well, wrong . With Leah home, Miri always imagined that their life together would go back to normal, but it soon becomes clear that nothing will ever be “normal” again. Acclaimed short story writer Armfield’s debut novel is a haunting story of loss, grief, and the horrors of the deep blue sea.

Random House Large Print Publishing All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

In this recession-set debut novel, first-generation immigrant Sneha is one of the lucky ones: she’s landed a well-paid, if grueling, corporate job right out of college; she’s making friends in her new city of Milwaukee; she’s even got a romance brewing with the mysterious and beautiful Marina. But when Sneha’s world is thrown into crisis, can her newfound community keep her afloat?

Simon & Schuster Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto by Edafe Okporo

Immigration and LGBTQ rights activist Okporo was 26 years old when he was driven from his home in Abuja, Nigeria, for the sin of being gay. Seeking asylum, he fled to New York City just days before the 2016 presidential election—only to learn firsthand that the U.S. immigration system focuses far more of its attention on locking people up than on helping freed refugees acclimate to American society. At once a personal narrative and a call to action, Asylum documents Okporo’s experiences as a gay Black man in both Nigeria and the U.S. and demands us to do better by immigrants everywhere.

Riverhead Books We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

Hart’s searing debut tells the story of a life-altering romance between Mallory, a college freshman, and a married older woman whom she meets at the university’s gym. Still wading through her grief over her mother’s recent death, Mallory throws herself headlong into the all-consuming affair. Years after the relationship, Mallory must decide whether to remain isolated from the world or reckon with the truth of what the other woman meant to her.

Coffee House Press Brown Neon by Raquel Gutiérrez

L.A.-born, Tucson-based Gutiérrez’s first essay collection is deeply queer and deeply Southwestern. Divided into three sections—love, land, and labor—the pieces in this book range in topic from the scars of a failed romance to the emotional significance and commodification of adobe. These seemingly disparate topics come together seamlessly in Gutiérrez’s capable hands, resulting in a literary topography of identity and belonging.

Vintage Eleutheria by Allegra Hyde

In a world of man-made climate disaster, Willa clings to hope. Even when her involuntary guru—the renowned Harvard professor Sylvia Gill—betrays her, Willa takes her cue from a book in Sylvia’s library called Living the Solution . Before long, she flies to the Bahaman island of Eleutheria to join its author in his quest to fight climate change, but what she finds there is a cult of eco-warriors in disarray. Hyde’s first novel is a delightfully queer entry into the burgeoning genre of climate fiction.

Bold Type Books The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan

For the nearly 50 years that the Women’s House of Detention stood in Greenwich Village, it housed women and trans people who had committed the crimes of being politically outspoken, poor, or gender nonconforming. By delving into the history and lives of this forgotten community, historian Ryan makes “a uniquely queer case for prison abolition.”

Balzer & Bray/Harperteen The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes

YA categorization aside, queer readers of all ages should make a beeline for this big-hearted story of first love and finding oneself. After being outed at her old school, Yami is determined not to let the white, rich kids at her Slayton Catholic find out she’s gay. But that plan gets a lot more complicated when she meets the only out queer person at her new school: the frustratingly adorable, clever, and talented Bo.

Hogarth Press Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

Eve, the protagonist and narrator of Fishman’s first novel, is completely in love with Romi, her doting, practically perfect girlfriend of two years. So there’s no reason for Eve to go posting nudes online in search of validation, right? But she does anyway, and that’s how she becomes entangled with nervous, beautiful Olivia and the intensely charismatic Nathan. What starts as occasional trysts with the couple eventually grows into something more complex and emotionally fraught, leading Eve to reevaluate her own relationship to sex and power.

Bloomsbury Publishing Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej

When the unnamed queer narrator of Songsiridej’s debut meets the much-older choreographer at an artists’ residency, she is initially repulsed by his loud, domineering manner. But a chance encounter back in Boston erupts into an all-consuming affair that sparks the question of what it really means to have agency in a relationship.

Harper Heretic: A Memoir by Jeanna Kadlec

Kadlec’s memoir-in-essays traces her journey from good Midwestern evangelical girl to public (and very online) queer community advocate. From chapter to chapter, she deftly moves between topics both cultural—like celebrity purity culture—and deeply personal, such as her now-ended youthful marriage to a pastor’s son.

Flatiron Books Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour

For her first adult novel, sapphic YA author extraordinaire LaCour spins a sweeping tale of star-crossed queer love between two young women who have found themselves adrift amid the sprawl Los Angeles. When florist Emilie and bartender Sara first meet while both working at the restaurant Yerba Buena, the spark is immediate. But can their love survive their pasts catching up to them?

William Morrow & Company Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

The Song of Achilles but make it trans—literally: Deane’s electrifying novel reimagines Achilles as a trans woman who has fled her home to live as a woman under the care of the kallai, the transgender priestess of Aphrodite. But Odysseus and the gods have other plans, and in exchange for the woman’s body of her dreams, Athena compels Achilles to seek glory in war against the Hittites—even if it means invoking the wrath of the cruel, immortal Helen.

Zando Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

When the final four women in a Bachelor -esque dating competition arrive in the wooded wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, they expect the usual reality TV shenanigans: sleep deprivation, producer manipulation, too much alcohol. Instead, they find Patricia, a local living alone in the woods who is desperate for connection. The result: a delightfully unhinged and irrepressibly queer romp through American media culture and genre convention.

Little Brown and Company Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham

After nearly 20 years of living in a men’s prison as a trans woman, Carlotta Mercedes is released on parole and returns to her native New York City—only to find it very much changed from what she remembers. On her own in post-gentrification Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Carlotta struggles to reconcile with her son and reunite with a family that seems unwilling to accept her for who she truly is. Hannaham’s follow-up to his PEN/Faulkner Award-winning Delicious Foods is at once a sweeping love letter to Brooklyn and an unforgettable condemnation of the prison industrial complex.

Keely Weiss is a writer and filmmaker. She has lived in Los Angeles, New York, and Virginia and has a cat named after Perry Mason.

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45 Best LGBTQ Books That Will Heat Up the Literary Landscape This Fall

The offerings are vast, with room for stories by and about people from all walks of queer life.

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Queerness isn't a solid state, an easy description for sexuality or identity. It means different things to different people. It is a wholly subjective experience, something that lives inside all of us, which is why LGBTQ literature is so dynamic and vast. We read queer books in large part because there is deep profundity in finding out we're not alone, and yet there is a singularity to our stories, to the stories of others.

McQuiston's new novel, One Last Stop , is 1 of 45 on this list of the best LGBTQ books of 2021, illuminating the vast and multi-hued world of the queer experience . There's poetry, history, true crime , time travel, and a slew of dynamite short story collections . These works (which include books that are already on the shelves and others you can look forward to reading later in the year), reveal that as much as we share certain things in common, our narratives —our selves —are various. Our books should reflect that multiplicity.

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So

So, who passed away in December of last year at the age of 28, was taken from us much too soon—an immense talent whose writing brims with generous, radiant empathy and hard-won wit. He bequeathed us this exuberant collection of stories centered on the Cambodian community of inland California, where donut shops and auto mechanic garages loll in the shadow of Costco, where queer people are out and proud yet still conduct their affairs in shadow, where parents utilize their experiences surviving the ruthless Khmer Rouge regime in order to win arguments against their Americanized children. So's parting gift is a book that bites its thumb at grief and graciously celebrates life.

Out August 3

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

Imagine Riverdale crossing streams with Stephen King's The Outsider and you'll get a sense of this gripping supernatural mystery in which two girls from very different walks of life investigate the ghostly goings-on in a rural Oregon town. Gould's debut begins as a snappy paranormal yarn and unspools into a profound story about the complex interplay between grief, guilt, and identity.

The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

A hint of Moulin Rouge , a whiff of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale , a little spritz of Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief —Schaffert's Paris-set page-turner is the exhilarating tale of a queer former criminal whose whims and wits just might help drive the Nazis out of the City of Lights. The Perfume Thief is a pulse-pounding thriller and a sensuous experience you'll want to savor. Out August 3

Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist by Patrick Nathan

As citizens of the world, the existential and emotional toll of the last few years has been immense, a superstorm of sociopolitical strife and social media-induced anxiety. Into this tempest wades acclaimed author Patrick Nathan, whose call to arms asks one of the most important questions of our time: "Who gets to police how we see ourselves and others?" It is up to us, this blazing work of nonfiction suggests, to save ourselves—with discernment, with rage, with empathy, with art. Out August 3

How to Wrestle a Girl by Venita Blackburn

Blackburn, whose first collection of short fiction won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, vividly renders the vulnerability of girlhood on the margins, revealing the aches of that time in one's life when everything feels at once carefree and world-ending. The 30 stories here appear on the page like snapshots from an off-color Polaroid—dazzling and disorienting.

Out September 7

The Magician by Colm Tóibín

There's a scene a quarter of the way through Tóibín's magisterial new novel in which Thomas Mann, future Nobel Prize winner, listens to and watches the German composer Gustav Mahler conduct his orchestra, an experience that strikes the fictionalized Mann as a "collision of bombast and subtlety." This is also an apt description for The Magician , Tóibín's twelfth novel, a decades-and-continents-spanning saga starring the Death in Venice author, from his boyhood in pre-WWI Lübeck spent hiding his homosexuality to a fateful trip to Northern Italy that would inspire perhaps his greatest known work.

Tenderness by Derrick Austin

Austin's second poetry collection, after his widely acclaimed debut Trouble the Water , feels like part of a lineage with Jericho Brown's The Tradition and Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds , queer lyricism that seeks solace and kinship and eroticism in the natural world—"love, and loss/brought to scale in a glorious/algal bloom, a brightness of jade and amber"—and in the arms of friends and lovers: "There is a roof one man's body makes over another."

Out September 7

Brocken Spectre by Jacques J. Rancourt

"Who would I have been back then?" asks the speaker of this aching and astute collection of poems, many of which wrestle with the legacy and intergenerational trauma of AIDS from the point of view of someone born in the pandemic's aftermath. What does it mean to live and love in the wake of a community-rupturing crisis, when a stranger's kiss recalls "those men/of our fathers' generation/who'd rendezvous in parks/past dark?"

Out September 14

Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks

Girl detectives, adolescent angst, all soundtracked to Fiona Apple—Milks's first novel is a mid-'90s marvel, one that acutely captures the surreal Tidal -wave of teenage emotions and the "private heat" of girlhood.

The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall

Missy is a cello prodigy turned indie-punk musician whose band is on the ascent. Just barely in her twenties, this former band geek goes all-in on the sex and drugs parts of the rock n' roll lifestyle, wanting not so much to shatter the glass ceiling of the scene's boys club, as to become part of it—a girl with a boytoy in every port. The persona she's constructed is upended when she falls for the female drummer in a fellow touring band. When Missy's lifestyle finally catches up with her, she's forced to seek solace in the embrace of her mother and grandmother—two women who've also wrestled with carving out their own versions of independence. Whittall's knockout novel is a multigenerational riot of grrrlhood and womanhood, a brisk and wistful tour through the ambivalence of responsibility.

Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

The generation of queer people coming of age now is doing so in the long shadow of the AIDS crisis, their lives loomed over by the epidemic's specter but wrestling with its effects in a more abstract way, especially now that treatment and prevention are more widely available. We've grown up reading and seeing the stories of those who lived through it—and those who didn't—but what of the generation in the middle that grew up in the immediate wake of AIDS but before the promise of PrEP. The generation that, as Lambda Award-winning writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore puts it, "came of age in the midst of the epidemic with the belief that desire intrinsically led to death, internalizing this trauma as part of becoming queer?" Sycamore's necessary and thought-provoking anthology amasses dispatches from writers and activists who weathered the fallout.

Out October 5

Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much by Jen Winston

As its tongue-in-cheek title suggests, Winston's unafraid-to-be-messy essay collection dispels many of the myths surrounding bisexuality : for one, that it's "straight plus gay-—an identity made of old ingredients rather than something all its own." Along the way, she astutely argues that identity is not a zero-sum game; it's fluid, always evolving, sometimes in a way that confounds even the person who embodies it. Provocative and profound, funny and frank, these pieces suggest that "confusion is as queer as it gets."

A Tale of Two Omars: A Memoir of Family, Revolution, and Coming Out During the Arab Spring by Omar Sharif Jr.

In 2012, in the wake of the Arab Spring, Omar Sharif, Jr—the grandson of famed actor Omar Sharif—came out as gay in the pages of The Advocate . In doing so, and against conservative backlash to the movement, he asked, "Am I welcome in the new Egypt?" His memoir attempts to reconcile three facets of his complex identity—Egyptian, half-Jewish, and gay—and unspools both a gripping personal saga and an urgent plea for the place he still very much calls home to embrace equal rights for everyone.

Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League

Fans of Netflix's GLOW , a canceled-before-its-time dramedy about sports and sisterhood, should rejoice in reading this entertaining and engaging story about a league of semi-pro female footballers—gay and straight, factory workers and mothers, beauticians and truck drivers—and their lasting legacy on the field and off. Like GLOW'S all-women pro-wrestling promotion, the National Women's Football League, which lasted from the early 70s to the mid 80s, began as a "comedy attraction" but soon morphed into a seriously special meeting ground for those who shared "a love for a game society told them they shouldn't (and couldn't) be playing." From two incredible sports journalists, Hail Mary is a glorious and galvanizing chronicle celebrating no-longer-forgotten gridiron greats.

Out November 2

Solid Ivory by James Ivory

On a spring afternoon in 1933, when James Ivory was 5 years old, his parents took him to see his first film. Decades later, he would himself become a legendary, Oscar-winning moviemaker, bringing some of the most cherished literary works to life on the big screen alongside his creative and romantic partner Ismail Merchant: Maurice , Howards End , Call Me By Your Name . The producer-director's memoirs are as stately and intimate as his indelible films, chronicling his childhood in Klamath Falls, Oregon during the Great Depression; his clandestine boyhood crushes; and the tribulations and triumphs of making movie magic.

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park

A surprise bestseller in Korea, Sang Young Park's electric English-language debut perfectly captures the neon-lit potential of youthful nights, or as the novel's narrator puts it, "the boundless energy of poor, promiscuous twenty-year-olds." Our wanton protagonist is Young, a college student in Seoul whose favorite activities are drinking, having sex, and one-upping his ride-or-die female friend, Jaehee, in both. But when Jaehee settles down, Young is forced to take a sobering look at his hard-and-fast lifestyle.

Out November 9

You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

"Too much lives in a moment/to not feed it to the fire of the heart, slow," poet and performer Andrea Gibson writes in their awe-inspiring volume of verse, a book that brims with boundless hope, with sly humor, with burning love, with the brilliance and beauty of the everyday. Gibson's great gift is finding the light in even the darkest, most dire straits. This is a collection for anyone who needs a reminder that "It's okay if you can't imagine/Spring. Sleep through the alarm/of the world. Name your hopelessness/a quiet hollow, a place you go to heal, a den you dug,/Sweetheart, instead/of a grave."

I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat by Christopher Gonzalez

A closeted gay man suffers through an old crush's bachelor party, surrounded by low-priced margaritas and homophobic former friends, but the night takes a turn when he locks eyes with a vaguely familiar bartender. After a breakup, a man "fears his heart might devour itself"—literally—and seeks out a specialist who could help him make it whole. Examining the lives of queer Puerto Rican men, Gonzalez's first collection of short fiction is sometimes bittersweet but always savory, full of piquant narratives of appetite and heartbreak, from nursing a sangria at Applebee's while trying to reconnect with childhood pals to sharing a plate of french fries in a place free from "think pieces and Twitter threads and fat-shamers and coworkers who love happy hour but hate food."

Out December 1

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

With psychological acuity and captivatingly sinuous prose, the Booker-shortlisted author of Real Life vividly portrays the inner lives of outsiders. He returns here with a linked story collection that zeroes in on a group of awkward and astute Midwesterners—chemical engineers, mathematicians, artists—and the romantic entanglements that cause them to fall forward into one another's orbits. Check out an original short story by Taylor here .

Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie

Pushing 40, Skye suffers from the kind of wanderlust that makes her jump not only from place to place but from person to person—though she doesn't think of it as suffering; to her, it's the freedom of living life on her own terms. However, the cloudless blue sky of her isolated life comes crashing down when a 12-year-old girl claiming to be her biological daughter—a result of an egg donation—confronts her. Of course, responsibility for someone else doesn't come easy when you've only just barely been responsible for your own self.

Michelle Hart is the Assistant Books Editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Other writing of hers has appeared on the Millions, the Rumpus, and the New Yorker . Her fiction has appeared in Joyland and Electric Literature. She has been awarded a fiction fellowship by the New York State Writers Institute and was once profiled in her hometown newspaper for being in the process of writing a novel--a novel she is still in the process of writing.

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10 most notable LGBTQ books of 2021

"With Teeth" by Kristen Arnett; "Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks," by Patricia Highsmith; "Detransition, Baby" by Torrey Peters.

As the omicron variant sweeps the world at unparalleled speed — upending the return of long-awaited "normal" holiday celebrations — now may be a better time than ever to stay indoors, escape from the surrounding chaos and get lost in a good (and queer) book.

From a historic rundown of the political movement sparked by the AIDS crisis to a novel surrounding an impregnated queer love triangle, here are 10 of the best-selling, award-winning and barrier-breaking LGBTQ books from 2021.

' The Prophets ' by Robert Jones Jr.

A forbidden love story of two enslaved boys living on a Mississippi plantation takes a turn when the pair is betrayed by an enslaved Christian evangelist, threatening their existence. Robert Jones Jr.'s debut novel — a National Book Award finalist for fiction — captures the horrors of the enslaved and the beauty of a sustaining love.

' ¡Hola Papi! ' by John Paul Brammer

Named after a popular LGBTQ advice column, “¡Hola Papi!” hilariously chronicles the heartwarming story of John Paul Brammer, who grew up queer in America’s heartland. Brammer's memoir-in-essays details everything from how he came out in college (“in a fit of gay mania") to a problematic relationship he had with a Christian youth group member. Brammer, who has written for NBC News, said in an interview that his publisher refers to him as the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw."

' Detransition, Baby ' by Torrey Peters

This groundbreaking novel follows three central characters: a transgender woman who wants a baby; her ex, a man who detransitions; and a pregnant cisgender woman. Torrey Peters’ debut novel was nominated for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, drawing the ire of the Wild Woman Writing Club because Peters is transgender.

' Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks '

At 999 pages, this collection gives readers unprecedented access to one of the 20th century’s most notable and misanthropic writers, whose works include "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "Strangers on a Train" and "The Price of Salt" (which was made into the film "Carol"). Her notebooks and diaries, consisting of 8,000 pages, contain entries from 1941, when she was a Barnard student, to 1995, the year of her death.

' Broken Horses ' by Brandi Carlisle

In her long-awaited memoir, singer-songwriter and six-time Grammy winner Brandi Carlile tackles sexuality, fame and parenthood. Variety’s Chris Willman called it “the best-written, most engaging rock autobiography since her childhood hero, Elton John, published 'Me.'" NPR named "Broken Horses" one of the best books of 2021.

' Let the Record Show ' by Sarah Schulman

Schulman documents the comprehensive history of a New York City grassroots advocacy group dedicated to ending the AIDS crisis: the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP. Listed for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, the book details the collective anger people felt in response to a lack of government action in the early days of the deadly crisis.

' Yes, Daddy ' by Jonathan Parks-Ramage

This suspenseful novel follows the journey of an ambitious, handsome young man, Jonah Keller, who is trying to make it big as a playwright in New York City. Jonah’s climb up the ladder of success takes a nightmarish turn when he meets an older, successful playwright who lures Jonah into a world of the wealthy and notorious. Before its publication this year, “Yes, Daddy” had already snagged a television adaptation by Amazon Studios.

' 100 Boyfriends ' by Brontez Purnell

This brutally hilarious collection of short stories chronicles the substance-fueled, romantic and erotic adventures of an ensemble cast of Black, queer men in America. Author Brontez Purnell's slice-of-life group of tales was listed for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

' With Teeth: A Novel ' by Kristen Arnett

Named among this year’s best works of fiction by The Washington Post, Vogue, Reader’s Digest and several other publications, this gripping novel unveils a mother's struggle to enjoy parenthood and project the image of a picture-perfect queer family. The Washington Post's Ron Charles hailed Kristen Arnett as "that rare, brave writer willing to articulate the darkest thoughts even the best parents entertain while trudging along through the most challenging job in the world."

' Last Call ' by Elon Green

In a powerful work of nonfiction, this New York Times critically acclaimed book gives readers a chilling account of an elusive serial killer, dubbed the “Last Call Killer,” who preyed on gay men in New York City in the 1990s. In 2001, Staten Island nurse Richard Rogers was arrested for two of the killings. Rogers, now 71, is serving a life sentence.

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Queer Books from 2021 You Might Have Missed — And Why We Need to Talk About Them

Laura Sackton

Laura Sackton is a queer book nerd and freelance writer, known on the internet for loving winter, despising summer, and going overboard with extravagant baking projects. In addition to her work at Book Riot, she reviews for BookPage and AudioFile, and writes a weekly newsletter, Books & Bakes , celebrating queer lit and tasty treats. You can catch her on Instagram shouting about the queer books she loves and sharing photos of the walks she takes in the hills of Western Mass (while listening to audiobooks, of course).

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I don’t spend enough time on bookish social media to make any scientific, data-based pronouncements, but there is something I’ve noticed in the hours I’ve spent scrolling through queer Bookstagram: the same queer books show up again and again. Don’t get me wrong: most of these are books I’ve read and loved, or books I am excited to read. I am thrilled that they continually show up in my Instagram feed. I am delighted that they’re getting noticed by mainstream press, racking up lots of Goodreads reviews, and showing up on Best Of lists. They should be getting attention! They deserve attention! This is not a case of either/or.

I’m pretty deeply immersed in the queer book world at this point. Whenever I come across a book on a 2021 queer book list that I haven’t heard of, I get excited. I choose my queer reads from an extremely wide pool because I devote a significant amount of time to keeping up with new releases and scrolling through indie press catalogues. But there are so many readers out there who aren’t paying such close attention to every queer book being published. Readers rely on BookTok, Bookstagram, BookTube, Book Twitter, bookish blogs and newsletters, bookstore displays…the list goes on. Step back and think about it. How do you decide what to read next? The answer is different for everyone, but it’s often some variation of “I heard about it from…” Talking about books on the internet matters. I talk about a book I love, someone else decides to read it, and they talk about it, too, so someone else reads it, and someone else, and someone else…and before long that book is everywhere you look. It’s a beautiful thing.

I just want more of it. More talking about more books. I don’t want anyone to stop shouting about how much they loved that super-hyped queer romance. I just want to see all of the other amazing queer romances published in the same year get some love, too. Queer lit is so expansive. It comes in every genre. There is queer horror and queer sci-fi and queer humor and queer everything else under the sun. And, even better, there isn’t just one queer horror book published each year, or one queer mystery! Yes, there are some genres that still have a long way to go in terms of the diversity and number of queer books published annually. But let’s stop pretending that there’s only room for one literary novel by a trans author, or one fantasy with an ace protagonist, or one lesbian thriller. That’s a model of scarcity rooted in racism and sexism and homophobia, and I’m not buying it. Queer lit is abundant. I want to see that abundance celebrated.

Today I’m highlighting a small sampling of queer books from 2021 that you might not have heard of. It’s time to fix that! A lot of these are personal favorites of mine. They’re also the books I don’t see every time I open Instagram. They don’t have many Goodreads reviews — many of them less than 300. It’s time to fix that! If you’re ready to shout about all the queer books with me, read on!

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters has gotten a lot of attention — which is amazing! It was one of my favorite reads of 2021 by a long shot. I also adored Summer Fun by Jeannie Thornton. It’s another contemporary novel written by a trans woman that explores all the complexities of trans life. Why are so few people talking about this one? It’s hilarious and tender and so observant, and it’s brilliantly structured as a series of letters a trans woman writers to her idol, a mysterious 1960s pop singer.

Summer Fun is just the beginning, though. Have you heard of A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett? Or A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus? They’re both absolutely stunning short story collections by trans authors that came out last year. A Natural History of Transition is fantastical, while A Dream of a Woman is starkly realist. Both feature shifting and unpredictable trans characters, characters who are quirky and strange and selfish and funny.

With Teeth by Kristen Arnett is another literary queer novel that I see around the internet a lot. You guessed it, it’s another novel I love. I also love Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, a sad, meandering, thoughtful novel about a gay man living in Seoul and his various romantic entanglements. And I love The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall, which is such a quietly queer novel. It’s about Missy, a rock musician who grew up on a commune in Vermont, and her complicated relationship with her mother, who left when Missy was a kid.

Then there’s And Then the Gray Heaven by R.E. Katz, which is a beautiful meditation on queer grief and partnership and art. It’s a short literary book published by a small press, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from shouting about it. And I still cannot understand why people aren’t jumping up and down about The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine. I loved this one so much that as soon as I finished it, I went and bought Alameddine’s entire backlist. The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan is a brilliant family saga about two generations of a Syrian Lebanese American family, and though it does seem to be getting some well-deserved love, can we also talk about how queer it is?

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers is an Instagram favorite. Again, I can see why! It’s a heartfelt and often hilarious story about a woman who gets drunk married in Vegas and then falls in love with her wife. Equally hilarious and moving is Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie. Skye has a habit of running away from all her problems, but that strategy stops working abruptly when 12-year-old Vicky, her daughter via egg donation, shows up. Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon is another queer novel about being young and how messy it can be to figure stuff out. Like Honey Girl, it brilliantly captures the feeling of being adrift in the world, and in your life.

In the realm of the speculative, A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is one that pops up all over my Instagram feed all the time. I understand why — it was another 2021 favorite for me. But let’s take a minute to appreciate just how much queer speculative fiction was published last year! I loved Nino Cipri’s Defekt , the whimsical and heartwarming sequel to Finna . Defekt is about a loyal employee of the IKEA-like furniture store LitenVärld who, during an overnight inventory shift, discovers there is a lot more to his world — and his life — than he realized. Found family! Vengeful furniture! Tender romance and fierce friendship! I need us all to shout about this one.

I’ve been single-handedly trying to get everyone I know to read Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, a graphic novel about a badass bisexual elder who fights off death with a vacuum. I mean, do I really need to tell you anything else about this one? I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Future Feeling by Joss Lake, a speculative novel about a trans dog walker who tumbles into an adventure in a mysterious dimension. And I’m equally excited about In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu, another queer fantasy novel I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about.

I don’t want to stop there, but I suspect I’ve already gone on for too long. And these are only a few of the queer books from 2021 that I personally loved, or can’t wait to read. I didn’t even get into YA, or nonfiction, or romance. Luckily, this isn’t the only place you can find fantastic, lesser-known queer books. You can take this quiz to get an under-the-radar queer rec ! Here’s a great list of under-the-radar queer books by authors of color . This list of queer releases from June of last year has some buzzy books on it, and some lesser-known gems! And our Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of series has some great queer picks, too.

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Queer Books We Loved in 2021

By Ilana Masad

2021 felt like a rough year for reading. For many, books either provided a much-needed escape from reality or they piled up on your shelf, going unread as you dealt with our new dystopian normal by rewatching Gilmore Girls for the umpteenth time. Some of you might still be in the famed pandemic reading slump , trying to find the motivation to make it past a title page.

But if you’ll excuse my attempt at a cheer, have no fear, because we’re here, with queer books we’ve loved this year! (Sorry, not sorry.)

The books we’ve gathered below are by no means the only queer books to have come out in 2021, and this list is not meant to be definitive in the slightest. In fact, more and more books by LGBTQ+ authors are coming out each year, so readers have an ever-widening buffet of options from which to choose. Our list of great queer books is just one of many, and in the name of expansive reading, we hope it’s eclectic enough to fit any taste.

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Rogers’ debut novel stars Grace Porter, a Black astronomer in her late twenties who has just completed her Ph.D. As a doctoral student myself, I cannot overstate how much it tracks that Porter — the name she prefers using — heads to Las Vegas with her friends after graduation to properly celebrate her achievement. Despite the famous saying, what happens in Vegas does not stay there, but rather serves as a romantic catalyst for our lesbian protagonist. She and her new flame, Yuki, go about their relationship back-asswards — or maybe in exactly the right order given U-Hauling stereotypes — because they end their first night together legally married.

Instead of totally freaking out after they elope, Porter and Yuki decide to get to know each other through what is, to be honest, a pretty classic queer mode of communication: long-distance texting. Both women also maintain deep and nourishing friendships, which are a welcome addition to what is, on its face, a romance novel. When Porter is passed over for a dream job due to academia’s prevalent racism, she decides to move to New York to be with Yuki and find out what happens. Don’t you want to know what happens, too?

As a queer nonbinary person with a history of eating disorders, I have been looking for a book like Megan Milks’s debut novel for a long time. Finally, here is a story that includes, among many elements, the ways in which body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria intersect and interact. The novel’s protagonist, Margaret Worms, is 16 and lonely at the start of the book, still mourning the loss of the Girls Can Solve Anything club she ran with fellow amateur girl detectives when they were all tweens. By recounting old cases, Milks treats readers to fantastical mysteries involving wildly changing bodies, as well as one instance of complete disembodiment. Later, when Margaret is sent to residential treatment for her eating disorder, she continues to question what it means to have a body as she investigates a new case involving a ghost haunting the facility. Moving, fun, funny, and hella queer — we love to see it.

Jesse McCarthy is 19 when he leaves the Midlands region of England, which has been home to his family ever since his Jamaican grandparents settled there as part of the Windrush generation. Translation for American readers: the Windrush generation is the nickname given to those who immigrated to the U.K. from the Caribbean countries — formerly colonized by the British — between 1948 and 1971. They were encouraged to emigrate in order to fill the post-World War II labor shortage in the U.K.

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The opening of the book focuses on Jesse’s grandfather’s arrival in England. But this isn’t quite a family saga, focusing instead on Jesse as our sole protagonist. Newly disfellowshipped from the Jehovah’s Witness church to which his parents belong, Jesse, who is gay, moves to London where he tries to make a living working square jobs at first, but soon discovers that there is money to be made as a rent boy.

Jesse dives into the new, heady, sometimes risky job, expressing his own sexuality for the first time even as he fulfills the desires of others, all while longing for something more: intimacy and self-expression. A stirring debut, Rainbow Milk establishes Mendez as a writer to watch.

Speaking of sexual expression, the anthology Kink, edited by R. O. Kwon and Cleanness author Garth Greenwell, contains a plethora of queer stories. Kink isn’t necessarily essentially queer — although it can often be framed as such, seeing as it can involve deviation from cis- and heteronormative sex practices — but a great deal of the selections are pretty damn gay. Just like kink in the real world, these stories vary widely in tone and style. Where one story deals with a middle-aged couple having sex with a young man who lives with them for the summer, another examines the simultaneous disgust with and fetishization of a trans couple in a white suburban neighborhood. Yet another piece celebrates intimacy as expressed via sex work, while others probe sexual power dynamics and how they can explode outward into all aspects of a relationship. Okay, you get it, it’s a very smart book, but, um, did I mention it’s also just really — tugs collar — hot? Because it is.

Even before diving into it, I marveled at SJ Sindu’s sophomore novel’s gripping premise: the protagonist and narrator is a child god, considered the tenth human reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. Kalki, which is his human name, was born with blue skin, a sure sign of his godhood, and as a result, has been raised in an ashram in Tamil Nadu. His father trains him in the ways of a proper young god: Kalki reads the sacred texts backward and forward, heals people from the village who come for his blessing, and hosts daily prayer and meditation sessions. But he’s also just a kid who loves playing with his cousin-brother Lakshman, who wants a cricket bat for his birthday, and who crushes on his friend Roopa.

For years, Kalki takes his own godliness for granted, and why shouldn’t he? It’s the only identity he’s known, people believe in him, and he lives in an ever-expanding ashram built on donations from the pious. In his teens, however, things begin to change as a cascading series of disasters occur despite his most fervent prayers and efforts to stop them. On a world tour with his father, Kalki decides to go rogue, and from there, things only get queerer. Questions about how identity is learned, internalized, and rebelled against are all at the center of this gorgeous and fast-paced novel.

Akwaeke Emezi first became known in the literary world through their gorgeous debut, Freshwater , which was quickly followed by two other novels. This memoir, their fourth book, is epistolary, taking the form of letters to various people: their mother, former mentors, friends, and more. Emezi is trans, but not — or not only — in the sense understood by many of us whose queer terminology is centered in the West. Which is to say that Emezi’s gender is not a binary gender because they are also not entirely human; rather, they are an ogbanje, a spirit that was meant to kill them when they were small but that has, instead, survived and grown with them. This spirit, as well as their identity as an embodied god, mean that Emezi’s flesh may never be entirely in keeping with their animating spiritual self — which isn’t to say they haven’t tried to make it so. The memoir details, among other trials and triumphs, the difficulties they encountered along the way as they transitioned and advocated for affirming surgeries. Even for those of us who are mere mortals (or cannot access the parts of us that might be more), the experiences Emezi describes may well be familiar. And even if they are not, they are gorgeously written, evocative, and self-assured.

The sophomore novel from Joy Huang-Iris is a gripping read with themes of cultural blending, family, and history. It’s also an absolute joy for anyone who, like me, enjoys experimental formatting and playful storytelling. The Balance Tips is about the multiracial Fay Wu Goodson, daughter of Jia Wu, a Taiwanese immigrant to the United States. A videographer, Fay investigates the complex intersecting identities of other New Yorkers —parts of the novel are written as scripts and treatments — which is a great way to avoid dealing with her own identity. Talk about relatable. When Fay’s grandmother moves to the U.S. from Taiwan, she, her mom, and her aunt Hua Wu Ting all begin dealing with family secrets as they come to light. Fay herself is pansexual and very much still figuring things out, which is beautifully mirrored in the narrative’s use of multiple languages, the folding in of myths as well as historical events from Taiwanese history, and the overall experimental style.

Sophie Santos, comedian and host of The Lesbian Agenda, has lived many different lives and identities, as the title of her new memoir suggests. Having grown up with a military dad, Santos had a transient childhood and teenagehood, and with each new home she explored some new facet of her developing self. She’s been many things before being an out and proud lesbian comedian, including both the predictable (tomboy, theater kid) and the less stereotypical (pageant queen, enthused sorority sister). Her ability to chameleon herself into different roles has served Santos well as a performer, and there are certainly some hilarious stories that have come of it — some laugh-out-loud funny, others intensely cringe — but that doesn’t mean she’s had it easy. In The One You Want to Marry , Santos frankly discusses her mental health struggles, and revisits some of her own bad behavior. She’s no saint, but she’s human, and it’s that messiness we love.

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21 of the Best LGBTQIA+-Authored Books of 2021

Queer authors turned out incredible work this year. Here are 21 standouts.

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2021 had a lot going on, to say the least. Though 2021 had its ups and downs, one good thing to come from this second year of the plague was that a lot of great books written by LGBTQIA+ authors were published. To look back on the brilliance that made its way onto paper this year, and maybe give you some gift ideas, here, in no particular order, are 21 of the best.

Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie

In this sophomore novel from Mia McKenzie (whose debut, The Summer We Got Free , won the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for debut fiction), we follow Skye, a late-30s woman who runs a travel company and lives a nomadic life on her own relationship-avoidant terms. But when a 12-year-old girl tells Skye that she is the product of one of Skye’s eggs that she donated to a friend more than a decade before, Skye’s life gets upended. This is a fast-paced, fun, and poignant story that maintains its lightheartedness even as it probes the complexities of queerness, family, race, and the myriad manifestations of love.

Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir by Brian Broome

Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

Literary powerhouse Akwaeke Emezi is on some kind of roll, releasing at least one book per year since 2018, with three more forthcoming. Dear Senthuran is their first memoir, and, like their other work, it is emblematic of a kind of linguistic and (extra)corporeal brilliance that shines through in the way they craft sentences. Here, Emezi’s chapters are letters to friends, family, and lovers, through which they convey their experience of creativity, spiritual and corporeal connection, and making choices about living and thriving under the oppressions of imperialist capitalism.

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor is another wunderkind of the fiction scene, and his debut novel, Real Life , was short-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize. In this follow-up short-story collection, many of which are connected, Taylor brings his A-game to the short form, capturing with intricate nuance how people behave and perform relationships along class, gender, and race lines. The details and insights in human observation sometimes feel uncanny. Also, it is really funny.

With Teeth: A Novel by Kristen Arnett

With her 2019 debut novel, Mostly Dead Things , Kristen Arnett gifted us one of the strangest and most oddly endearing families in contemporary literature. With Teeth is also a family story, but with a different vibe. Following Sammie — one of the moms to Samson, whom she is vaguely or not-so-vaguely afraid of — in her bored and on-edge central Florida life, this book involves biting in more ways than one. It balances dark humor with affecting explorations of queer parenthood and marriage and, not least, loneliness.

¡Hola Papi¡: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer

John Paul Brammer is — I’m just going to say it — one of the best writers out there. His prose always manages a perfect balance between intensely insightful and deeply funny. Brammer got his writing start working for Grindr’s editorial vertical, Into, where he began his advice column of the same name as the book (the column has since migrated to Substack ). Now he is a prolific writer and illustrator. But this debut memoir-in-essays is a collection of “advice columns” written in response to questions Brammer mainly has for himself. The result is a book that does Brammer’s own writing justice, and that bar is very high.

The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcolm Belc

In this memoir of nonbinary parenthood, Krys Malcolm Belc brilliantly pieces together documents, photographs, and other archival material from his experience of gestating and giving birth to one of the children he has with his wife as a transmasculine person. The documentation and fragmented structure of the book perfectly fit the deeply honest and precise prose around the sometimes-gritty corporeal and cultural realities of birth, and how they are both entwined with and separate from gender.

The Renunciations by Donika Kelly

Always read Donika Kelly. That’s just a rule we should all follow. Her poetry is radiant. I know I’m not the only person who eagerly awaited this sophomore collection after reading her transcendent debut, Bestiary (2016). The Renunciations is both painful and painfully beautiful, with many of the poems reckoning with childhood sexual abuse, and many exploring the soft and hard edges of love and self. The imagery and intention behind the language make this book sing.

A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus

This debut collection of short stories from the Portland-based writer and editor (including of the literary magazine smoke and mold ) can be described as earthly and magical. Angus’ reverence for the science of nature, and equally for the imagination and mystery of nature, shines through in stories about chrysalis babies, mountains and moons, caterpillars, families, museums, and all manner of curious wonder.

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos is just one of those writers whose work is maybe too good. If you like essays that dig deep into the existential aspects of (often or always imposed) ideas around identity in a way that feels both incredibly smart and highly accessible, Febos’ work is for you. This is her third book and includes essays about the animalistic nature of humans, sex, gender, bodies, and also cuddle parties. It drops truth and insight on every page, and each essay includes an illustration from the artist and writer Forsyth Harmon .

Black Boy Out of Time by Hari Ziyad

Hari Ziyad is a cultural critic and screenwriter and was the editor in chief of the recently shuttered RaceBaitr . They are also a practicing abolitionist, and in their debut memoir, they relate and reframe many of their coming-of-age experiences with abolitionist insight. In applying this lens to their own life, Ziyad tells a nuanced, tender, and clear-eyed story of growing up Black in America, but also growing up in a large, loving, imperfect family and the way those relationships, and all relationships, shape one another.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

This debut novel made a splash early in the year, when every major news and culture outlet was talking about it. And while queer and trans artists generally hold complicated feelings about mainstream attention, and Peters has been open about this herself, this book is a juicy, meaty novel that, regardless of what you think about its (incredibly rich) characters, will not let go of your attention. It’s best not to know too much about this one going into it, because it is full of delights that are best experienced fresh, but to get you in the mood: This is a story about a trans woman, a detransitioned trans woman, and a cis woman, and how they might all figure out parenthood together. Go forth, and let it wash over you.

Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans

Jasmine Mans is known for her spoken word and is the resident poet at Newark Public Library. This is her second collection, after 2012’s Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels . Her relationships to Newark, America, queerness, Blackness, and the layers of love and vitality in coming of age fold together into a luminous poetry collection that will find its way into your heart and live there forever.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo won the National Book Award for Last Night at the Telegraph Club , and for good reason. Written by the prolific author of best-selling YA novels including Ash and A Line in the Dark, this queer love story takes place in 1954 San Francisco during the Red Scare, when Chinese and Chinese-American people were being highly targeted for racism, xenophobia, and deportation. It follows two girls, Lily and Kath, as they fall in love and navigate multiple dimensions of self-discovery.

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman

This book is a tome, but it is so readable, you’ll forget it’s 700-plus pages long. Sarah Schulman is a true powerhouse of creativity and knowledge as a prolific playwright, filmmaker, fiction and nonfiction writer, and longtime activist. Schulman was very involved in ACT UP and collected oral histories from dozens of people who were involved too in order to tell the whole story about the prismatic and often messy ways movements form and act, including in anti-racist and whitewashed ways.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Rivers Solomon rose to literary fame with their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts , and won a Lambda Literary Award for their second novel, The Deep . In Sorrowland , we follow Vern through the trauma and healing of abuse, parenting, and love. The book is both an epic fantasy-adjacent adventure and a parable, an exploration of power that captures all of its complicated implications. This is an immersive read with an unforgettable character at its center.

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So

This debut short-story collection was published posthumously after Anthony Veasna So tragically passed away unexpectedly just months before its publication. The stories in this vivid collection capture slices of Cambodian-American life, focusing on the children of refugees who carry intergenerational trauma. From a teacher to a badminton coach to a 9-year-old child, these characters are vibrant and fully realized on the page and are full of both humor and the complexities of living under multiple forces of marginalization.

You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson is one of those go-to queer poets whose spoken word is a cornerstone of many poetry lovers’ queer coming of age (whether or not that coincides with that first adolescence). Their poems are, indeed, like lightning, as much on the page as they would be on a stage. This new collection is as electric as ever, and is a gorgeous addition to this year’s poetry crop.

How to Wrestle a Girl: Stories by Venita Blackburn

Venita Blackburn’s debut, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes , won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and with this sophomore short-story collection, Blackburn’s writing chops are on fire. Following girls who are mean, hurt, targeted, dreaming, and otherwise wrestling their way through the world, this is a must-read for its exploration of girlhood and its vibrant prose alike.

Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up With the AIDS Crisis by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Novelist, memoirist, and editor Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s latest anthology collects work from a plethora of people who came of age during the AIDS crisis, mainly in the ’90s when the epidemic was widely known about — and widely associated with gay sex and queerness in general. The essays here have such a range of styles and perspectives, which alone makes it an excellent read. But the way they together paint a rich portrait of an in-between generation of people whose hearts, bodies, and minds were affected deeply and in such different ways by the crisis is what makes this book truly excellent.

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12 New Queer Books to Read This Summer

By Liam Hess and Emma Specter

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This year, the debate around the purpose of Pride month has never felt more heightened, due in part to the ongoing attempts to roll back rights for LGBTQ+ people across a number of U.S. states. But June (and indeed, any month of the year) should also serve as a time to celebrate and uplift the sheer breadth of queer creativity on display in 2022—and nowhere more so than in the world of literature. Here, find a list of all the new novels, memoirs, essay collections, and other LGBTQ+ books we’re looking forward to spending time with this summer.

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller (May 31)

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History

With their new book, writer Huw Lemmey and academic Ben Miller are bringing their fascinating—and very funny—deep dives into the lives of the most dastardly queer people in history from the podcast to the page. Bad Gays offers a riveting look back at historical figures whom the present-day LGBTQ+ community might be less eager to reclaim, from outright murderers like Andrew Cunanan and Aileen Wuornos to more insidiously sinister figures like J. Edgar Hoover or Donald Trump’s infamous mentor, Roy Cohn, while also exploring how their queerness might have played a part in the alienation or deeper societal resentments that sent them down the wrong path. (The less said about “evil twinks,” the better.) —Liam Hess

Nevada by Imogen Binnie (June 7)

Originally published by Topside Press in 2013, Binnie’s debut novel—which follows a young, punk-aspiring trans woman who heads west from New York City in her ex-girlfriend’s stolen car, attempting to play the fraught role of role model to a younger, not-yet-out acolyte she meets in Nevada—is a beautiful and occasionally disturbing complication of the oh-so-American trope of the cross-country road trip. Detransition, Baby author Torrey Peters is just one in a long list of trans women writers who name Binnie as an influence, and it’s long past time for cis readers to form a bond with the brilliance of her work. —Emma Specter

Greenland by David Santos Donaldson (June 7)

At the beginning of David Santos Donaldson’s debut novel, Greenland, its narrator, Kip—a Black British expat studying in New York—holes himself up in his basement study to churn out his first book in three weeks. The book in question is based on the life of Mohammed el Adl, E.M. Forster’s young Egyptian lover, and Kip begins to find his grip on reality disintegrating as his interest in el Adl descends into obsession. As it weaves in meditations on colonialism, spirituality, and the erotic, Santos Donadlson’s supremely stylish fever dream of a novel may delve most deeply into a specific subset of the queer experience, but the bigger questions it poses about how we come to terms with our own social and cultural identities make it feel surprisingly universal. —L.H.

The Kingdom of Sand by Andrew Holleran (June 7)

The Kingdom of Sand

One of gay literature’s most esteemed titans, Andrew Holleran, returns this month with his first novel in 16 years, The Kingdom of Sand . While Holleran’s cult classic, Dancer from the Dance, is remembered for the illicit thrills of its hedonistic roller-coaster ride through gay life in 1970s New York (during the free-spirited moment after Stonewall and before the AIDS crisis), in The Kingdom of Sand, Holleran turns his gimlet eye to the aftermath of that period. The book offers a poignant vision of friendship between the narrator—a gay man in his 40s who moved from New York back to his hometown in Florida to care for his dying parents, where he has remained ever since—and a man 20 or so years his senior called Earl, with whom he shares a strange and unlikely bond; its grapplings with loneliness and mortality emerging as something both haunting and ultimately beautiful. —L.H.

So Happy for You by Celia Laskey (June 7)

So Happy For You

Laskey excels at writing queer fiction that dazzles in its simplicity, and this latest effort—which follows a queer academic roped into serving as maid of honor at her childhood best friend’s wedding, only to find out that the bridal party is, well, stacked against her, to say the least—is no exception. We’ve too often sullied the term “beach read,” but So Happy for You is the kind of book best enjoyed with no distractions, beside a beautiful body of water. —E.S.

Just by Looking at Him by Ryan O’Connell (June 7)

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Just by Looking at Him

In this first novel from the acclaimed comedian and writer behind the hit Netflix show Special, Ryan O’Connell draws on his personal experiences as a queer man with cerebral palsy to the same humorous effect that has drawn him legions of fans—but with a whole lot of heart too. Just by Looking at Him is written from the perspective of a gay, disabled TV writer living in Los Angeles who appears, from the outside at least, to have it all—a successful show, a decent income, a loving boyfriend—but deep down feels stuck, attempting to overcome his imposter syndrome and low self-esteem through liberal amounts of alcohol and casual sex. O’Connell’s warm, conversational tone charts his protagonist’s journey of self-acceptance with all of the innate charm and dry wit you’d expect. —L.H.

Brown Neon by Raquel Gutiérrez (June 8)

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This debut essay collection is being marketed as “part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree,” and really, how can you come up with a more inviting description than that? Gutiérrez tells a singular and inimitable set of stories in Brown Neon, focusing much of the collection on the physical land that has alternately sustained, commodified, and criminalized so many modes of being. —E.S.

Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill (June 9)

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Tiepolo Blue

James Cahill’s first novel, Tiepolo Blue, charts a heady summer in 1990s Britain in the life of Don, an esteemed art history professor at Cambridge whose life is turned upside down after a radical contemporary artwork is placed in the quad of his college. A roller-coaster ride through the seedier corners of gay London follows, as Don’s journey of self-discovery ultimately turns self-destructive. With touches of Alan Hollinghurst, the musings of the book’s protagonist on the radical power of art to act as a catalyst for personal change make it an exhilarating, erudite read. —L.H.

X by Davey Davis (June 28)

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What if the world were ending and we were all just walking around Brooklyn listening to podcasts? That’s more or less the mise-en-scène for Davis’s Lee, who works for a major corporation by day and frequents warehouse parties by night. In this dystopian yet all-too-imaginable read, a new friend of Lee’s goes missing around a U.S.-led purge of migrants and refugees, resulting in a tale as sexy as it is alarming—and making it the perfect thing to read at Riis Beach all summer long. —E.S.

Pretty Baby by Chris Belcher (July 12)

Pretty Baby

The hometown-beauty-queen-to-pro-domme pipeline is strong in Belcher’s memoir, which draws on stories from her time working as “L.A.’s Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix.” It’s long past time for a canon to emerge around sex work written by those who are intimately familiar with doing that work, and Belcher’s account of labor, sexuality, identity, queerness, and femininity is absolutely not to be missed. —E.S.

Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of my (In)Fertility by Michelle Tea (August 2)

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Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility

Author, poet, tarot legend, and organizer Michelle Tea has long been known as a fairy godmother of the millennial queer set, and in this blazing new memoir, she approaches the subject of parenthood (and all the poking, prodding, jaw-dropping expense, and nosy questions that it can entail for LGBTQ+ parents) with her signature verve. —E.S.

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews (August 2)

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All This Could be Different

A recent college graduate attempts to navigate her new life in Milwaukee, the expectations of her parents back in India, an increasingly not-so-great work life, an array of exciting new queer crushes, and a set of friendships that alternately inspire and enrage her in this bold and wide-ranging novel that sets it sights on what it really means to be “okay.” Are you okay if you’re making rent? If you’re dating the people you want to date? If your parents are proud of you? These are the questions that have consumed innumerable 20-somethings, and Mathews expertly captures and elevates the position of being a young queer person in the post-recession U.S. with many more questions than answers. —E.S.

Vogue Daily

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17 Exciting Queer Books to Savor This Summer

Penguin Random House

Daydreaming about hitting your local park or beach with a good queer book in tow? Us too, and luckily, we won't have to wait much longer.

Below, find 17 recent or upcoming releases featuring queer storylines and/or authored by LGBTQ writers, all hand-picked by our editors. From rollicking rom-coms to thought-provoking nonfiction, this list has a little something for every reader.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

If you haven't heard of Detransition, Baby , where you have been? The groundbreaking novel from trans writer Torrey Peters follows three women — transgender and cisgender — as they embark on a uniquely complicated journey of making a family. It's a messy, glorious, and truly one-of-a-kind tale, but don't just take it from me: Detransition, Baby is a national bestseller with rave reviews, and a television series based on the book is already in the works . — Sam Manzella

Sarahland by Sam Cohen

Grand Central Publishing

The many Sarahs scattered throughout Sam Cohen's innovative short story collection run the gamut, from an aimless college grad-turned-sex worker to a gender non-conforming reimagining of the biblical Sarah. One thing is consistent, though: These bold, thought-provoking tales are as queer as they come. — SM

We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth

A feminist cyber thriller with a plucked-from-the-headlines premise, this debut novel from nonbinary writer and educator A.E. Osworth is a gripping, smartly structured read — and a brilliant exploration of how male rage endangers women. I encourage everyone to read this book, but if you're a white, cisgender, heterosexual man, it's required reading. — SM

Queer: Words of Change by Coco Romack

Sasquatch Books

Searching for a pithy queer read that still packs a punch? Queer: Words of Change by journalist Coco Romack fits the bill. A curated collection of quotes, the book highlights diverse LGBTQ activists and creatives past and present, from lesbian writer-activist Audre Lorde to pioneering transgender actress Laverne Cox. Partial proceeds will benefit New York City's Ali Forney Center. — SM

It Had to Be You by Georgia Clark

Atria/Emily Bestler Books

It Had to Be You centers around Liv Goldenhorn, a Brooklyn-based wedding planner who gets the surprise of a lifetime when her late husband-slash-business partner, Eliot, bequeathes half of their business to his secret girlfriend. What follows is a sexy, queer-inclusive ensemble rom-com that promises to " melt your heart like a popsicle ." Where do I sign up? — SM

Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets Through Capital, Power, and Labor by Alice Sparkly Kat

Nonbinary writer and astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat breaks down the etymology of the planets through the lens of capital and labor, putting contemporary postcolonial theory in dialogue with an ancient spiritual practice. Their analysis strikes that rare balance of being richly contextualized and accessibly written, making this " history and toolkit " an essential addition to any queer astrology lover's library. — SM

May the Best Man Win by ZR Ellor

Roaring Brook Press

ZR Ellor's Young Adult debut follows Jeremy, a newly out trans teen who decides to challenge his ex-boyfriend, football star Lukas, for the coveted title of Homecoming King. Unresolved tensions (and lingering sparks) come to a head as they battle it out for the crown. — SM

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Based on more than 200 interviews with ACT UP members, Let the Record Show is the most definitive history of the activist collective, best known for its militant protest tactics during the height of the AIDS crisis. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel author Alexander Chee called Let the Record Show "a masterpiece of historical research and intellectual analysis that creates many windows into both a vanished world and the one that emerged from it, the one we live in now." It's a timely read, too, since this July marks the 40th anniversary of the first time HIV was covered by The New York Times . — Chris Rudolph

Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books

Another buzzy release that is already being adapted for the screen , Yes, Daddy is a New York City-set modern gothic about a struggling gay playwright whose experience dating an older, more accomplished writer takes a dark turn. It's the debut novel from Jonathan Parks-Ramage, whose writing has appeared in outlets like Vice and and Slate . — SM

Burn It All Down by Nicolas DiDomizio

Little, Brown & Co

Described as a "mother/son, crime-revenge thriller," Burn It All Down is what happens when a gay teenage boy and his best friend-slash-mother are on the run after accidentally committing a series of crimes in an attempt at seeking revenge. James Patterson calls the book "audacious, addictive, [and] highly entertaining," which sounds like the perfect beach read to me. — CR

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

The latest from Steven Rowley, author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor , tells the story of a gay uncle who takes in his niece and nephew after a family tragedy strikes. The Palm Springs-set tale promises plenty of kaftans as well as family drama. — CR

Continuum by Chella Man

The latest in Pocket Change Collective's ongoing series of short works by LGBTQ activists, Continuum comes from the mind of Chella Man, a transgender activist, artist, and model (you probably already follow him on Instagram ). He wrestles deftly with a challenging but important question: What are the constructs we all need to unlearn in order to further liberation for all? — SM

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

Saint Martin's Griffin Press

In their highly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling Red, White, & Royal Blue , Casey McQuiston tackles time travel and sapphic love against an unlikely backdrop: the New York City subway system. August, an NYC transplant by way of Louisiana, falls for a charming girl named Jane on the Q train...only to realize that her leather jacket-clad public transit crush is actually a queer activist from the 1970s who is literally displaced in time. Chaos (and "magical, sexy, big-hearted romance") ensues. — SM

The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon

This debut Young Adult fantasy novel follows Wyatt, a witch and transgender man who is forced to reckon with his traumatic past — and confront his ex-fiancé — in order to save a magical kingdom he left behind. The Witch King is the first of two books in a duology, and it comes on the heels of Cemetery Boys , Aidan Thomas's bestselling YA novel about a trans Latinx witch. Trans and gender non-conforming witches to the front! — SM

¡Hola Papi! by John Paul Brammer

Simon & Schuster

JP Brammer is the man behind ¡Hola Papi! , the popular queer advice column that can be currently found on The Cut . In his new memoir, also titled ¡Hola Papi! , Brammer continues to dole out advice while also telling his story of "growing up biracial and in the closet against the backdrop of America's heartland while attempting to answer some of life's toughest questions." Teaching life lessons with laughter is Brammer's specialty, and this is a must-read for any of his devoted readers. — CR

Bath Haus by P.J. Vernon

The latest book from P.J. Vernon is billed as “ Gone Girl with gays and Grindr,” so you know you’ll be seeing copies around a Fire Island pool or two this summer. The story follows Oliver, a recovering addict who visits Haus, a local gay bathhouse. While there, he follows a man into a private room — but the hookup goes horribly wrong, and he barely escapes with his life, a nightmare pretty much every gay guy has feared. It's been described as a “white-knuckler” page-turner, and we can’t wait to read it…from the safety of our own bed. — CR

Out June 15

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson

Scholastic Press

This earnest Young Adult romance follows Olivia and Toni, two teen girls who meet at a music and arts festival over the summer. Sparks fly, and the weekend-long festival turns out to be much more than either of them bargained for. It's the sophomore novel from queer writer Leah Johnson, who made her debut with last year's wildly popular You Should See Me in a Crown . — SM

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An Evening with George M. Johnson, author of 'All Boys Aren't Blue'

As George’s memoir  "All Boys Aren’t Blue"  has reached massive success as a New York Times bestseller, it has become the American Library Association’s third most challenged book of 2021. But with each shove, George continues to persevere and advocate for Black and queer voices. “Black storytelling has often been banned,” George says, “My book is a tool so that Black queer kids and LGBTQ teens can see themselves, and read about themselves, and learn about themselves.”

In this talk, George speaks on the importance of sharing diverse stories: why we should remain resilient, how representation in media can support young adults’ mental and physical health and what we can do to support these voices. By listening to one another and understanding the history, language and actions necessary to change the world, we can form a community where we are all free to be our true, authentic selves.

The author will be signing books shortly after the event.

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California state university, san marcos.

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Cuban-American writer, teacher named Miami-Dade poet laureate

C uban American poet Caridad Moro-Gronlier wants to help Miamians express the stories hidden within their hearts as Miami-Dade County's new poet laureate.

Why it matters: Moro-Gronlier, an award-winning poet , literary editor and English professor, was appointed to the county post yesterday on the first day of National Poetry Month.

Her 2021 book, " Tortillera ," details "the queer experience of coming out while Cuban" and reclaims the Spanish slur.

What they're saying: Moro-Gronlier, who teaches dual enrollment English at Miami-Dade Public Schools and Miami-Dade College, tells Axios that she wants to host poetry events for residents of all ages across the county to create connections in a divided society.

Sharing your story in a poem can be cathartic and act like a "vehicle of empathy," allowing others to step into your shoes and see life from a different perspective, Moro-Gronlier says.
"I think we all ultimately want to be heard and want somebody to listen, and I really believe that we could truly approach the world a little differently if we actually listened to one another's stories."

What's next: She would like to partner with the Miami-Dade Public Library System to hold events in different parts of Miami, and has also considered pairing younger and older poets to create a memoir poetry project.

Moro-Gronlier credits much of her success to the public library system — her "home away from home" as a child — and her English teachers at Miami-Dade Public Schools.

At her appointment ceremony Monday, she said her teachers were the first to read and critique her early poems. They helped nurture her love for writing.
"They believed that this little Cuban girl had something to say."

Get the rundown of the biggest stories of the day with Axios Daily Essentials.

Cuban-American writer, teacher named Miami-Dade poet laureate

The photo that wrapped Marlon Brando’s homoerotic swagger in a tight leather jacket

A young Marlon Brando in a leather jacket and on a motorcycle

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Book Review

Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel

By Burt Kearns Applause: 296 pages, $29.95 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

He leans over the handlebars of his motorcycle, zipped up in a black leather jacket, his biker cap tilted over his right eye. His lips slightly parted, his eyes inquisitive, he instantly embodies contradictions: tough and vulnerable, fearless and scared, masculine and feminine.

This image of Marlon Brando from the 1953 film “The Wild One,” absorbed by the likes of Elvis Presley, James Dean and John Lennon, immortalized in the pop art of Andy Warhol, has had an almost subliminal impact on the American psyche.

“The Wild One” is nowhere close to Brando’s best movie or best performance. But this singular image, culled from an 89-minute film, somehow plumbs the depths of our thoughts and feelings on masculinity and rebellion.

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Burt Kearns’ new book, “Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel,” is not, the author takes pains to explain, a Brando biography. There have been many of those, including the actor’s own “Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me” (written with Robert Lindsey).

“Hollywood Rebel” is, as the author writes, “a study of how one man’s artistic and personal decisions affected not only those around him, but all of Western society and popular culture.” But at its most incisive the book is a biography of this specific image from Brando’s late 20s, the biker portrait seen ’round the world, recognizable and indelible even to those who have never seen the movie from which it was extracted.

Cover of "Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel"

“The Wild One” was based on the Frank Rooney short story “Cyclists’ Raid,” which in turn was based on the 1947 invasion of the Central California town of Hollister (near Monterey) by thousands of rowdy bikers over a turbulent Fourth of July weekend. As Kearns writes, post-World War II motorcycle “gangs” were generally populated by veterans set adrift in a new world after their service ended. “Cyclists’ Raid” caught the attention of producer Stanley Kramer, who specialized in progressive “social problem” movies, including one he had just made with Brando, “The Men,” in which the rising star played a paralyzed vet.

When Brando signed on to star in “The Wild One” he was hot off the success of the film adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which had made him a young Broadway legend when it premiered there in 1947. In “Streetcar” Brando played Stanley Kowalski as a virtual fire hose of sexuality, a brute in a tight white T-shirt (and, though the film conveys the point with Production Code-mandated subtlety, a rapist). This was a new kind of screen carnality, raw and visceral, and Brando, a mumbling powerhouse, was a new kind of star.

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But “The Wild One” was newer still. As Kearns observes, the movie’s homoerotic subtext quickly becomes homoerotic text. Brando’s Johnny Strabler, pouty with a slight Southern lilt, engages in a frenemy relationship with a rival biker, Chino (played by Lee Marvin), who behaves more like a jilted lover than a fellow road dog (“I love ya, Johnny!” he repeats over and over; during a fistfight Johnny knocks Chino through a store window, where he lands smack in between bride and groom mannequins).

Johnny seems utterly baffled by, if not terrified of, the opposite sex, represented by a townie (Mary Murphy) looking to spice up her small-town existence and a biker moll (Yvonne Doughty) with fond memories of a one-night stand.

Then there’s that tight leather, which would make Brando-as-Johnny a sort of butch fetish object for gay fans, artists and filmmakers, including Warhol, who used the famous image in multiple works; and Kenneth Anger, whose 1963 avant-garde short film “Scorpio Rising” features clips of Johnny cruising on his bike.

That Brando himself freely discussed his sexual adventures with both men and women made the homoerotic symbolism of “The Wild One” both easier and more resonant.

Lest you think the film influenced only gay subculture, Kearns also details its impact on rock ’n’ roll, particularly on a shy megastar from Memphis, who openly proclaimed his Brando worship, and a group of lads from Liverpool.

In one scene, Chino is lamenting to Johnny that “the Beetles” miss him, apparently alluding to the gang’s groupies. And yes, this was seven years before a certain band began to call itself the Beatles. John Lennon was on record as a huge Brando and “Wild One” fan. Kearns builds a compelling case for this origin story of the band’s name as he goes down one of the book’s many rabbit holes, some more rewarding than others.

The big picture is much clearer. Brando, and especially this Brando, has had an outsize influence on American culture and our conception of how a rebel behaves. “What are you rebelling against?” Johnny is asked as his gang makes itself at home in small-town California. His famous response: “Whaddya got?” Brando-as-Johnny grew into an all-purpose symbol of revolt, against norms in society, sexuality, fashion, music … and whaddya got. (Two years later came “Rebel Without a Cause” and another timeless jacket, this one a red nylon windbreaker.)

“Hollywood Rebel” occasionally wears out its welcome. Kearns has a habit of extensively, excessively quoting the same handful of expert sources. He sometimes overstates his arguments, as when he calls the Hollister biker invasion “one of the most influential public disturbances since the Boston Massacre” (one could imagine many rivals for that list, from the Civil War draft riots, to Vietnam protests, to Watts, to Ferguson, to the Jan. 6 insurrection). The author also seems a little too proud of his prolific double-entendre usage, even for a book that is largely about sexual magnetism.

On balance, however, “Hollywood Rebel” is a worthy addition to the Brando bookshelf, largely because the author picks an idea and never loses sight of it, even as he fans across multiple disciplines to explore the idea. This is a book about how one facet of one man captured in one image from one film can send ripples through the world.

Chris Vognar is a freelance culture writer.

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Hollywood, CA - March 10: Cord Jefferson back stage during the the 96th Annual Academy Awards in Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, CA, Sunday, March 10, 2024. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 06: Coleman Domingo arrives at the "Rustin" screening and Q&A presented by SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations at NETFLIX on January 06, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Unique Nicole/Getty Images)

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Stavropol, South Russia: In Search of Gorbachev’s Roots

The origins of a soviet leader revered as a visionary reformer in the west, but reviled as a weak American puppet in his native land

This article is taken from the July 2021 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issue for just £10 .

P eople of my generation — Westerners at least — who grew up at the tail-end of the Cold War can still get a bit starry-eyed about Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the former Soviet premier who celebrated his ninetieth birthday in March this year. Leader from 1985 to 1991, he seemed to end the Cold War overnight, showed us “communism with a human face” and appeared at pains to sign away the nuclear weapons we had spent our childhoods cowering from.

A leader popular enough to get a nickname, to us he was “Gorby”, the man in the black trilby, the approachable Soviet premier that Margaret Thatcher could “do business with”. He was the communist who made Reagan revise his estimates of the USSR as “an Evil Empire” and consign the phrase to “another time, another era.”

Yet in Russia itself, away from metropolitan liberal circles, pro-Gorby declarations are usually met with pity or contempt. In his own country, he is remembered as the windbag with port wine stains — “Misha the Marked” — the apparatchik who harangued them with interminable speeches in a Wurzel-like Southern burr and let them down where it really mattered. He left the economy in ruins, the shops empty, the queues for household goods a daily torment.

With his perestroika (a radical restructuring of Soviet life) and glasnost (openness) he managed to break up an empire, shaking the USSR so hard it came to pieces in his hands. “A traitor”, you hear, “a weak, soft leader”, “naïve”, a “bad politician” and — the worst crime of all — “He was working for the Americans”.

Objections that he worked not for but with the Americans and had to do so to save the Soviet economy, are usually dismissed. For many, Gorbachev did the unforgivable. “What can one make,” muttered one Russian acquaintance, “of a man who inherits a family of nations and then just gives it all away?”

Yet as with so many of my generation, Gorby-loyalty is in my DNA. Those of us who have spent our adult lives travelling or living in Eastern Europe largely owe them to Gorbachev and his reforms, his demolishing of the Iron Curtain. At any rate, when I was offered the chance to visit his birthplace in South Russia earlier this year, I grabbed it at once. There were few world-figures whose origins interested me more.

Cupolas and idealism

G orbachev’s birthplace, Privolnoe, can be found about 90 miles north of Stavropol, the Southern city he was later to make, as Regional General Secretary, almost literally his own. It’s a village of about 3,000 people surrounded by, as he put it, “steppe, steppe and more steppe”, endless flat green prairie.

Alongside the motorway heading to it are numerous roadside cemeteries and thickets of trees all painted, in the Russian way, fetlock-high in whitewash, a precaution against insects and heat. The sun beats down from a vast sky and the floating clouds are a procession of wonderful shapes. Some look like work-brigades, some faintly like sputniks, others like combine harvesters. Here the weather can change instantly: Brits will feel at home. Privolnoe today is a well-manicured collection of one-storey brick or wooden houses complete with iris-blue shutters. It is surrounded by playing fields for the village’s kids, and springy-looking meadows with wildflowers.

Unlike many Russian villages it has an infrastructure — for which read a bar and a decent supermarket — and everywhere there are stabs at a kind of (naïve) idealism. By the side of the road an enormous figure of a goose sits by a fairy-tale well, with the slogan “Protect Beauty” next to it. There’s a children’s playground called “The Ant Hill” with a mocked-up dragon and robots, and an Eternal Flame at the end of an avenue.

Nearby is one of the city’s war memorials. As different from ours as can be imagined, it shows the faces, absurdly young, of four of the city’s fallen, with “They Could Have Lived” accusing you beside them. Right behind are the cupolas of the village’s Orthodox Church — funded, it seems, heavily by Gorbachev — and the village’s “House of Culture” for knees-ups and fun. Though populated, like most Russian villages, either by children or the elderly (those of working age have left for the city) it’s a place whose pride in itself is clear.

Childhood of terrors

I t was Gorbachev’s house I wanted to find, and the first person I asked pointed me to it. It can be found by turning left down a side-road, then left again by the school — a dull grey building with happy transfers of aeroplanes and tanks stuck to the window, at which Gorbachev himself studied way back when. There’s little fanfare surrounding the Gorbachev home: simply a grey brick building behind fences with a metal roof and those trademark blue shutters which seem to define the village. It looks closed-up and unvisited, except by foreign film crews and Gorb-anoraks such as myself.

When I tell a cashier at the local shop why I’m there, her lip curls: “Oh, so you respect him in England, do you?” In a BBC news extract from 2016, villagers were more balanced. “Of course, Mikhail did a lot for our village, a lot,” one local says, “but as for the USSR, we’re upset about that.” Another echoes him, “Germany’s united now, but our country fell apart. That’s a mistake by our leaders. They could have saved it.”

Privolnoe has endured worse. The village, founded in 1861, has been through as much as any southern Russian village, but 1931, when Gorbachev was born, was one of the low points. Stavropol Krai , Privolnoe’s region, is heavily agricultural, packed with sunflowers and wheat. This made it vulnerable to Stalin’s collectivisation campaign, as he wrenched private land away from reluctant local farmers, to herd them into kolkhozes — collective farms — or send the richer of them to the Gulag.

For those who didn’t comply, a worse fate awaited, and this spelt terror for places like Privolnoe. A terrible famine was inflicted on the South — most notoriously in the Ukraine but here and in Kazakhstan as well — as an already chaotically disrupted workforce saw the grain quotas demanded of them soar, starving the locals to death.

Family memories

I t became a capital crime to steal even an ear of corn, and between 1932 and 1933, two of Gorbachev’s uncles and one of his aunts were to die of starvation. Gorbachev’s earliest childhood memory was of his grandfather boiling up frogs in a desperate attempt to feed his family. He remembered, he said, their white stomachs floating in the bubbling water, though couldn’t remember if he’d choked one down or not.

Such memories are far from uncommon in this region: many families went through the same. Nor was it unique that both Gorbachev’s grandfathers — farmers the pair of them — should be imprisoned under Stalin. One of them, the communist Pantelei, whose zeal didn’t save him from arrest quotas in 1937, was tortured so badly he returned, Gorbachev said, a permanently altered man. The other, Andrei — a pronounced anti-Red — worked so hard in the Gulag he came back from Siberia with four medals for it, thereafter swallowing his politics and getting on with the job.

The terror of Gorbachev’s early childhood gave way to others as the Germans roared into his village in 1941

As his biographer, William Taubman, pointed out, Gorbachev’s life as a child was already ideologically riven. Andrei’s house was stuffed with religious icons, Pantelei’s with portraits of Stalin and Lenin. The grandfather who believed in Christianity was hard as nails, while Pantelei, the Party Man, was warm and kind, and despite his rural background seemed almost an intellectual. Gorbachev seemed to live out these contradictions all his life.

The terror of Gorbachev’s early childhood gave way to others as the Germans roared into his village in 1941. Their four-month occupation left the place in tatters, the community divided, the women reduced to dragging ploughs themselves in a desperate attempt at a harvest. For a period, Gorbachev lived on a single cup of uncooked grain a day.

Later, as men up to the age of 50 were conscripted and the working age dropped to 12, he began to slog regularly as an employee of the Machine Tractor-Station. In 1949, just turned 18, he received “The Order of the Red Banner of Labour”. Along with his candidate membership of the Party, it ushered him into Moscow University, to study law. It was goodbye to the village.

Unstoppable rise

I t is difficult to think of greater contrasts to Privolnoe than Moscow, but Gorbachev never worked as the lawyer he trained to become there. When he emerged with a degree five years later, it was to a different world.

Gorbachev had in 1953 married his Raisa, a philosophy student, but something even more momentous happened that same year. A few months earlier, Stalin had died and the country was changing fast. In Stavropol region — Gorbachev went back there to start his working life — there was a shattering backlog of cases, as prisoners flung into Gulags for poor harvests in the thirties now had their charges re-evaluated and their sentences overturned.

To a newly-wed, one can see why the backbreaking tonnage of legal paperwork might not have appealed. Instead, Komsomol, the Soviet youth organisation (a kind of boy-scouts/girl-guides with political teeth) had vacancies, many of their senior members leaping to fill posts at the newly-created KGB. Within a few years, Gorby had been made Komsomol First Secretary for the region. His unstoppable rise had begun.

By now, he and Raisa were living in Stavropol. A fort-town in the North Caucasus, it was established in 1777 and is now Russia’s “greenist city”. Today Stavropol is stuffed with shopping centres, wine bars, street cafes and a population of 400,000. Back when Gorbachev arrived, it barely scraped a quarter of that, the town almost a big village.

Raisa Gorbacheva, she of the natty dress-sense and catty relationship with US First Lady Nancy Reagan, spoke about the “sea of mud” she had to cross to get to the Teachers’ Institute, the lack of central heating and running water (she and Gorbachev had to fetch theirs from a public fountain).

Not that life started very beautifully for the Gorbachevs in Stavropol. They lived in a single room with (in Raisa’s words) “a bed, a table, two chairs and two huge boxes full of books”. Raisa cooked each night on a paraffin burner in the communal corridor. The house, 49 Kazansky Street, a solid-looking affair, can still be found quite easily, up a slope and a sandy road, though there’s no plaque at all to its previous occupants (in fact Stavropol region, in terms of memorials, seems to have washed its hands of the Gorbachevs altogether).

As Gorbachev worked his way up through Komsomol and then the Party, their circumstances improved, with better properties on Morozov and Dzherzhinski streets. These names (still in place) are bitterly ironic — one referring to a young snitch (Pavel Morozov) who shopped his parents for unorthodoxy, the other to Felix Dzerzhinski, creator of the Soviet secret police. A Russia, in other words, Gorbachev did so much to try and free his people from.

Perestroika , he always said, had started for him in Stavropol. Made General Secretary for the entire region in 1970 — the Stavropol party boss — he brought in numerous reforms to agricultural work, introducing incentives and restructuring the farming system. Colleagues from the time have mixed memories. Some of them speak of his geniality, his openness and energy, the fact he drank so little. Yet historian William Taubman reports others describing him as “vain and easily offended”, “two-faced” in his habit of saying “different things to different people”, and “with a craving for power that led him to fawn on those who would give it to him.”

Such things though were endemic to the USSR and arguably came with the job, and the Gorbachev we know in the West was summed up by another colleague: “He was a great guy: inspiring, loved to joke and laugh, didn’t get drunk, a good, progressive thinker.”

Powerful allies

O nly one criticism was to dog him throughout his career: his failure to thank the people who helped him. Later, in the Kremlin, it bled loyalty away from those who might have been his rescuers.

But nothing helped Gorbachev more in his ambitions than Stavropol itself. At the bicentenary of the city in 1977 (part of his luck), a key visitor from Moscow was Mikhail Suslov — Chief Ideologue of the Party and creepy grey eminence of the Brezhnev years. Gorbachev, ever the genial host, schmoozed him and made an ally. He was boosted too by Stavropol’s geography, and those sanatoria in the Caucasian mountains. Not only Suslov but prime minister Kosygin and KGB head Yuri Andropov had diabetes and kidney problems. When they visited the South for treatment, Gorbachev was on hand to wine and dine them, gaining three patrons in the process.

In November 1978, after some stunning agricultural successes, he received the call to join the Central Committee in Moscow. He and Raisa packed their bags and left Stavropol forever — back to Moscow and the centre of power. Just seven years and three dead General Secretaries later, Gorbachev, aged 54, would be leading the whole empire.

His father Sergei, who from Privolnoe witnessed so many of his son’s successes, wasn’t alive to see these ones, having died in 1976 (his grave is easily locatable in Privolnoe’s tranquil cemetery). But his words from an earlier letter give some sense of what Gorbachev’s family might have felt:

“We congratulate you on your new job. There is no limit to your mother’s and father’s joy and pride. We wish you good health and great strength for your work for your country’s well-being.”

Heartening words, from a father to a son. But whether you nod respectfully at that final phrase or scream with laughter will very much depend, it seems, on a single thing: which side of the Iron Curtain you grew up on. Perhaps the last word, though, should go to Gorbachev himself. Asked by film-maker Werner Herzog in 2019 what his epitaph should be, he had a ready answer: “Mi staralis … We tried.”

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Trump promotes Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless The USA Bible': What to know about the book and its long journey

Former president Donald Trump encourages supporters to buy Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA Bible," a project inspired by Nashville country musician's hit song.
Resurgent version of Greenwood's Bible project a modified version from original concept, a change that likely followed 2021 shake-up in publishers.

After years with few updates about Lee Greenwood’s controversial Bible, the project is again resurgent with a recent promotion by former President Donald Trump.

“All Americans need to have a Bible in their home and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in a video posted to social media Tuesday, encouraging supporters to purchase the “God Bless The USA Bible.” “Religion is so important and so missing, but it’s going to come back.”

Greenwood — the Nashville area country musician whose hit song “God Bless the USA” inspired the Bible with a similar namesake — has long been allies with Trump and other prominent Republicans, many of whom are featured in promotional material for the “God Bless The USA Bible.” But that reputational clout in conservative circles hasn’t necessarily translated to business success in the past, largely due to a major change in the book’s publishing plan.

Here's what to know about the Bible project’s journey so far and why it’s significant it’s back in the conservative limelight.

An unordinary Bible, a fiery debate

The “God Bless The USA Bible” received heightened attention since the outset due to its overt political features.

The text includes the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, and the lyrics to the chorus to Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA.” Critics saw it as a symbol of Christian nationalism, a right-wing movement that believes the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.

A petition emerged in 2021 calling Greenwood’s Bible “a toxic mix that will exacerbate the challenges to American evangelicalism.” From there, a broader conversation ensued about the standards by which publishers print Bibles.

Gatekeeping in Bible publishing

Greenwood’s early business partner on the project, a Hermitage-based marketing firm called Elite Source Pro, initially reached a manufacturing agreement with the Nashville-based HarperCollins Christian Publishing to print the “God Bless The USA Bible.”

As part of that agreement, HarperCollins would publish the book but not sell or endorse it. But then HarperCollins reversed course , a major setback for Greenwood’s Bible.

The reversal by HarperCollins followed a decision by Zondervan — a publishing group under HarperCollins Christian Publishing and an official North American licensor for Bibles printed in the New International Version translation — to pass on the project. HarperCollins said the decision was unrelated to the petition or other public denunciations against Greenwood’s Bible.

The full backstory: Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the USA Bible' finds new printer after HarperCollins Christian passes

A new translation and mystery publisher

The resurgent “God Bless The USA Bible” featured in Trump’s recent ad is an altered version of the original concept, a modification that likely followed the publishing shake-up.

Greenwood’s Bible is now printed in the King James Version, a different translation from the original pitch to HarperCollins.

Perhaps the biggest mystery is the new publisher. That manufacturer is producing a limited quantity of copies, leading to a delayed four-to-six weeks for a copy to ship.

It’s also unclear which business partners are still involved in the project. Hugh Kirkman, who led Elite Service Pro, the firm that originally partnered with Greenwood for the project, responded to a request for comment by referring media inquiries to Greenwood’s publicist.

The publicist said Elite Source Pro is not a partner on the project and the Bible has always been printed in the King James Version.

"Several years ago, the Bible was going to be printed with the NIV translation, but something happened with the then licensor and the then potential publisher. As a result, this God Bless The USA Bible has always been printed with the King James Version translation," publicist Jeremy Westby said in a statement.

Westby did not have the name of the new licensee who is manufacturing the Bible.

Trump’s plug for the “God Bless The USA Bible” recycled language the former president is using to appeal to a conservative Christian base.

“Our founding fathers did a tremendous thing when they built America on Judeo-Christian values,” Trump said in his video on social media. “Now that foundation is under attack perhaps as never before.”

'Bring back our religion’: Trump vows to support Christians during Nashville speech

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media @liamsadams.

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Nicholas Kristof

The Online Degradation of Women and Girls That We Meet With a Shrug

A photo illustration of a woman with blurred circles in front of her face. The background is aqua.

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

Alarms are blaring about artificial intelligence deepfakes that manipulate voters, like the robocall sounding like President Biden that went to New Hampshire households, or the fake video of Taylor Swift endorsing Donald Trump.

Yet there’s actually a far bigger problem with deepfakes that we haven’t paid enough attention to: deepfake nude videos and photos that humiliate celebrities and unknown children alike. One recent study found that 98 percent of deepfake videos online were pornographic and that 99 percent of those targeted were women or girls.

Faked nude imagery of Taylor Swift rattled the internet in January, but this goes way beyond her: Companies make money by selling advertising and premium subscriptions for websites hosting fake sex videos of famous female actresses, singers, influencers, princesses and politicians. Google directs traffic to these graphic videos, and victims have little recourse.

Sometimes the victims are underage girls.

Francesca Mani, a 14-year-old high school sophomore in New Jersey , told me she was in class in October when the loudspeaker summoned her to the school office. There the assistant principal and a counselor told her that one or more male classmates had used a “nudify” program to take a clothed picture of her and generate a fake naked image. The boys had made naked images of a number of other sophomore girls as well.

Fighting tears, feeling violated and humiliated, Francesca stumbled back to class. In the hallway, she said, she passed another group of girls crying for the same reason — and a cluster of boys mocking them.

“When I saw the boys laughing, I got so mad,” Francesca said. “After school, I came home, and I told my mom we need to do something about this.”

Now 15, Francesca started a website about the deepfake problem — aiheeelp.com — and began meeting state legislators and members of Congress in an effort to call attention to the issue.

While there have always been doctored images, artificial intelligence makes the process much easier. With just a single good image of a person’s face, it is now possible in just half an hour to make a 60-second sex video of that person. Those videos can then be posted on general pornographic websites for anyone to see, or on specialized sites for deepfakes.

The videos there are graphic and sometimes sadistic, depicting women tied up as they are raped or urinated on, for example. One site offers categories including “rape” (472 items), “crying” (655) and “degradation” (822).

In addition, there are the “nudify” or “undressing” websites and apps of the kind that targeted Francesca. “Undress on a click!” one urges. These overwhelmingly target women and girls ; some are not even capable of generating a naked male. A British study of child sexual images produced by artificial intelligence reported that 99.6 percent were of girls, most commonly between 7 and 13 years old.

Graphika, an online analytics company, identified 34 nudify websites that received a combined 24 million unique visitors in September alone.

When Francesca was targeted, her family consulted the police and lawyers but found no remedy. “There’s nobody to turn to,” said her mother, Dorota Mani. “The police say, ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything.’”

The problem is that there isn’t a law that has been clearly broken. “We just continue to be unable to have a legal framework that can be nimble enough to address the tech,” said Yiota Souras, the chief legal officer for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Sophie Compton, a documentary maker, made a film on the topic, “ Another Body ,” and was so appalled that she started a campaign and website, MyImageMyChoice.org , to push for change.

“It’s become a kind of crazy industry, completely based on the violation of consent,” Compton said.

The impunity reflects a blasé attitude toward the humiliation of victims. One survey found that 74 percent of deepfake pornography users reported not feeling guilty about watching the videos.

We have a hard-fought consensus established today that unwanted kissing, groping and demeaning comments are unacceptable, so how is this other form of violation given a pass? How can we care so little about protecting women and girls from online degradation?

“Most survivors I talk to say they contemplated suicide,” said Andrea Powell , who works with people who have been deepfaked and develops strategies to address the problem.

This is a burden that falls disproportionately on prominent women. One deepfake website displays the official portrait of a female member of Congress — and then 28 fake sex videos of her. Another website has 90. (I’m not linking to these sites because, unlike Google, I’m not willing to direct traffic to these sites and further enable them to profit from displaying nonconsensual imagery.)

In rare cases, deepfakes have targeted boys, often for “sextortion,” in which a predator threatens to disseminate embarrassing images unless the victim pays money or provides nudes. The F.B.I. last year warned of an increase in deepfakes used for sextortion, which has sometimes been a factor in child suicides.

“The images look SCARY real and there’s even a video of me doing disgusting things that also look SCARY real,” one 14-year-old reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. That child sent debit card information to a predator who threatened to post the fakes online.

As I see it, Google and other search engines are recklessly directing traffic to porn sites with nonconsensual deepfakes. Google is essential to the business model of these malicious companies.

In one search I did on Google, seven of the top 10 video results were explicit sex videos involving female celebrities. Using the same search terms on Microsoft’s Bing search engine, all 10 were. But this isn’t inevitable: At Yahoo, none were.

In other spheres, Google does the right thing. Ask “How do I kill myself?” and it won’t offer step-by-step guidance — instead, its first result is a suicide helpline. Ask “How do I poison my spouse?” and it’s not very helpful. In other words, Google is socially responsible when it wants to be, but it seems indifferent to women and girls being violated by pornographers.

“Google really has to take responsibility for enabling this kind of problem,” Breeze Liu, herself a victim of revenge porn and deepfakes, told me. “It has the power to stop this.”

Liu was shattered when she got a message in 2020 from a friend to drop everything and call him at once.

“I don’t want you to panic,” he told her when she called, “but there’s a video of you on Pornhub .”

It turned out to be a nude video that had been recorded without Liu’s knowledge. Soon it was downloaded and posted on many other porn sites, and then apparently used to spin deepfake videos showing her performing sex acts. All told, the material appeared on at least 832 links.

Liu was mortified. She didn’t know how to tell her parents. She climbed to the top of a tall building and prepared to jump off.

In the end, Liu didn’t jump. Instead, like Francesca, she got mad — and resolved to help other people in the same situation.

“We are being slut-shamed and the perpetrators are completely running free,” she told me. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Liu, who previously had worked for a venture capital firm in technology, founded a start-up, Alecto AI , that aims to help victims of nonconsensual pornography locate images of themselves and then get them removed. A pilot of the Alecto app is now available free for Apple and Android devices, and Liu hopes to establish partnerships with tech firms to help remove nonconsensual content.

Tech can address problems that tech created, she argues.

Google agrees that there is room for improvement. No Google official was willing to discuss the problem with me on the record, but Cathy Edwards, a vice president for search at the company, issued a statement that said, “We understand how distressing this content can be, and we’re committed to building on our existing protections to help people who are affected.”

“We’re actively developing additional safeguards on Google Search,” the statement added, noting that the company has set up a process where deepfake victims can apply to have these links removed from search results.

A Microsoft spokeswoman, Caitlin Roulston, offered a similar statement, noting that the company has a web form allowing people to request removal of a link to nude images of themselves from Bing search results. The statement encouraged users to adjust safe search settings to “block undesired adult content” and acknowledged that “more work needs to be done.”

Count me unimpressed. I don’t see why Google and Bing should direct traffic to deepfake websites whose business is nonconsensual imagery of sex and nudity. Search engines are pillars of that sleazy and exploitative ecosystem. You can do better, Google and Bing.

A.I. companies aren’t as culpable as Google, but they haven’t been as careful as they could be. Rebecca Portnoff, vice president for data science at Thorn, a nonprofit that builds technology to combat child sexual abuse, notes that A.I. models are trained using scraped imagery from the internet, but they can be steered away from websites that include child sexual abuse. The upshot: They can’t so easily generate what they don’t know.

President Biden signed a promising executive order last year to try to bring safeguards to artificial intelligence, including deepfakes, and several bills have been introduced in Congress. Some states have enacted their own measures.

I’m in favor of trying to crack down on deepfakes with criminal law, but it’s easy to pass a law and difficult to enforce it. A more effective tool might be simpler: civil liability for damages these deepfakes cause. Tech companies are now largely excused from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but if this were amended and companies knew that they faced lawsuits and had to pay damages, their incentives would change and they would police themselves. And the business model of some deepfake companies would collapse.

Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, and others have proposed a new federal regulatory body to oversee technology companies and new media, just as the Federal Communications Commission oversees old media. That makes sense to me.

Australia seems a step ahead of other countries in regulating deepfakes, and perhaps that’s in part because a Perth woman, Noelle Martin , was targeted at age 17 by someone who doctored an image of her into porn. Outraged, she became a lawyer and has devoted herself to fighting such abuse and lobbying for tighter regulations.

One result has been a wave of retaliatory fake imagery meant to hurt her. Some included images of her underage sister.

“This form of abuse is potentially permanent,” Martin told me. “This abuse affects a person’s education, employability, future earning capacity, reputation, interpersonal relationships, romantic relationships, mental and physical health — potentially in perpetuity.”

The greatest obstacles to regulating deepfakes, I’ve come to believe, aren’t technical or legal — although those are real — but simply our collective complacency.

Society was also once complacent about domestic violence and sexual harassment. In recent decades, we’ve gained empathy for victims and built systems of accountability that, while imperfect, have fostered a more civilized society.

It’s time for similar accountability in the digital space. New technologies are arriving, yes, but we needn’t bow to them. It astonishes me that society apparently believes that women and girls must accept being tormented by demeaning imagery. Instead, we should stand with victims and crack down on deepfakes that allow companies to profit from sexual degradation, humiliation and misogyny.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. @ NickKristof

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You Need These New 2021 Queer Book Releases To End The Year
The first half of 2021 went by in the blink of an eye (and so is the second half) and we've barely recovered from the epicness of those queer releases, yet there are even more new ones releasing! From heartbreaking memoirs to queer superheroes and fun graphic novels, we're sure you'll find a new favourite read down below!
15 Queer Books We Can't Wait to Leaf Through This Fall
Prestel. Fall is fast approaching, which means it's the perfect time to cozy up with a good queer book. We compiled 15 exciting new releases from LGBTQ+ authors to get you through. From WLW (witches loving witches) rom-coms to investigative deep-dives, there's a little something for every reader on this list. A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee.
12 New Queer Books to Read This Summer
Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller (May 31) Bad Gays: A Homosexual History. $25. BOOKSHOP. With their new book, writer Huw Lemmey and academic Ben Miller are bringing ...
17 Exciting Queer Books to Savor This Summer
Us too, and luckily, we won't have to wait much longer. Below, find 17 recent or upcoming releases featuring queer storylines and/or authored by LGBTQ writers, all hand-picked by our editors. From rollicking rom-coms to thought-provoking nonfiction, this list has a little something for every reader. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters.
New Releases in LGBTQ+ Books
The Step Bet (Peach State Stepbros #1) Devon McCormack. 1,553. Kindle Edition. 1 offer from $5.99. #12. Dealing With Mapinguari and Dogged Engineers (The Sorcerer's Grimoire Book 2) AJ Sherwood. 695.
20 Best LGBTQ Books, Recommended by Queer Authors
1. The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye. Recommended by: Juno Dawson, author of This Book Is Gay, Her Majesty's Royal Coven and The Shadow Cabinet. Published in 2021 by trans journalist Shon Faye ...
2021 YA Books with LGBT Themes (200 books)
This list is for 2021 books with gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender characters or themes. Books on this list must be published for the YA or middle grade market. ... message 1: by Dahlia (new) Mar 14, 2019 06:51AM. Emily Danforth's book is actually adult this time around! reply | flag. message 2: by Rainbowheart (new) Mar 14, 2019 09:48AM ...
Book Review: 'All the World Beside,' by Garrard Conley
Garrard Conley makes his fiction debut with a story about a queer affair between a reverend and a doctor in Puritan New England. By Tom Crewe Tom Crewe is a contributing editor at The London ...
An Evening with George M. Johnson, author of 'All Boys Aren't Blue'
As George's memoir "All Boys Aren't Blue" has reached massive success as a New York Times bestseller, it has become the American Library Association's third most challenged book of 2021.
Book Review: 'Long Live Queer Nightlife,' by Amin Ghaziani
In "Long Live Queer Nightlife," the L.G.B.T.Q. studies scholar Amin Ghaziani visits a new generation of ad hoc dance parties that have risen from the ashes of the gay bar.
Cuban-American writer, teacher named Miami-Dade poet laureate
Her 2021 book, "Tortillera," details "the queer experience of coming out while Cuban" and reclaims the Spanish slur.
The photo that wrapped Marlon Brando's homoerotic swagger in a tight
A new book traces how a gender-bending image from 1953's 'The Wild One' resonated far beyond American gay subculture. The photo that wrapped Marlon Brando's homoerotic swagger in a tight ...
Stavropol, South Russia: In Search of Gorbachev's Roots
A fort-town in the North Caucasus, it was established in 1777 and is now Russia's "greenist city". Today Stavropol is stuffed with shopping centres, wine bars, street cafes and a population of 400,000. Back when Gorbachev arrived, it barely scraped a quarter of that, the town almost a big village.
How to Style a Book Shelf: Jeremiah Brent Shares His Tips
Jeremiah Brent, the newest cast member of Netflix's "Queer Eye," shows how he styles the shelves in the home he shares with his husband, Nate Berkus. By Tim McKeough In a public library ...
Trump Bible: Journey behind Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the USA Bible'
A petition emerged in 2021 calling Greenwood's Bible "a toxic mix that will exacerbate the challenges to American evangelicalism." From there, a broader conversation ensued about the ...
Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License
While an advanced office suite like this one typically runs for a couple hundred bucks, right now, Microsoft Office Pro 2021 is a jaw-dropping $55.99 (reg. $219) with special coupon code ENJOY20 ...
Opinion
"The images look SCARY real and there's even a video of me doing disgusting things that also look SCARY real," one 14-year-old reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Cheap Flights from New York to Stavropol
How does KAYAK's flight Price Forecast tool help me choose the right time to buy my flight ticket from New York to Stavropol? KAYAK's flight Price Forecast tool uses historical data to determine whether the price for a flight to Stavropol from New York is likely to change within 7 days, so travelers know whether to wait or book now.

75 of the Best Queer Books of 2021

Comics / Graphic Novels and Memoirs

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu

Stone Fruit by Lee Lai

Red Rock Candy Baby by Shira Spector

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle

The Unbroken by C.L. Clark

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne De Bourgh by Molly Greeley

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine

With Teeth by Kristen Arnett

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie

We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett

Blue Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu

The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcom Belc

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

A History of Scars by Laura Lee

The One You Want to Marry by Sophie Santos

Almost Flying by Jake Maia Arlow

Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea by Ashley Herring Blake

The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan

A Touch of Ruckus by Ash Van Otterloo

Artie and the Wolf Moon by Olivia Stephens

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia

Journey to Cash by Ashley Bartlett

The Final Child by Fran Dorricott

Warn Me When It’s Time by Cheryl A. Head

Unbreakable by Cari Hunter

What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna

We Are the Babysitters Club edited by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks

The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai

On Freedom by Maggie Nelson

Our Work Is Everywhere by Syan Rose

The Care We Dream of edited by Zena Sharman

Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam

The Good Arabs by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

The Renunciations by Donika Kelly

Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Magnified by Minnie Bruce Pratt

For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes

Night Tide by Anna Burke

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Future Feeling by Joss Lake

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

Love is for Losers by Wibke Brueggemann

Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron

The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

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