Imogen, Obviously by
A New York Times and Indie bestseller! With humor and insight, #1 New York Times bestseller Becky Albertalli explores the nuances of sexuality, identity, and friendship in this timely new novel. Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she's got the World's Greatest Ally title locked down. She's never missed a Pride Alliance meeting. She knows more about queer media discourse than her very queer little sister. She even has two queer best friends. There's Gretchen, a fellow high school senior, who helps keep Imogen's biases in check. And then there's Lili--newly out and newly thriving with a cool new squad of queer college friends. Imogen's thrilled for Lili. Any ally would be. And now that she's finally visiting Lili on campus, she's bringing her ally A game. Any support Lili needs, Imogen's all in. Even if that means bending the truth, just a little. Like when Lili drops a tiny queer bombshell: she's told all her college friends that Imogen and Lili used to date. And none of them know that Imogen is a raging hetero--not even Lili's best friend, Tessa. Of course, the more time Imogen spends with chaotic, freckle-faced Tessa, the more she starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with. . .
Dragging Mason County by
"A timely tale of friendship, self-acceptance, and the importance of proper contouring."--Kevin Christopher Snipes, author of Milo and Marcos at the End of the World A laugh-out-loud YA debut that examines the realities of small-town queer life and celebrates the transformative power of drag--perfect for fans of RuPaul's Drag Race and Pumpkin. Peter Thompkin needs a public image overhaul. After a tense confrontation with one of the few other queer kids in his small-town high school, rumors about him are becoming more elaborate by the day. Meanwhile, his best friend Alan (aka teen drag queen Aggie Culture) is throwing Mason County's debut Drag Extravaganza. Although Peter is a self-described "dragnostic," he decides to help produce the show, hoping to prove that he isn't a self-hating gay. In the process, he finds himself facing down angry guard dogs, angrier bigots, and a very high-strung church lady. As backlash grows, Peter begins to wonder whether he's setting fire to his already damaged reputation and if his friendship with Alan will survive past curtain call. At turns touching, sharply funny, and a little absurd, Dragging Mason County explores the pains and pleasures of queer community through one teen's journey to self-acceptance.
Ode to My First Car by
By the critically praised author of A Million Quiet Revolutions, this YA contemporary sapphic romance told in verse is about a bisexual teen girl who falls in and out of love over the course of one fateful summer. It's a few months before senior year and Claire Kemp, a closeted bisexual, is finally starting to admit she might be falling in love with her best friend, Sophia, who she's known since they were four. Trying to pay off the fine from the crash that totals Lars, her beloved car, Claire takes a job at the local nursing home up the street from her house. There she meets Lena, an eighty-eight-year-old lesbian woman who tells her stories about what it was like growing up gay in the 1950s and '60s. As Claire spends more time with Lena and grows more confident of her identity, another girl, Pen, comes into the picture, and Claire is caught between two loves-one familiar and well-worn, the other new and untested.
I'll Take Everything You Have by
From an Edgar Award-winning author, this historical noir novel follows the life-changing summer of sixteen-year-old Joe Garbe as he discovers queer community in 1930s Chicago and gets caught up in the city's crooked underbelly. In the summer of 1934, Joe Garbe arrives in Chicago with one goal: Earn enough money to get out of debt and save the family farm. Joe's cousin sets him up with a hotel job, then proposes a sketchy scheme to make a lot more money fast. While running his con, Joe finds himself splitting time between Eddie, a handsome flirt on a delivery truck, and Raymond, a carefree rich kid who shows Joe the eye-opening queer life around every corner of the big city. Joe's exposure to the surface of criminal Chicago pulls him into something darker than he could have imagined. When danger closes in--from gangsters, the police, and people he thought were friends--Joe needs to pack up and get lost. But before he can figure out where to go, he has to decide who he wants to be. I'll Take Everything You Have is a vivid portrayal of queer coming of age in Depression-era Chicago, and a timeless story of trying to make your future bright when the rest of the world is dead set on keeping it hidden in the dark.
In the Lives of Puppets by
A NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND INDIE BESTSELLER! New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune invites you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts. Most Anticipated from BookPage * Goodreads * The Nerd Daily * Paste Magazine * LitReactor * OverDrive * LGBTQ Reads * Tor.com * LibraryReads * more "An enchanting tale of Pinocchio in the end times." --P. Djèlà Clark In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots--fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They're a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled "HAP," he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio's former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic's assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming. Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached? Inspired by Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door. â~... "An epic quest of rescue and discovery [with] the author's trademark charm, heart, and bittersweetness." --Library Journal, starred review Praise for TJ Klune's previous work: "Like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket." --V.E. SCHWAB * "Very close to perfect." --SEANAN McGUIRE * "Utterly absorbing." --GAIL CARRIGER * "It will renew your faith in humanity." --TERRY BROOKS * "It healed me." --CASSANDRA KHAW * "Compassionate." --RYKA AOKI
Any Other City by
Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static Saints. Side A is a snapshot of her life from 1993, when Tracy arrives in a labyrinthine city as a fledgling artist and unexpectedly falls in with a clutch of trans women, including the iconoclastic visual artist Sadie Tang. Side B finds Tracy, now a semi-famous musician, in the same strange city in 2019, healing from a traumatic event through songwriting, queer kinship, and sexual pleasure. While writing her memoir, Tracy perceives how the past reverberates into the present, how a body is a time machine, how there's power in refusing to dust the past with powdered sugar, and how seedlings begin to slowly grow in empty spaces after things have been broken open. Motifs recur like musical phrases, and traces of what used to be there peek through, like a palimpsest. Any Other City is a novel about friendship and other forms of love, travelling in a body across decades, and transm
Blackouts by
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, BookPage, The New York Public Library, Powell's A Must-Read: Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Boston Herald, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, The Bay Area Reporter, Datebook, Electric Literature, The Stacks, Them, Publishers Weekly "Sweeping, ingenious . . . A kiss to build a dream on." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective. Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns--and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan's tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures? A book about storytelling--its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change--and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Justin Torres's Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative. A marvel of creative imagination, it draws on testimony, photographs, illustrations, and a range of influences as it insists that we look long and steadily at what we have inherited and what we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. A reclamation of ransacked history, a celebration of defiance, and a transformative encounter, Blackouts mines the stories that have been kept from us and brings them into the light.
Always the Almost by
A trans pianist makes a New Year's resolution on a frozen Wisconsin night to win regionals and win back his ex, but a new boy complicates things in Edward Underhill's heartfelt debut YA rom-dram, Always the Almost. Sixteen-year-old trans boy Miles Jacobson has two New Year's resolutions: 1) win back his ex-boyfriend (and star of the football team) Shane McIntyre, and 2) finally beat his slimy arch-nemesis at the Midwest's biggest classical piano competition. But that's not going to be so easy. For one thing, Shane broke up with Miles two weeks after Miles came out as trans, and now Shane's stubbornly ignoring him, even when they literally bump into each other. Plus, Miles' new, slightly terrifying piano teacher keeps telling him that he's playing like he "doesn't know who he is"--whatever that means. Then Miles meets the new boy in town, Eric Mendez, a proudly queer cartoonist from Seattle who asks his pronouns, cares about art as much as he does--and makes his stomach flutter. Not what he needs to be focusing on right now. But after Eric and Miles pretend to date so they can score an invite to a couples-only Valentine's party, the ruse turns real with a kiss, which is also definitely not in the plan. If only Miles could figure out why Eric likes him so much. After all, it's not like he's cool or confident or comfortable in his own skin. He's not even good enough at piano to get his fellow competitors to respect him, especially now, as Miles. Nothing's ever been as easy for him as for other people--other boys. He's only ever been almost enough. So why, when he's with Eric, does it feel like the only person he's ever really not been enough for...is himself?
Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy SIGNED by
New York Times bestseller Faith Erin Hicks is back with a young adult graphic novel romance about a hotheaded hockey player who asks for temper management lessons from the cool, calm boy in drama club. It should have been a night of triumph for Alix's hockey team. But her mean teammate Lindsay decided to start up with her usual rude comments and today Alix, who usually tries to control her anger, let it finally run free. Alix lashes out and before she knows it, her coach is dragging her off Lindsay, and the invitation to the Canada National Women's U18 Team's summer camp is on the line. She needs to learn how to control this anger, and she is sure Ezra, the popular and poised theater kid from her grade is the answer. So she asks for his help. But as they hang out and start get closer, Alix learns that there is more to Ezra than the cool front he puts on. And that maybe this friendship could become something more. . . .
DC Pride: the New Generation
The highly anticipated sequel to the Ringo Award-winning DC Pride 2021, DC Pride- The New Generation features more stories, more characters, and more pride than ever before! Spotlighting LGBTQIA+ fan-favorites new and old, including Superman (Jon Kent), Nubia, Tim Drake, Kid Quick, Connor Hawke, Aquaman (Jackson Hyde), Green Lantern (Jo Mullein), Alysia Yeoh, the Ray, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Batwoman - brought to life by a stellar lineup of queer and ally talent! 2023 Eisner Nominee - Best Short Story, "Finding Batman" by Kevin Conroy and J. Bone This volume includes all five parts of Tim Drake's coming out journey, as well as Kevin Conroy's celebrated autobiographical comic "Finding Batman." DC Pride- The New Generation also includes a special Multiversity- Teen Justice kickoff story spotlighting Kid Quick. DC Pride- The New Generation collects DC Pride 2022 #1 and DC Pride- Tim Drake Special #1, including the following stories- "Super Pride" by Devin Grayson, Nick Robles, Triona Farrell and Aditya Bidikar"Confessions" by Stephanie Williams, Meghan Hetrick, Marissa Louise and Ariana Maher"Special Delivery" by Travis G. Moore, Enrica Eren Angiolini and Ariana Maher"Are You Ready for This?" by Danny Lore & Ivan Cohen, Brittney Williams, Enrica Eren Angiolini and Ariana Maher"A World Kept Just For Me" by Alyssa Wong, W. Scott Forbes and Ariana Maher"The Gumshoe in Green" by Tini Howard, Evan Cagle and Lucas Gattoni"Think of Me" by Ted Brandt & Ro Stein and Frank Cvetkovic"Public Display of Electromagnetism" by Greg Lockard, Giulio Macaione and Aditya Bidikar"The Hunt" by Dani Fernandez, Zoe Thorogood, Jeremy Lawson and Aditya Bidikar"Bat's in the Cradle" by Stephanie Philips, Samantha Dodge, Marissa Louise and Lucas Gattoni"Up at Bat" by Jadzia Axelrod, Lynne Yoshii, Tamra Bonvillain and Ariana Maherand "Finding Batman," a personal story by Kevin Conroy with art by J.Bone and Aditya Bidikar
Light from Uncommon Stars by
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. Hugo Award Finalist A National Bestseller Indie Next Pick New York Public Library Top 10 Book of 2021 A Kirkus Best Book of 2021 A Barnes & Noble Best Science Fiction Book of 2021 2022 Alex Award Winner 2022 Stonewall Book Award Winner Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
All the Things We Don't Talk About by
A "big-hearted, lively, and expansive portrait of a family" that follows a neurodivergent father, his nonbinary teenager, and the sudden, catastrophic reappearance of the woman who abandoned them (Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author). Morgan Flowers just wants to hide. Raised by their neurodivergent father, Morgan has grown up haunted by the absence of their mysterious mother Zoe, especially now, as they navigate their gender identity and the turmoil of first love. Their father Julian has raised Morgan with care, but he can't quite fill the gap left by the dazzling and destructive Zoe, who fled to Europe on Morgan's first birthday. And when Zoe is dumped by her girlfriend Brigid, she suddenly comes crashing back into Morgan and Julian's lives, poised to disrupt the fragile peace they have so carefully cultivated. Through it all, Julian and Brigid have become unlikely pen-pals and friends, united by the knowledge of what it's like to love and lose Zoe; they both know that she hasn't changed. Despite the red flags, Morgan is swiftly drawn into Zoe's glittering orbit and into a series of harmful missteps, and Brigid may be the only link that can pull them back from the edge. A story of betrayal and trauma alongside queer love and resilience, ALL THE THINGS WE DON'T TALK ABOUT is a celebration of and a reckoning with the power and unintentional pain of a thoroughly modern family.
Rust in the Root by
The author of the visionary New York Times bestseller Dread Nation returns with another spellbinding historical fantasy set at the crossroads of race and power in America. It is 1937, and Laura Ann Langston lives in an America divided--between those who work the mystical arts and those who do not. Ever since the Great Rust, a catastrophic event that blighted the arcane force called the Dynamism and threw America into disarray, the country has been rebuilding for a better future. And everyone knows the future is industry and technology--otherwise known as Mechomancy--not the traditional mystical arts. Laura disagrees. A talented young queer mage from Pennsylvania, Laura hopped a portal to New York City on her seventeenth birthday with hopes of earning her mage's license and becoming something more than a rootworker. But four months later, she's got little to show for it other than an empty pocket and broken dreams. With nowhere else to turn, Laura applies for a job with the Bureau of the Arcane's Conservation Corps, a branch of the US government dedicated to repairing the Dynamism so that Mechomancy can thrive. There she meets the Skylark, a powerful mage with a mysterious past, who reluctantly takes Laura on as an apprentice. As they're sent off on their first mission together into the heart of the country's oldest and most mysterious Blight, they discover the work of mages not encountered since the darkest period in America's past, when Black mages were killed for their power--work that could threaten Laura's and the Skylark's lives, and everything they've worked for.
The Thirty Names of Night by
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award--Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost ​​From the award-winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars, a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts--a "vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night is a feat" (R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries). Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. As his grandmother's sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria, but he's been struggling ever since his mother's ghost began visiting him each evening. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting birds. She mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn't and has never been alone, he has the courage to claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother's ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar's signature "folkloric, lyrical, and emotionally intense...gorgeous and alive" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a "stunning...vivid, visceral, and urgent" (Booklist, starred review) exploration of loss, memory, migration, and identity.
And Then the Gray Heaven by
RE Katz'sAnd Then the Gray Heaven centers on Jules, whose partner B has recently died in a freak accident. Confronting the red tape of the hospital, the dissociation and cruelty of B's family, and the unimaginable void now at the center of their lives, Jules and new friend Theo embark on a road trip to bury two-thirds of B's ashes in the places they most belong. Along the way, Katz delves into their relationship and their life stories--Jules' rise from abandoned baby origins through the Florida foster care system, and B's artistic transformation, surrounded by kindred spirits who helped them realize it was possible to be regarded as a human and not as a body. Delving into what it means to try to be alive to your own pain and the pain of others under late capitalism,And Then the Gray Heaven explores the themes of queer grief and affection, queer failure, burial as hero's journey, and the grotesqueries of artistic determination within and beyond the institutions that define our lives.
Out There by
Into the queer new yonder! To conclude the trio of anthologies that started with critically acclaimed All Out and Out Now, Out There features seventeen original short stories set in the future from fantastic queer YA authors. Explore new and familiar worlds where the human consciousness can be uploaded into a body on Mars...an alien helps a girl decide if she should tell her best friend how she feels...two teens get stuck in a time loop at a space station...people are forced to travel to the past or the future to escape the dying planet...only a nonbinary person can translate the binary code of a machine that predicts the future...everyone in the world vanishes except for two teen girls who are in love. This essential and beautifully written collection immerses and surprises with each turn of the page. With original stories from: Ugochi M. Agoawike K. Ancrum Kalynn Bayron Z Brewer Mason Deaver Alechia Dow Z.R. Ellor Leah Johnson Naomi Kanakia Claire Kann Alex London Jim McCarthy Abdi Nazemian Emma K. Ohland Adam Sass Mato J. Steger Nita Tyndall
Young Mungo by
A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain Douglas Stuart's first novel Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Published or forthcoming in forty territories, it has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Now Stuart returns with Young Mungo, his extraordinary second novel. Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men. Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future. Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
Roaming by
"Gloriously rendered... An ode to traveling as friends when you're both young and carefree and every new experience is exciting and wondrous."―Robert Ito, The New York Times Book Review Spring Break, 2009: Five days, three friends, and one big city. Roaming marks a triumphant return to the graphic novel and a deft foray into new adult fiction for Caldecott Medal authors Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki. Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term friendship off-balance. Emotional tensions vibrate wildly against the resplendently illustrated backdrop of the city, capturing a spontaneous queer romance in all of its fledgling glory. Slick attention to the details of a bustling, intimidating metropolis are softened with a palette of muted pastels, as though seen through the eyes of first-time travelers. The awe, wonder, and occasional stumble along the way come to life with stunning accuracy. Roaming is the third collaboration from the critically acclaimed team behind Skim and Governor General's Literary Award winner This One Summer. Moody, atmospheric, and teeming with life, the magic of this comics duo leaks through the pages with lush and exquisite pen work. The Tamakis' singular, elegant vision of an urban paradise slowly revealing its imperfections to the tune of its visitors' rhythms is a masterpiece--a future classic for generations to come.
Manywhere by
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ART SIEDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION, THE 2022 LAMBDA LITERARY PRIZE FOR TRANSGENDER FICTION, AND THE 2023 PUBLISHING TRIANGLE EDMUND WHITE AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION "These breathlessly imaginative stories are all the more remarkable for the elegant, organic ways in which the author unhooks language from its entrenched assumptions about men and women." --The New York Times Book Review Morgan Thomas's Manywhere features lush and uncompromising stories about characters crossing geographical borders and gender binaries. The nine stories in Morgan Thomas's shimmering debut collection witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, whatever the cost. As Thomas's subjects trace deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery. A trans woman finds her independence with the purchase of a pregnancy bump; a young Virginian flees their relationship, choosing instead to immerse themself in the life of an intersex person from Colonial-era Jamestown. A writer tries to evade the murky and violent legacy of an ancestor who supposedly disappeared into a midwifery bag, and in the uncanny title story, a young trans person brings home a replacement daughter for their elderly father. Winding between reinvention and remembrance, transition and transcendence, these origin stories resound across centuries. With warm, meticulous emotional intelligence, Morgan Thomas uncovers how the stories we borrow to understand ourselves in turn shape the people we become. Ushering in a new form of queer mythmaking, Manywhere introduces a storyteller of uncommon range and talent.
Odes to Lithium by
Captivating poems and visual art seek to bring comfort and solidarity to anyone living with Bipolar Disorder. In this remarkable debut, Shira Erlichman pens a love letter to Lithium, her medication for Bipolar Disorder. With inventiveness, compassion, and humor, she thrusts us into a world of unconventional praise. From an unexpected encounter with her grandmother's ghost, to a bubble bath with Bjӧrk, to her plumber's confession that he, too, has Bipolar, Erlichman buoyantly topples stigma against the mentally ill. These are necessary odes to self-acceptance, resilience, and the jagged path toward healing. With startling language, and accompanied by her bold drawings and collages, she gives us a sparkling, original view into what makes us human.
Black Girl, Call Home by
A literary coming-of-age poetry collection, an ode to the places we call home, and a piercingly intimate deconstruction of daughterhood, Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home.
All the Flowers Kneeling by
Finalist for the 2023 PEN Open Book Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker "Paul Tran's debut collection of poems is indelible, this remarkable voice transforming itself as you read, eventually transforming you." --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel "This powerful debut marshals narrative lyrics and stark beauty to address personal and political violence." --New York Times Book Review A profound meditation on physical, emotional, and psychological transformation in the aftermath of imperial violence and interpersonal abuse, from a poet both "tender and unflinching" (Khadijah Queen) Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran's debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. In poems of desire, gender, bodies, legacies, and imagined futures, Tran's poems elucidate the complex and harrowing processes of reckoning and recovery, enhanced by innovative poetic forms that mirror the nonlinear emotional and psychological experiences of trauma survivors. At once grand and intimate, commanding and deeply vulnerable, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacity for resilience, endurance, and love.
Time Is a Mother by
The New York Times-bestselling collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong "Take your time with these poems, and return to them often."--Washington Post How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break. The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
Fantasia for the Man in Blue by
In his debut collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man's late-night encounter with a police officer--the titular "man in blue"--becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: "It's a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love I'm too ashamed to want for myself." In "Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum," the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an "infant's small mouth" as well as the "sad calculator" that was "built to subtract from and divide a town." In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the "other" and locates us squarely within these personae.