The 41 Best Queer Reads
The 41 Best Queer Reads
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.
Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy by Rachel Krantz
Harmony
bookshop.org
$26.04
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.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Tor Nightfire
bookshop.org
$16.73
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.
Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada
Other Press (NY)
bookshop.org
$22.32
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.
Greenland by David Santos Donaldson
Amistad Press
bookshop.org
$25.10
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.
So Happy for You by Celia Laskey
Hanover Square Press
bookshop.org
$25.10
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.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Flatiron Books
bookshop.org
$25.10
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.
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews
Random House Large Print Publishing
Bookshop
$26.97
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?
Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto by Edafe Okporo
Simon & Schuster
bookshop.org
$25.10
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.
We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart
Riverhead Books
bookshop.org
$24.18
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.
Brown Neon by Raquel Gutiérrez
Coffee House Press
bookshop.org
$15.76
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.
Eleutheria by Allegra Hyde
Vintage
bookshop.org
$15.81
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.
The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan
Bold Type Books
bookshop.org
$27.90
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.”
The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes
Balzer & Bray/Harperteen
bookshop.org
$17.66
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.
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
Hogarth Press
bookshop.org
$25.11
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.
Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej
Bloomsbury Publishing
bookshop.org
$24.18
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.
Heretic: A Memoir by Jeanna Kadlec
Harper
bookshop.org
$26.03
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.
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour
Flatiron Books
bookshop.org
$16.73
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?
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane
William Morrow & Company
bookshop.org
$26.03
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.
Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen
Zando
bookshop.org
$25.11
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.
Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham
Little Brown and Company
bookshop.org
$26.04
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.
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
W. W. Norton & Company
bookshop.org
$14.83
After several years spent racking up accolades for his poetry collections and the bestselling memoir A Brief History of my Body, Belcourt has given us a new gift to enjoy this year: his debut novel. Yearning to write the novel that has eluded him for years, the book’s unnamed indigenous narrator returns to his rural Canadian hometown to catch up on family drama, life on the rez, and ill-advised hookups with married men.
The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
G.P. Putnam's Sons
bookshop.org
$25.00
It’s impossible to write about the literary world’s queerest and dearest of the year without including this Baldwin-inflected debut novel about two enslaved young men in love. Following a stunning betrayal, Samuel and Isaiah find their relationship endangered—at the hands of not just their enslaver but their fellow slaves as well. The result: a deeply moving novel about suffering, hope, and love.
Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green
Celadon Books
bookshop.org
$25.00
Sure, Elon Green’s meticulously researched account of the Last Call Killer is a gripping true-crime read, but it’s also so much more. Last Call is as much a story about a serial killer as it is about the forgotten lives and deaths of those he preyed upon: gay men in New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Far more than just a catch-a-killer tale, this book is a monument to the glittering, vibrant world created by a community well acquainted with mortality.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
One World
bookshop.org
$25.00
If you haven’t heard about Detransition, Baby by now, I’d like to know how far outside of civilization you’ve been living, and for how long. Exquisitely dishy, Torrey Peters’s breakout novel tells the story of a literally gender-bending love triangle between three women, cis and trans: Reese, a trans woman caught in a downward spiral after a breakup; Ames, formerly Amy, who decided to detransition and live as a man after breaking up with Reese; and Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, who is pregnant with Ames’s baby.
The Recent East by Thomas Grattan
MCD
bookshop.org
$25.00
Thomas Grattan’s debut novel takes the “decades-spanning family saga” genre to new queer heights. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beate Haas returns with her two teenage children to her native East Germany for the first time since her family fled when she was a child. Beate’s gay son, Michael, soon falls in with a crowd of wannabe anarchists, while her daughter, Adela, becomes fascinated by the Holocaust. Over the decades, the abandoned German town transforms around them, welcoming first refugees, then neo-Nazis, and eventually chic vacationers seeking the seaside air.
Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
Fantagraphics Books
bookshop.org
$23.00
Stone Fruit heralds the arrival of a formidable new voice in comics. This graphic novel told in playdates tells the story of Bron and Ray, a queer couple who love playing weirdo aunties to Ray’s six-year-old niece, Nessie. Bron and Ray’s always-joyful time with Nessie is a welcome respite from their atrophying relationship—and their separate attempts to repair long-eroded family ties.
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
Houghton Mifflin
bookshop.org
$22.00
Old-school fans of Fun Home (the book, not the musical, although the musical is also pretty gay—I mean, great), rejoice! Alison Bechdel is back with another singular graphic memoir for us to devour. Having already devoted two volumes—2006’s Fun Home and the 2012 follow-up, Are You My Mother?—to her parents, the acclaimed cartoonist now turns her withering sense of humor to another topic with which she has a complicated relationship: fitness.
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
bookshop.org
$37.00
After more than a year of watching political pundits trip over themselves to opine on air about the worst pandemic in human memory, a history of ACT UP—the activist group instrumental in confronting the American AIDS crisis at its height—feels particularly timely. Sarah Schulman’s vital survey of a terrifying time reminds us that queer people have long known a thing or two about living through a devastating plague.
Future Feeling by Joss Lake
Soft Skull
bookshop.org
$16.00
Pen is a disaffected Bushwickian dog walker who spends his free time obsessing over holograms of his idol, Aiden Chase. After a particularly disappointing real-life encounter with Aiden, Pen enlists his roommates to help him hex the transmasc influencer—but their curse goes awry, accidentally sending a third trans man named Blithe into the Shadowlands.
Love Is an Ex-country by Randa Jarrar
Catapult
bookshop.org
$24.00
Step aside, Jack Kerouac: When it comes to great American road trip stories, we’re letting fat, queer, Muslim-Arab single mothers drive the car, as Randa Jarrar says. Ex-country follows the author on her 2016 journey from California to her parents’ house in Connecticut, complete with pit stops to destroy wayward Confederate flags and reflect on traumatic childhood memories. The result is at once a scathing critique of American culture and a joyful celebration of life.
We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
Random House
bookshop.org
$26.00
In We Play Ourselves, Silverman—a queer, New York–based playwright who writes for TV and film in Los Angeles—pens a story about a queer playwright who decides to flee New York for L.A. in the wake of a personal scandal. (Contrary to what you’re thinking, it’s not a memoir.) In the City of Angels, protagonist Cass gets drawn into the orbit of her filmmaker neighbor, Caroline. Over time, as Cass begins to understand how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teen girls starring in her latest film, Cass begins to wonder: When working in the name of art, how far is too far?
Let's Get Back to the Party by Zak Salih
Algonquin Books
bookshop.org
$24.00
In the weeks after the Obergefell Supreme Court decision, two gay men—high school teacher Sebastian and his childhood friend Oscar—struggle to articulate what it means to be a “queer” “adult.” For Sebastian, it means belonging, domesticity, the newly legitimized right to marry; for Oscar, it means nightlife, found family, all the aspects of gay culture that have begun to fall out of fashion as queer men are increasingly assimilated into the mainstream. The result is a book for everyone who both craves and fears intimacy.
We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth
Grand Central Publishing
bookshop.org
$26.00
Sure, A.E. Osworth’s exhilarating debut is a Gamergate-inspired thriller about a female video game developer whose decision to stand up to workplace harassment spirals out of control, with devastating consequences for all involved. But it’s also a book about the LGBTQ+ cyber-anarchist collective that comes to Eliza’s aid, in the process showing her—and all of us—that a better, queerer world is possible.
100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell
MCD X Fsg Originals
bookshop.org
$14.00
The title of this book offers a refreshingly straightforward description of what’s inside: 100 Boyfriends is a collection of short stories about different kinds of boyfriends—from farm daddies to party twinks to Euro candy. Each tale is a tour de force of storytelling on its own; together, the collection transcends the considerable sum of its parts.
Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer
Simon & Schuster
bookshop.org
$24.00
An outgrowth from John Paul Brammer’s advice column of the same name, Hola Papi is part words of wisdom, part raucous memoir careening through the misadventures of queer youth. Taken together, that adds up to a warm, witty compendium of hard-won life lessons, ripped directly from the annals of Brammer’s own experiences as a biracial gay man.
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi
Riverhead Books
bookshop.org
$25.00
Though their debut book—2018’s Freshwater—has often been described as an autobiographical novel, Akwaeke Emezi’s newest release marks the prolific writer’s first explicit foray into memoir. Told through a series of letters, Dear Senthuran tracks Emezi’s own journey coming into their spirit, body, gender, and creative power.
The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood by Krys Malcolm Belc
Counterpoint LLC
bookshop.org
$24.00
Krys Malcolm Belc’s singular memoir-in-essays traces how his experiences conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding a child helped to clarify his gender identity. A white nonbinary transmasc person, Belc is listed on his son Samson’s legal documents as “the natural mother of the child”—but “motherhood” doesn’t describe Belc’s own experience of pregnancy and parenting. The Natural Mother of the Child attempts to bridge that gap, offering an alternative interpretation of what it means to grow a family.
The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse by Kevin Simmonds
Triquarterly Books
bookshop.org
$19.00
Memoir and music theory may not seem like the most obvious of pairings, but Kevin Simmonds’s new biography-in-verse of Leontyne Price, the first great African-American opera star, makes it look natural. A book structured into operatic acts, The Monster I Am Today examines Simmonds’s own identity as a musician and gay man alongside that of Price as an icon and artist.
Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So
Ecco Press
bookshop.org
$26.00
Even if you’re not a “short stories person,” the late Anthony Veasna So’s story collection is one to look out for. Following the children of refugees in a Californian community of Cambodian-Americans, Afterparties shepherds its characters through experiences with found family, intergenerational trauma, and Moby-Dick—you know, cornerstones of the queer experience.
On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson
Graywolf Press
amazon.com
$24.00
Having previously tackled the subjects of queer family, sexual violence, and the color blue, Nelson turns her attention to a subject that has become particularly fraught in the American consciousness: freedom. In her latest book of literary theory, the unofficial prose-poet laureate of Art Queers everywhere meditates on what topics like addiction, climate crisis, and sexual liberation teach us about what it means to truly be free.
High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir by Edgar Gomez
Soft Skull
amazon.com
$17.00
The catalogue page for this debut memoir lists a number of things you can expect to find within the book’s contents. Among them are “Maybelline foundation shade: Rich Tan,” “A baby wailing in an ancient Jesuit language,” and “The most famous woman in the world.” If that doesn’t entice you to read Gomez’s account of figuring out how to embrace his queer identity amid a culture of machismo, I’m not sure what will.
Here are the best new LGTBQ+ books of 2021, to read during Pride month and any month.