I did two small press roundups for Metafilter this month: one for Pride and the other for Juneteenth. The one for Pride is reproduced below (and Juneteenth is in this separate post):
The Ace and Aro Relationship Guide: Making It Work in Friendship, Love, and Sex by Cody Daigle-Orians (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 21 Oct 2024): Whether we’re talking about friendships, romantic relationships, casual dates or intimate partners, this guide will help you not only live authentically in your ace and aro identity, but joyfully share it with others. (Amazon; Bookshop)
And Then There Was One by Michele Castleman (Bold Strokes Books, 1 June 2024): Six weeks after Lyla Smith dragged her sister’s dead body onto the Lake Erie shore, she escapes her small Ohio town to work as a nanny for distant relatives on their remote private island. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Antiquity by Hanna Johannson, trans. Kira Josefsson (Catapult, 6 Feb 2024): Elegant, slippery, and provocative, Antiquity is a queer Lolita story by prize-winning Swedish author Hanna Johansson—a story of desire, power, obsession, observation, and taboo. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Born Backwards by Tanya Olson (YesYes Books, 18 Jun 2024): Olson’s third poetry collection “reports from inside butch culture in the 1980s American South as it traces how geography, family, experiences, and popular culture shape one queer life.” (Amazon; Bookshop)
Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke (Catapult, 23 Jan 2024): At once cinematic yet intimate, Broughtupsy is an enthralling debut novel about a young Jamaican woman grappling with grief as she discovers her family, her home, is always just out of reach. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Call Is Coming from Inside the House: Essays by Allyson McOuat (ECW Press, Apr 2024): In a series of intimate and humorous dispatches, McOuat examines her identity as a queer woman, and as a mother, through the lens of the pop culture moments in the ’80s and ’90s that molded her identity. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Dances of Time and Tenderness by Julian Carter (Nightboat Books, 4 June 2024): A cycle of stories linking queer memory, activism, death, and art in a transpoetic history of desire and touch. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Dragonfly Gambit by A. D. Sui (Neon Hemlock Press, 16 Apr 2024): Nearly ten years after Inez Kato sustained a career-ending injury during a military exercise gone awry, she lies, cheats, and seduces her way to the very top, to destroy the fleet that she was once a part of, even at the cost of her own life. Ennis Rezál, Third Daughter of the Rule, has six months left to live. She is desperate to end the twenty-year war she was birthed to fight. But when she brings Inez aboard the mothership, a chess game of manipulation and double-crossing begins to unfold, and the Rule doesn’t stand a chance. (Amazon; Bookshop)
An Evening with Birdy O’Day by Greg Kearney (Arsenal Pulp, 16 Apr 2024): A funny, boisterous, and deeply moving novel about aging hairstylist Roland’s childhood friendship with Birdy O’Day, whose fevered quest for pop music glory drives them apart. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Finding Echoes by Foz Meadows (Neon Hemlock, 30 Jan 2024): Snow Kidama speaks to ghosts amongst the local gangs of Charybdis Precinct, isolated from the rest of New Arcadia by the city’s ancient walls. But when his old lover, Gem—a man he thought dead—shows up in need of his services, Snow is forced to reevaluate everything. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Firebugs by Nino Bulling (Drawn & Quarterly, 13 Feb 2024): After a trip to Paris, Ingken returns home ready for a break from drugs. Their supportive partner, Lily, is flushed, excited about a new connection she’s made. Although Ingken wants to be happy for her, there’s a discomfort they can’t shake. Sleepless nights fill with an endless scroll of images and headlines about climate disaster. A vague dysphoria simmers under their skin; they are able to identify that like Lily, they are changing, but they’re not sure exactly how and at what pace. Everyone keeps telling them to burn themself to the ground and build themself back up but they worry about the kind of debris that fire might leave behind. (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan (Counterpoint LLC, 4 June 2024): As a Hungarian immigrant working as a studio hack writing monster movies in 1950s Hollywood, George Curtis must navigate the McCarthy-era studio system filled with possible communists and spies, the life of closeted men along Sunset Boulevard, and the inability of the era to cleave love from persecution and guilt. But when Madeline, a famous actress, offers George a writing residency at her estate in Malibu to work on the political writing he cares most deeply about, his world is blown open. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Getting Glam at Gram’s by Sara Weed, ill. Erin Hawryluk (Arsenal Pulp, 3 Sept 2024): A colourful and celebratory picture book that embraces all gender expressions through a fun family fashion show. (Amazon; Bookshop)
God of River Mud by Vic Sizemore (West Virginia UP, Jan 2024): To escape a life of poverty and abuse, Berna Cannaday marries Zechariah Minor, a fundamentalist Baptist preacher, and commits herself to his faith, trying to make it her own. After Zechariah takes a church beside the Elk River in rural Clay, West Virginia, Berna falls in love with someone from their congregation—Jordan, a woman who has known since childhood that he was meant to be a man. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Healthy Chest Binding for Trans and Non-Binary People: A Practical Guide by Frances Reed (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 18 Apr 2024): Binding is a crucial strategy in many transgender and non-binary people’s lives for coping with gender dysphoria, yet the vast majority of those who bind report some negative physical symptoms. Written by Frances Reed, a licensed bodywork and massage therapist specialising in gender transition, this comprehensive guide helps you make the healthiest choices from the very start of your binding journey. (Amazon; Bookshop)
If We Were Stars by Eule Grey (Ninestar Press, 2 Apr 2024): Best friends since they were ten years old, Kurt O’Hara and Beast Harris tackle the typical teenage challenges together: pronouns, AWOL bodies, not to mention snogging. A long-distance relationship with an alien named Iuvenis is the least of their troubles. (Amazon)
Keep This Off The Record by Arden Joy (Rising Action, 31 Jan 2024): A romance: Abigail Meyer and Freya Jonsson can’t stand one another. But could their severe hatred be masking something else entirely? (Amazon; Bookshop)
The Long Hallway by Richard Scott Larson (University of Wisconsin Press, 16 Apr 2024): Growing up queer, closeted, and afraid, Richard Scott Larson found expression for his interior life in horror films, especially John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Halloween. He developed an intense childhood identification with Michael Myers, Carpenter’s inscrutable masked villain, as well as Michael’s potential victims. Larson scrutinizes this identification, meditating on horror as a metaphor for the torments of the closet. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt (Nightboat Books, 24 Sept 2024): This portrait of queer, working class London drifts from coffee shop to house party, in search of the next tryst. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Lush Lives by J. Vanessa Lyon (Grove Atlantic/Roxane Gay Books, 20 Aug 2024): With beguiling wit and undeniable passion, Lush Lives is a deliciously queer and sexy novel about bold, brilliant women unafraid to take risks and fight for what they love (Amazon; Bookshop)
Medusa of the Roses by Navid Sinaki (Grove Atlantic, 13 Aug 2024): Sex, vengeance, and betrayal in modern day Tehran—Navid Sinaki’s bold and cinematic debut is a queer literary noir following Anjir, a morbid romantic and petty thief whose boyfriend disappears just as they’re planning to leave their hometown for good. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte (Drawn & Quarterly, 16 Jan 2024): As she examines her life experience and traumas with great care, Delporte faces the questions about gender and sexuality that both haunt and entice her. Deeply informed by her personal relationships as much as queer art and theory, Portrait of a Body is both a joyous and at times hard meditation on embodiment—a journey to be reunited with the self in an attempt to heal pain and live more authentically. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács (Broken Eye Books, 6 Feb 2024): An AI child discovers Jewish mysticism. A student can give no more blood to their semi-sentient apartment and plans their escape. A candidate is rigorously evaluated for their ability to be a liaison to alien newcomers. A young magician gains perspective from her time as a plant. A neurodivergent woman tries to survive on a planetoid where thoughts shape reality… (Amazon; Bookshop)
So Long Sad Love by Mirion Malle, trans. Aleshia Jensen (Drawn & Quarterly, 23 Apr 2024): This graphic novel swaps out the wobbly transition of weaving a new existence into being post-heartbreak for the surprising effortlessness and simplicity of a life already rebuilt. Cleo not only rediscovers her identity as an artist but uncovers her capacity to find love where she has always been most at home: with other women. Mirion Malle dares to tell a story with a happier ending in a stunning, full-color follow-up to the multi-award nominated This is How I Disappear. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać (Seven Stories Press, 30 Apr 2024): This novel tells a story of being locked in: socially, domestically and intimately. Here the Croatian poet and writer depicts a wrenching love between a transgender man and a woman as well as a demanding love between a mother and a daughter in a narrative about breaking through and liberation of the mind, family, and society. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Vantage Points: On Media as Trans Memoir by Chase Joynt (Arsenal Pulp, 17 Sep 2024): Following the death of the family patriarch, a box of newly procured family documents reveals writer-filmmaker Chase Joynt’s previously unknown connection to Canadian media maverick Marshall McLuhan. Vantage Points takes up the surprising appearance of McLuhan in Joynt’s family archive as a way to think about legacies of childhood sexual abuse and how we might process and represent them. (Amazon; Bookshop)
You Can’t Go Home Again by Jeanette Bears (Bold Strokes Books, 13 Aug 2024): Contemporary romance. Raegan Holcolm thought all they wanted was a proud military career, and that’s what they had. But a sudden injury sends them back to their hometown with a wealth of pain, both physical and emotional, insecurities, and the reality that the career they’d chosen above all else has rejected them. The first time they fell in love, Rae left Jules behind. For love to have a second chance, they’ll need to realize all along that home might have been a person just as much as a place. (Amazon; Bookshop)
Previous roundups 1, 2, and 3 also included Bad Seed by Gabriel Carle, trans. Heather Houde (Feminist Press), The Default World by Naomi Kanakia (Feminist Press), Disobedience by Daniel Sarah Karasik (Book*hug), Indian Winter by Kazim Ali (Coach House), Love the World Or Get Killed Trying by Alvina Chamberland (Noemi), My Body Is Paper by Gil Cuadros (City Lights), These Letters End In Tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere (Catapult), and, finally, How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica (Tin House) which Bookshop included in its Pride Month 15% off sale with code PRIDE24.
The Bookshop sale also includes these small press titles that I haven’t previously listed:
- All-Night Pharmacy (Ruth Madievsky, Catapult, Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction)
- Birthright (George Abraham, Button Poetry, “every pronoun is a Free Palestine,” Bisexual Poetry Finalist in the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards; Button Poetry also has a 3 for $36 Pride Month deal going on, including Birthright and poetry by Blythe Baird, Sierra DeMulder, Andrea Gibson, Ebony Stewart, and more)
- Boulder (Eva Baltasar, trans. Julia Sanches, And Other Stories, a queer couple struggles with motherhood, shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize)
- Brown Neon: Essays (Raquel Gutiérrez, Coffee House Press, “part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree”)
- Cecilia (K-Ming Chang, Coffee House Press, an “erotic, surreal novella”)
- Corey Fah Does Social Mobility (Isabel Waidner, Graywolf, “A novel that celebrates radical queer survival and gleefully takes a hammer to false notions of success”)
- A Dream of a Woman (Casey Plett, Arsenal Pulp Press, short stories by the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning Little Fish)
- Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 (Eman Abdelhadi & M. E. O’Brien, Common Notions, speculative fiction)
- Feed (Tommy Pico, Tin House Books, fourth book in Teebs tetralogy, “an epistolary recipe for the main character, a poem of nourishment, and a jaunty walk through New York’s High Line park, with the lines, stanzas, paragraphs, dialogue, and registers approximating the park’s cultivated gardens of wildness”)
- Females (Andrea Long Chu, Verso, provocative genre-defying investigation into femaleness)
- The Free People’s Village (Sim Kern, Levine Querido, a novel of “eat-the-rich climate fiction”)
- The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs (Lambda Literary Award-winning Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Arsenal Pulp Press, disability justice, care and mutual aid)
- Her Body and Other Parties: Stories (Carmen Maria Machado, Graywolf Press, “blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction… to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies”)
- High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir (Edgar Gomez, Soft Skull, “a touching and often hilarious spiralic path to embracing a gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo”)
- Homie: Poems (Danez Smith, Graywolf Press, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the NAACP Image Award for Poetry)
- How to Fuck Like a Girl (Vera Blossom, Dopamine/Semiotext(e), a how-to guide)
- I Love This Part (Tillie Walden, Avery Hill Publishing, graphic novel of teen queer love)
- It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (ed. Joe Vallese, Feminist Press, essays by Carmen Maria Machado, Bruce Owens Grimm, Richard Scott Larson)
- Love Is an Ex-Country: A Memoir (Randa Jarrar, Catapult, “Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme.”)
- Mrs. S (K. Patrick, Europa Editions, a butch English boarding school matron begins an illicit affair with the headmaster’s wife)
- Outwrite: The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture (eds. Julie R. Enszer, Elena Gross, Rutgers UP, 27 of the most memorable speeches from the OutWrite conference)
- Playboy (Constance Debre, trans. Holly James, Semiotext(e), the first volume of the renowned trilogy on the author’s decision to abandon her bourgeois Parisian life to become a lesbian and writer)
- Sluts: Anthology (ed. Michelle Tea, Dopamine Books, anthology of essays and stories on sexual promiscuity in contemporary American culture)
- Stone Fruit (Lee Lai, Fantagraphics Books, a queer couple opens up to their families in this 2022 Lambda Literary Award winner for Comics)
- Survival Takes a Wild Imagination: Poems (Fariha Róisín, Andrews McMeel Publishing, “Who is my family? My father? How do I love a mother no longer here? Can I see myself? What does it mean to be Bangladeshi? What is a border?”)
- Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through (T. Fleischmann, Coffee House Press, “an autobiographical narrative of embodiment, visual art, history, and loss”)
- Thunder Song: Essays (Sasha Lapointe, Counterpoint LLC, what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the USA)
- The Tradition (Jericho Brown, Copper Canyon Press, Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry that examines black bodies, desire, privilege and resistance)
- When We Were Sisters (Fatimah Asghar, One World, “traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings,” longlisted for the National Book Award)
- You Exist Too Much (Zaina Arafat, Catapult: Palestinian American queer coming-of-age novel)
- Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (Chen Chen, BOA Editions, “What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves calling out for rescue?”)