Family! Politics! Relationships! Movies! Sports! Photography! Queer life and love in all its glory! That’s what you’ll find in today’s LGBTQIA+ non-fiction reading list! Covering a broad range of genres and subjects, you’ll find this summer’s unmissable LGBTQIA+ non-fiction titles below.
if you want to stock your bookshop shelves with anything on this list then please reach out to your local Turnaround sales rep.
MEMOIR
Faltas
By Cecilia Gentili
9781736716823 | Littlepuss Press | PB | 04/10/2022 | £14.99
A rich and moving epistolary memoir about transgender childhood, sexual trauma, motherhood, and a young queer life in 1970s Argentina.
Their next release, Faltas, is the memoir of Pose actress and activist Cecilia Gentili. In these hilarious and heart-breaking letters, Gentili reinvents the trans memoir, putting the confession squarely between the writer and her enemies, paramours and friends. Writing to childhood figures such as her rapist’s daughter, her father’s mistress, her best friend, and her mother, Gentili probes deeply into the bitter cruelty, buried secrets, and delicious gossip of a small town. Is she here for revenge, or forgiveness? Both! And more! A story of sex, theft, murder, motherhood, and outrageous fashion choices, Faltas is a beautiful, messy meditation on what it takes to heal, and even grow.
I Felt the End Before It Came
By Daniel Allen Cox
9780735242104 | Viking Press Usa | HB | 09/05/2023 | £22.99
‘I spent eighteen years in a group that taught me to hate myself. You cannot be queer and a Jehovah s Witness – it’s one or the other.’
Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his religion considered unacceptable: celebrating birthdays and holidays; voting in elections, pursuing higher education, and other forays into independent thought. Their opposition to blood transfusions would have consequences for his mother, just as their stance on homosexuality would for him. But even years after whispers of his sexual orientation reached his congregation’s presiding elder, catalyzing his disassociation, the distinction between ‘in’ and ‘out’ isn’t always clear. Still in the midst of a lifelong disentanglement, Cox grapples with the group’s cultish tactics — from gaslighting to shunning — and their resulting harms — from simmering anger to substance abuse — all while redefining its concepts through a queer lens.
The Yards Between Us
By Ryan Russell
9781368081368 | Andscape Books | HB | 18/05/2023 | £25.99
A groundbreaking memoir from the first active NFL player to come out as bisexual.
The Yards Between Us explores Russell’s life in the NFL, his love of football, men and women, walking the devastating tightrope of keeping his sexuality secret, the tension between his private and public lives, and the importance of crashing through barriers. One part inspirational journey and one part coming of age as an athlete struggling to break a mould, The Yards Between Us follows in the footsteps of powerful sports memoirs like Agassi’s Open, Misty Copeland’s Life In Motion and Megan Rapinoe’s One Life. Ryan’s memoir shows us the power, the love and the benefit of starting over and starting strong.
One Sunny Afternoon
By Amanda Jette Knox
9780735244634 | Viking Canada | PB | 22/08/2023 | £16.99
From bestselling author and activist Amanda Jette Knox, a deeply personal memoir about facing life-long trauma head on, and bravely healing the scars that endure.
For writer and human rights advocate Amanda Jette Knox, the inspiring story of her family’s journey of love and acceptance, when both her child and partner came out as transgender one after the other, was the hopeful beginning to their new lives. Their tale, shared in her memoir Love Lives Here and embraced by readers everywhere, quickly found its way to the top of bestseller lists.
Yet in the spring of 2020, Jette Knox began to experience targeted attacks on social media, and she soon became the subject of a small but very vocal group that criticized her book’s success and her advocacy work. The intensity of the backlash grew and drove Jette Knox to contemplate suicide. But instead of taking her life, on one sunny afternoon, she went to the hospital to seek help. One Sunny Afternoon is a searing testament to Amanda Jette Knox’s extraordinary reckoning with her past and present, to find hope in her future.
CULTURE
We See Each Other
By Tre’vell Anderson
9781368081733 | Andscape Books | HB | 11/05/2023 | £25.99
A groundbreaking look at the history of transgender representation in TV and film, by an of-the-moment and in-demand culture reporter.
We See Each Other is a personal history of trans visibility since the beginning of moving images. A literary reckoning, it unearths a transcestry that’s long existed in plain sight and in the shadows of history’s annals, and further contextualizes our present moment of increased representation. The films and television shows that Tre’vell covers include: Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, Psycho, Holiday Heart, Boy’s Don’t Cry, America’s Next Top Model, Some Like It Hot, Survivor, Tangerine, Pose, RuPaul’s Drag Race and much more. Though there have been trans memoirs and histories, there has never been a book quite like this, nor is anyone more suited to write it than Tre’vell. ‘I don’t remember exactly when I was taught to hate myself,’ says Tre’vell Anderson in We See Each Other’s introduction. As the narrative unfolds, Tre’vell knits together the history of trans people on screen with stories of their life growing up and their formative experiences as a Black, trans journalist.
Surviving The Future
By Scott Branson , Raven Hudson & Mimi Thi Nguyen
9781629639710 | PM Press | PB | 29/06/2023 | £18.99
A cutting-edge exploration of current ideas in the radical queer movement and revolutionary theory through a collection of essays from leading theorists, organisers and radicals.
Though the mainstream media saturates us with the boring norms of queer representation, the writers in this book ditch false hope to imagine collective visions of liberation that tell different stories, build alternate worlds, and refuse the legacies of racial capitalism, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism. The work curated in this book spans Black queer life in the time of COVID-19 and uprising, assimilation, building anarchist trans/queer infrastructures, & more.
LIFESTYLE
Multiamory
By Jase Lindrgren, Dedeker Winston & Emily Sotelo Matlack
9781627783200 | Cleis Press | PB | 25/05/2023 | £17.99
The ultimate unbiased and practical guide to modern dating equipped with effective expert advice! When Multiamory authors Dedeker Winston, Emily Sotelo Matlack and Jase Lindgren started producing their advice show about polyamory and other non-traditional relationships, they received dozens of questions from listeners about all sorts of relationship quandaries and communication stalemates. They quickly found out that existing relationship tools weren’t up to the task, and that conventional wisdom is sorely lacking for modern relationships. Many of the primary resources for relationship advice are frustratingly religious, unapproachable and academic, or alienating to anyone who falls outside the mainstream of heterosexual monogamy. Over the course of many years and hundreds of episodes, they have spent hours nerding out over research, reading up on evidence-based relationship advice, and listening to the personal struggles of hundreds of couples and individuals.
Queer Animals and Plants Coloring Book
By Kes Otter Lieffe & Anja Van Geert
9781648411939 | Microcosm Publishing | PB | 9/06/2023 | £16.99
Queerness is everywhere in the natural world.
Lesbian gulls, intersex grizzly bears, gay orgies of manatees, trans clownfish, binary-smashing lichens, sex-changing willow trees, and asexual naked mole rats! So many of us grew up with wildlife programs and school biology classes that showed only monogamous, heterosexual pairings with the goal of making little baby animals. This colouring book celebrates the diversity of animals, plants, and fungi, and the way our beautiful queer communities exist far beyond the realms of human culture. Bring your brightest colours to learn about and befriend some of the most colourful characters in nature and challenge society’s cis-het norms.
This entertaining and educational resource, created by trans woman and ecologist Kes Otter Lieffe, and richly illustrated by Anja Van Geert, builds on the success of their popular Queer Animals Coloring Zine to liberate our understanding of ourselves and the natural world we belong to.
Nourishing Resistance
By Wren Awry & Cindy Milstein
9781629639925 | PM Press | PB | 29/06/2023 | £18.99
A collection of essays, poems and stories exploring the crucial role that food has played in resistance, protest, and mutual aid around the world.
From the cooks who have quietly fed rebels and revolutionaries to the collective kitchens set up after hurricanes and floods, food has long played a crucial role in resistance, protest, and mutual aid. Twenty-three contributors-cooks, farmers, writers, organisers, academics, and dreamers write on queer potlucks, BIPOC-centered farms and gardens, rebel ancestors, disability justice, indigenous food sovereignty, and the fight against toxic diet culture, among many other topics.
GUIDES
An Opinionated Guide to Queer London
By Frank Gallaugher
9781914314476 | Hoxton Mini Press | PB | 15/06/2023 | £10.95
The brightest and best LGBTQ+ places to drink, dance, cruise, hang out and enjoy in the capital!
If it’s queer, it’s here: culturally and historically, London is one of the premier cities in the world for LGBTQ+ life. With SO much on offer, it can be hard to know where to go. This is where this book comes in. Featuring everything from riotous club nights and funky cabaret to drag brunches, film festivals, and art and cultural tours exploring the rich history of queer trailblazers, this handy guide sorts the fierce and fresh from the tired and trashy. It’s your ticket to queer heaven. This is part of a growing series of opinionated guides which offer no-nonsense insider’s advice on what to do and see in London.
The World Of Patricia Highsmith
By Jon Hammer & Karem McBurnie
9781838216795 | Herb Lester Associates | Sheet Maps | 31/08/2023 | £12
In The World Of Patricia Highsmith we detail 54 locations associated with the author and her work.
From long-gone lesbian boites in Manhattan and her last home in the Swiss mountains, to scenes from The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers On A Train. Each location is carefully described and plotted on a map — an obsessive task of which we think many of Highsmith’s characters would approve.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Boys! Boys! Boys!
By Ghislain Pascal
9783969001141 | Kehrer Verlag | HB | 11/05/2023 | £46
Contemporary collection of works by more than sixty queer and gay photographers from around the world.
The latest BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! book presents new work by more than sixty photographers from thirty countries including China, India, Iran, Poland, and Russia where gay rights are repressed and queer lives are under constant threat. BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! was founded by The Little Black Gallery and is curated by Ghislain Pascal to promote queer and gay fine art photography, which includes their bi-annual magazine with the same name. The first BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! book was published in 2019, the second in 2020, both are sold out. Part of the proceeds of this edition will be donated to charities supporting the LGBTQ+ community and fighting the HIV / AIDS epidemic.
Castro to Christopher
By Nicholas Blair & introduction by Jim Farber
9781648230349 | Powerhouse Books | HB | 27/06/2023 | £42.99
The lost world of the ‘gay paradises’ in San Francisco and New York is beautifully documented in this collection of intimate portraits and street photography from 1979-1986.
A New York City native, Nicholas Blair dropped out of high school in 1977 and hit the road, landing in San Francisco, where he helped form an arts commune. With a Leica rangefinder camera given to him by a childhood friend, he honed his craft as a photographer amidst the explosion of LGBTQ life that was taking over from the hippie movement. From the Castro Valley in San Francisco to the conga-line of Christopher Street that cuts through New York’s West Village, there is a vanished world revitalized in the photos of Nicholas Blair. Now an internationally recognized photographer, Blair is compiling these images for the first time, exploring a time and place that altered the cultural makeup of America. Blair’s photos of the streets are honest, revealing, evocative, and tender; much like the streets and their theater of play were themselves.
