For Pride Month, observed annually during the month of June, we asked the many independent literary presses and magazines that make up our membership to share with us some of the literature by authors identifying as LGBTQ+ that they recommend reading in celebration.
Fiction
Who Killed Buster Sparkle? by John W. Bateman
Unsolicited Press | 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947021-79-2
In this novel, “When a drag queen named Peaches meets Buster, a Mississippi ghost with partial amnesia, questions of past, present, and future surface.”
Chasing Harmony by Melanie Bell
Read Furiously | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7371758-9-6
In this YA novel, piano prodigy Anna Stern “struggles to find her identity without the soundtrack of sonatas and concertos.”
The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas
Neon Hemlock | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952086-94-6
In this novella that is “equal parts pulp caper and meta-textual academic text,” protagonist “Professor Laxman Yadav is dating Saviour, one of the world’s most famous superheroes, while also investigating possibly the most important archeological find of all time.”
Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run by Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan
Generous Press | 2025
ISBN: 9798991642859
The thirtieth-anniversary “reboot” edition of this cyber-erotic romantic thriller written in the 1990s “includes an updated lens for today’s readers, as GenZ investigative journalist Drew uncovers what just might be the greatest queer love story of all time.”
Pearl of the Sea by Raffaella Delle Donne and Anthony Silverston
Catalyst Press | 2023
ISBN: 9781946395740
Illustrated by Willem Samuel, this YA graphic novel “is a South African adventure story exploring how we are both bound to and freed by nature, seen through the eyes of a tough teen-aged heroine determined to live life by her own rules.”
The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs by Sammie Downing
Half Mystic Press | 2019
ISBN: 9781948552080
In this fantasy novella, “Young Miriam is born into a world where women carry houses stitched to their backs, while men carry keys with the power to unlock them.”
The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel
Translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato
New Vessel Press | 2023
ISBN: 9781954404120
According to Patrick Nathan, Gardel’s National Book Award–winning novel “reminds its readers of an uncomfortable truth: that even a life of regret can be a beautiful one.”
I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat by Christopher Gonzalez
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2021
ISBN: 9781951631215
According to Ruth Joffre, this short fiction collection “captures all the messy joys and crackling anxieties of modern queer life, inviting readers to join its Puerto Rican characters on journeys punctuated by desire, shame, and grace.”
Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights by Granand
Translated from the German by Michael Gillespie
Warbler Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-957240-24-4
Set in 1920s Berlin, “these charming, witty, and erotic tales capture the trials and triumphs of early twentieth-century gay life without apology or shame.”
Sleep Tight Satellite by Carol Guess
Tupelo Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-946482-90-7
According to Randall Brown, in this short fiction collection, Guess “builds the most wondrous word-nests, each one holding something precious, each one surrounded by the world-at-large, afire.”
Beautiful Dreamers by Minrose Gwin
Hub City Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-88574-036-4
Gwin’s novel is one “of innocence and betrayal, love and intolerance, and the care and honesty we owe the families we choose.”
The Moonstone Covenant by Jill Hammer
Ayin Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781961814158
In Hammer’s fantasy novel, “Istehar Sha’an, whose unique powers allow her to communicate with trees and books, has led her community of refugee forest people to a remarkable place.”
God’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu
A Public Space Books | 2022
ISBN: 9781734590715
In these nine stories, Ifeakandu “explores with tenderness and grace the fundamental question of the heart: can deep love and hope be sustained in spite of the dominant expectations of society.”
Stories from the Edge of the Sea by Andrew Lam
Red Hen Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781636282428
The fourteen stories in this collection “explore love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California.”
Neon Hemlock | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952086-92-2
According to Ann LeBlanc, Madden’s novella is “a powerful examination of questions of race, gender, militarism, and who gets to use your body, image, and soul when you’re strapped into a giant robot.”
Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers
LittlePuss Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-964322-00-1
The portable paperback edition of this Stonewall Book Award–winning collection of science fiction and fantasy from transgender authors, originally published in 2017, includes a new afterword from editors Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett.
The Secret That Is Not a Secret by Jay Michaelson
Ayin Press | 2023
ISBN: 9798986780399
The characters in these interlocking stories “are pious and rebellious, mystical and queer, from a Hasidic woman tormented by her husband’s long beard to a closeted gay man repenting of his sins in the mikva.”
Welcome to Boy.net by Lyda Morehouse
Wizard’s Tower Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781913892722
According to Naomi Kritzer, Morehouse’s novel “gives the reader a gripping blend of space adventure, a universe with the glitz and grime of a city’s nightlife, and heartbreakingly human characters you will root for.”
Creature Publishing | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951971-25-0
This debut novella “explores predatory family dynamics, the boundaries of bodies and home, and how individuals choose to participate in or push back against structures that would harm them.”
The Sea Gives Up the Dead by Molly Olguín
Red Hen Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781636282718
In this short story collection, “historical fiction, horror, and fantasy tangle together in a queer garden of love, grief, and longing.”
Sundown in San Ojuela by M. M. Olivas
Lanternfish Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781941360750
According to Nalo Hopkinson, this horror novel is “a wild ride of brujas and old Aztec gods, chupacabras and haunted houses that gets stranger, darker, and more dire with each turn of the page.”
Phantom Advances by Mary Lynn Reed
Split/Lip Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-19528-972-83
In these short stories, “young queer women travel America’s back roads, roaming through the South, Midwest, New York, and California, while questions of gender and identity ride shotgun.”
The Necessary Hunger by Nina Revoyr
Akashic Books | 2019
ISBN: 9781617756696
The new edition of this YA novel, originally published in 1997, “follows two basketball stars—Nancy Takahiro and Raina Webber—and several of their friends through their last year of high school.”
An Archive of Brightness by Kelsey Socha
Lanternfish Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1941360651
According to Matthew Vesely, in this book Socha “has woven together a lawless assortment of experiences, telling a story of queerness, mundanity, and a murder (of crows).”
Someplace Generous: An Inclusive Romance Anthology
Generous Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781955905626
Edited by Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame, this anthology “presents voices largely new to the genre of romance, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story.”
Green Writers Press | 2018
ISBN: 9780999499511
In this short story collection, “retreat, even escape, to a quaint and bucolic lifestyle is regularly upset by reminders that a human is, in the end, another part of the natural world and a part of a larger social organism.”
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuang-zi
Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
Graywolf Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-64445-315-5
A finalist for the 2024 National Book Award in Translation, this novel “unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.”
Nonfiction & Multi-Genre Works
Ruin & Want by José Angel Araguz
Sundress Publications | 2023
ISBN: 9781951979539
Araguz’s memoir contains “a series of gripping, episodic prose pieces centered on an illicit relationship between a student and his high school English teacher.”
Worthy of the Event by Vivian Blaxell
LittlePuss Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781964322995
In this seven-part essay, Blaxell “takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai’i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind.”
Capital Queer: A Pride Celebration from Washington Writers’ Publishing House
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | 2025
ISBN: 9781941551516
This anthology “honoring the LGBTQ+ experience” features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by Suzanne Feldman, Emily Holland, Kim Roberts, and more writers from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn by Jeff Copeland
Feral House | 2025
ISBN: 9781627311595
This memoir follows a “young, aspiring writer desperate for a break…and the legendary Andy Warhol superstar who gave him the story of a lifetime.”
Black Lesbian in White America and Other Writings by Anita Cornwell
Sinister Wisdom | 2025
ISBN: 9781944981778
This new reprint of Cornwell’s 1983 essay collection includes previously unpublished poetry and an introduction by Briona Simone Jones, as well as an interview between Cornwell and Audre Lorde.
Country Queers: A Love Letter by Rae Garringer
Haymarket Books | 2024
ISBN: 9798888902486
“Part photo book, part memoir, part oral history project,” Garringer’s volume “paints a vivid portrait of queer and trans experiences in rural areas and small towns across the US.”
Reading Secrets: A Queer Inheritance of Life and Scripture by Malcolm Himschoot
Catalyst Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781963511147
In this memoir, Himschoot “travels alongside the ghost of his father, exploring their inherited homophobia and the American culture that shaped their triumphs and tragedies.”
Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres by Charles Jensen
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2024
ISBN: 9781951631338
This memoir follows Jensen “from his upbringing and struggles with sexual awareness in rural Wisconsin to his sexual liberation in college and, finally, to the complex relationships and bizarre coincidences of adulthood.”
Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis
Haymarket Books | 2025
ISBN: 9798888902493
Lewis’s book is “at once a left transfeminist battlecry against cisness, a decolonial takedown of nationalist womanhoods, and a sex-radical retort to femmephobia in all its guises.”
Dyke Delusions: Essays & Observations by Samantha Mann
Read Furiously | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-9608691-6-6
According to Melissa Faliveno, this is “a collection of smart, funny, clear-eyed essays on girlhood, motherhood, violence, and desire.”
Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy by Christopher Marmolejo
North Atlantic Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781623178475
In this book, Marmolejo “frames literacy as key to liberation, and explores an understanding of tarot as critical literacy.”
My Own Dear Darling Boy: The Letters of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas
Warbler Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-954525-67-2
This edition of surviving letters that Wilde wrote to Douglas, alongside introductory essays and a letter from Douglas, “is a testament to the enduring power and radical force of love.”
Akashic Books | 2019
ISBN: 9781617757594
This memoir is an “account of life as a closeted professional athlete from gay NFL player O’Callaghan, against the backdrop of depression, opioid addiction, and the threat of suicide.”
Thee Psychick Bible by Genesis P. Orridge
Feral House | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-932595-39-0
This book contains “30 years+ of social, ritual and communal creative explorations condensed into what we feel may become the most profound new manual on ‘practical magick.’”
Come by Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast by Neesha Powell-Ingabire
Hub City Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-88574-038-8
In her debut memoir, Powell-Ingabire “chips away at coastal Georgia’s facade of beaches and golden marshes to recover undertold Black history alongside personal and family stories.”
Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition by Paul B. Preciado
Graywolf Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-332-2
This book is a “mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry, and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility.”
IHRAM Press | 2023
ISBN: 9798870935591
This anthology of stories, poems, and essays bringing together writers from around the world “gives voice to queer people facing a barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and bigotry worldwide.”
Crevice: A Life Between Worlds by Anna Redsand
Choeofpleirn Press | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9911790-8-9
In these thirteen essays, Redsand writes “that wherever she is in the world, she will always be living on the edge of Dinétah, in a place she calls ‘Home Not Home.’”
Eating Turtle by Alexis Stratton
Harbor Editions | 2025
ISBN: 9798349289804
In these lyrical essays, Stratton “embarks on a multiyear journey through a dozen countries—from the stark Australian desert to the winding streets of Taipei—yearning to find healing in the movement between worlds.”
Split/Lip Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-952897-39-9
In these lyric essays, vine “moves through doom fest after doom fest to assemble memories, chains of afterimages, and a register of metaphors.”
North Atlantic Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781623179687
This book is “an unapologetic guide for readers who are Black, masc, and bi—unlearning biphobia, coming out, combatting erasure, and embodying your whole self.”
Poetry
Dream of Xibalba by Stephanie Adams-Santos
Orison Books | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-949039-38-2
This long poem “draws the reader into a dreamworld where the barrier between life and death grows porous, populated by ancestors and spirits.”
I Hope This Helps by Samiya Bashir
Nightboat Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781643622729
Bashir’s genre-bending collection “reflects on the excruciating metamorphosis of an artist, ‘a twinkle-textured disco-ball Jenga set’ constrained and shaped by the limits of our reality.”
Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf
Nightboat Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781643622385
A 2025 Firecracker Award finalist, Bendorf’s third collection “resounds through liminal spaces, at dusk and dawn, across personal meditations and wider cultural awakenings to form a collection overflowing with freedom, rebellion, mischief, and song.”
Fling Diction by Frances Cannon
Green Writers Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9876631-5-8
The poems in this collection, says Major Jackson, “name the luxuriant grounds by which a self, curious to touch creation, defines itself. Such vulnerability is the hallmark of living.”
Unsolicited Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1956692679
This collection is “a response to the federal government’s plan to kill thousands of cormorants in the name of salmon recovery.”
Things a Bright Boy Can Do by Michael Chang
Coach House Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781552454978
In this collection, “the titans of pop culture and poetry wrestle at Chang’s whimsy, their poems a series of flings and retorts at the end of a late-night spree.”
My Love Is Water by Rob Macaisa Colgate
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946604-34-7
In this hybrid collection of drama and poetry “tracing the disintegration of a recent relationship,” the narrator “traverses a Chicago apartment filled with gay ghosts and broken Tagalog.”
Not a Force of Nature by Amy De’Ath
Futurepoem | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9889439-2-1
According to Kay Gabriel, in this collection De’Ath “turns poetry into a hot, potent, and highly funny form of criticism, in which social force is felt intimately, and voiced in the acid niceness of a work email.”
Zombie Vomit Mad Libs by Duy Đoàn
Alice James Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781949944686
According to Tamiko Beyer, in these poems Đoàn is “culling the expanse of human creation—from Shakespeare to Pokémon to the iPhone—to wrestle with deadly serious themes of suicide, imperialism, love, and loss.”
Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry
Green Linden Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7371625-8-2
This anthology of work by one hundred poets—including Frank Bidart, Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Mark Doty, Marilyn Hacker, and more—showcases “four generations of living writers, as varied in their subjects and styles as the nation they represent.”
Autumn House Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781637681107
“Using images of the great American West and the highways that connect it,” this collection “charts a path through landscapes of disenfranchisement toward self-determination and agency.”
Sledding the Valley of Shadow by Laura Foley
Fernwood Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781594981494
In this collection, Foley practices “the acceptance of the imperfect as the perfect lesson, as welcome or necessary steps to wisdom, slipping and sliding a flash-lit, joyful, snowy way to an abiding gratitude.”
Translated from the Spanish by James Nolan
Fonograf Editions | 2025
ISBN: 979-8987589052
According to Alexis Almeida, this bilingual collection stages “suits of poems committed to beauty and resistance, weaving together a politics filled with erotic charges, fierce candor, and a lilting descent into the past.”
Reprise: Poems and Photographs by Golden
Haymarket Books | 2025
ISBN: 9798888903056
The poems and portraits in this collection “reveal a stark vulnerability that invites readers to look deeply at times of great and, possibly, liberatory uncertainty.”
Coachella Elegy by Christian Gullette
Trio House Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781949487220
This debut poetry collection “explores the queer promised lands and poolside utopias of the American West even as they are threatened by environmental destruction.”
Live in Suspense by David Groff
Trio House Press | 2023
ISBN: 9781949487152
In these poems, Groff “writes about living between beginnings and endings, about always expecting the next mortal thing to happen.”
Ar:range:ments by Esther Kondo Heller
Fonograf Editions | 2025
ISBN: 979-8987589052
In this collection, “the action of arranging becomes a means of sounding out a collective utterance of Black survival with joy amidst grief, colonialism, medical racism, and loss.”
Still My Father’s Son by Nora Hikari
Sundress Publications | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-951979-70-6
Hikari’s collection “weaves a complex & delicate tale of love, religious trauma, queerness, and self/selves.”
Adam in the Garden by AE Hines
Charlotte Lit Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-960558-07-7
In these poems, Hines “lyrically examines the thresholds we cross: from childhood to adulthood, youth to old age, from rejection to self-acceptance.”
the archive is all in present tense by Elizabeth Hoover
Barrow Street | 2022
ISBN: 978-1736607558
According to Sun-Yung Shin, this is “an intensely cinematic collection of poems, intensely erotic and equally cerebral, where you will descend into archival folds making the body negative space in a restless, inescapable, eternal now.”
Dust and Dragons by Rob Jacques
Fernwood Press | 2023
ISBN: 9781594980992
These seventy-five poems explore “events involving dust and dragons as well as our very natural human reactions to them that are caused by our innocence and experience, faith and doubt, and lust and love.”
Flood Editions | 2025
ISBN: 9798985787474
According to Guy Davenport, this collection is “a late harvest of seeds sown by Blake, L. Frank Baum, the Bible, and Zukofsky, all in a new architecture.”
trans[re]incarnation by E Kerr
Mason Jar Press | 2023
ISBN: 9781951853143
The poems in this chapbook “reflect an experience of betrayal by one’s own god, body, and family, while searching for the promise of what can still be.”
Feast of the Ass by Jahan Khajavi
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-946604-14-9
“Drawing extensively on Iranian poetic traditions and the history of their reception in English translation,” Feast of the Ass “presents a series of verses that play in the fields of love poetry’s address.”
Tupelo Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-961209-10-7
“With a title utilizing the last two words Emily Dickinson wrote, ”Called Back “converses with one of our greatest poets in theatrical monologue, poem after poem, decoding secrets amidst the blatant.”
Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin
Alice James Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781949944709
Lin’s collection speaks of “the experiences of an undocumented American, her parents who fled Communist China and found safety in fundamentalist Christianity, and how she tried to understand them and herself.”
Noemi Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-955992-04-6
Girl Work “centers hybrid-form and prose poems exploring haunting, labor, sexual trauma, and the assertion of a gender- nonconforming self in our current political moment.”
When Stars are Traitors by LKN
Poetry Global Network | 2024
ISBN: 9781739288181
LKN’s collection “journeys through seven years of survival and the constant seeking for hope, courage and healing.”
Ghost in the Archive by Jennifer Loyd
Conduit Books & Ephemera | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9883272-4-0
According to Chet’la Sebree, this poetry collection is “a beautiful exploration of past and possibility through the life of Rachel Carson and a contemporary speaker who seeks her own truths.”
The Center for Literary Publishing | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-885635-93-8
McCabe’s collection traverses “the Ice Age; the excavation of the oldest female body; ancient Los Angeles before humans; and, in Sweden (McCabe’s mother’s home country), the 377-million-year-old meteor-made Siljan lake.”
book of provocations by mónica teresa ortiz
Host Publications | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7376050-6-5
Ortiz’s poems “explore catastrophe, illustrating in verse the refusal of the human spirit to submit to systems of oppression.”
threesome in the last Toyota Celica by m. mick powell
Host Publications | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-7376050-4-1
This collection “sings about Black queer femmehood in harmonies of multiple voices, asserting the self as ever-changing and voluminous.”
Brutal Companion by Ruben Quesada
Barrow Street | 2024
ISBN: 9781962131032
Quesada’s collection “probes the brutality and beauty found in relationships with lovers, friends, family, and the self.”
Interlocutor Goddess by Jasmine Reid
Autumn House Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781637681114
Interlocutor Goddess “employs a trans-lyricism, weaving together dual meanings through homonyms, homophones, and portmanteaus to create a layered, fugitive language that resists rigid classifications.”
The Red Handkerchief by Daniel Shapiro
Dos Madres Press | 2014
ISBN: 978-1-939929-14-3
According to Joan Larkin, in this collection Shapiro “knows that whatever we encounter—a face in the bathroom mirror, a dead lover’s shirt, even a wig, unexpectedly reimagined—can liberate the true self beneath our fears and disguises.”
In Lieu of Solutions by Violet Spurlock
Futurepoem | 2023
ISBN: 979-8-9889439-0-7
According to Stacy Szymaszek, these poems “perform miracles of clarity in situations where there is no clarity. They analyze to survive and share the process of analyzing as a generosity of spirit.”
Here at Last is Love: Selected Poems by Dunstan Thompson
Slant Books | 2015
ISBN: 9781639820122
This collection aims to provide “the definitive, authorized selection of Thompson’s best work, revealing to a wider public the literary vision of a ‘lost master.’”
Translating Blue by Sherre Vernon
Poetose | 2025
ISBN: 9781646723638
Vernon’s collection “considers how even in a lifetime of challenge and heartbreak one can find something beautiful in this life.”
When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton
Harbor Editions | 2024
ISBN: 9781957248431
According to Subhaga Crystal Bacon, the poems in this anthology “are diverse in style and form, but all speak to the tireless pressures of fitting into a heteronormative world before we are awake to our queerness.”
Noemi Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-934819-94-4
Wong’s poems “speak queerly of urban existences crushed by political and economic powers.”
For now I am sitting here growing transparent by Yau Ching
Translated from the Chinese by Chenxin Jiang
Zephyr Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938890-34-5
According to mk zariel, this collection is a “radically prefigurative text intertwined with social movements and communities of care, creating a world without dichotomies between softness and strength.”
Literary Magazines
A Soft Reset: Queer Writers of Color on Video Games
ANMLY | 2023
Guest edited by Summer Farah, this folio features writing by Harriette Chan, Stephanie Dinsae, Gyasi Hall, Nancy Huang, Marlin M. Jenkins, Felix Lecocq, Lyn Rafil, Nathanial Torres, and JS Wu.
“Sexuality” by Dhayana Alejandrina
Wellspringwords | 2024
This poem begins, “She found me at a really young age. / Opening myself like a fragile book, / I welcomed her.”
Tahoma Literary Review | 2024
This essay begins, “This guide provides the necessary procedures to effectively parent your child who: a) Is a chronic stutterer, b) Possesses an overactive imagination…”
“Dinner with Enya” by Jasmine Basuel
The Core Review | 2024
This story begins, “Netty was kissed outside the apartment building. Her girlfriend’s lips were dry and the press was quick and after she pulled back, Netty licked her lips like there was something to taste.”
West Trestle Review | 2022
This piece begins, “I. / First the strings. See her face smooth as paper—flawless, / rouged—her lips O, her tongue fluid against teeth. Next the piano.”
Two Poems by Elizabeth Bradfield
Terrain.org | 2025
The poem “Bell” begins, “Lucky when my shift on deck aligned with early / light and I could polish the bell: waist / and shoulder, head and lip.”
“Monday Night Choir Boi” by Jae Casella
Epistemic Literary | 2024
This poem begins, “We call ourselves The Lavender Choir. / We practice every Monday night. / Charlie ushers us into the sanctuary.”
“The Glass Wife” by K-Ming Chang
Baffling Magazine | 2024
This story begins, “The woman I love is made of glass. She enters me slowly, assimilating to my temperature, coiling pleasure around her finger like a filament at our center.”
“Contingency Plan or Just in Case” by Celene Chen
West Trestle Review | 2022
This piece begins, “When we first moved into our apartment, I found myself repeatedly saying, ‘Oh, you know, just in case,’ to my girlfriend.”
“Queer Marriage” by Prince Cunningham
Frozen Sea | 2025
This poem begins, “As if the bottom of Cayuga Lake opened to the sky, / So too Never is also Forever. As matter is mirrored / In antimatter, as shape is mirrored in shadow, we share…”
“(I Want to be a) Queer Action Hero” by Hal Dietrich
Arkana | 2024
This essay begins, “For such a little guy, I talk a lot about fighting. From what I’ve learned watching movies, this is pretty common.”
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This story begins, “My mother saw Saigon fall. No, the truth is that she was already long gone, bound for Guam on a boat…”
The Georgia Review | 2025
The poem “Passover” begins, “Dodged a bullet is one way / you described not getting AIDS / though we know the metaphor / inadequate.”
Dipity Literary Magazine | 2025
This poem begins, “Let’s be honest it has never been ‘legal’ to be this real. / Everything about the government is designed to say, ‘How can / I make you smaller and easier to chew.’”
manywor(l)ds | 2024
This piece begins, “I can’t imagine / I’m not a girl! / It’s normal / a desperate need / It’s just animal nature!”
“Versioning” by Soramimi Hanarejima
Baffling Magazine | 2025
This story begins, “Afraid that our most savage argument yet portends the coming demise of our friendship, I use my emergency contact privileges to download the latest backup from your archive of selves.”
“The Trouble with Cladistics & Dying Alone” by Ace Howlen
Arkana | 2025
This hybrid work begins, “my father & his father—neither eloquent men— / waltz around words they do not like.”
“God’s Children Are Little Broken Things” by Arinze Ifeakandu
A Public Space | 2015
Ifeakandu’s short story was originally published in Issue 24 of A Public Space and was later republished in a short fiction collection of the same name by A Public Space Books in 2022.
new words | 2025
Issue 6 of new words—a trans* and gender-expansive poetry and hybrid journal and a finalist for the 2025 Firecracker Award in Magazines/Best Debut—features writing by Arden Eli Hill, C. H. Lieberman, Jude Marx, Jory Mickelson, and more.
Fruitslice | 2025
Issue 6 of Fruitslice, a 2025 Firecracker Award finalist “featuring exclusively Queer writers, artists, and creators,” includes writing by Jess Beaudin, Alayna Cabral, AJ Dent, Jamayka Young, and more.
Issue 8: LGBTQ+ in the Roaring Twenties
Fahmidan Journal | 2021
Issue 8 of Fahmidan Journal features writing by Lorelei Bacht, Gwendolyn Harper, Mashaal Sajid, Max Turner, and more.
Epistemic Literary | 2024
This poem begins, “cold kisses on my thigh / seconds pass and i / bin the piece, watching white / disappear down the hole…”
The Keepthings | 2024
This story begins, “Jody and I met after New York City’s Pride March on June 28, 1987. It’s a cliché, but it was love at first sight.”
“Claiming Missing Inheritance” by Jack Lancaster
Bellevue Literary Review | 2020
This essay begins, “At the Whitney Museum, David Wojnarowicz’s portrait of his friend Peter Hujar claims its own wall.”
“Writing Queer Romance as an Exploration of My Own Queerness” by Karmen Lee
Open Secrets Magazine | 2025
This essay begins, “As a late thirty-something adult, when I look back on my childhood, I can see all the ways in which I missed the signs of my queerness.”
“nobody’s cis at the airport” by Perry Levitch
New England Review | 2024
This poem begins, “i.e. everyone’s unhappy about how literal / their body is i.e. the sticky realization / you need to literally move yourself / somewhere to be there…”
“Can the Sireniform Speak?: Devolving with The Little Mermaid” by Sophie Lewis
The Drift | 2023
This essay begins, “In the year that brought us the orca uprising and the disappearance of a submarine carrying tourists to the wreck of the Titanic, Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid starred an African American woman.”
“How I Realized I’m Asexual” by Mar
Open Secrets Magazine | 2025
This essay begins, “The first time I considered the possibility of being asexual, it wasn’t the lack of desire that struck me—it was the empty space beside me where I thought someone would be, slowly vanishing.”
Tahoma Literary Review | 2024
The poem “What the Soil Felt” begins, “A long time ago a tree crossed its legs. A eucalyptus became aware of its essence. They all kept / listening for a whistle…”
Shō Poetry Journal | 2025
This playlist features twelve audio recordings by poets recently published in Shō Poetry Journal, including William Ward Butler, Mickie Kennedy, Hannah Smith, and more.
ANMLY | 2020
According to guest editor tanner menard, “In each their own way, the poems published in this folio have unique medicine & subtle power. Together, they are a testament to the beauty of all Indigenous communities & they sing.”
Words Without Borders | 2015
This sixth annual Queer Issue features fiction by Sylwia Chutnik (translated from the Polish by Sean Gasper Bye) and Giancarlo Pastore (translated from the Italian by Wendell Ricketts); poetry by Pedro de Jesús (translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster); and more.
“The Tile Was My Alibi” by Jaime Rodriguez
Dipity Literary Magazine | 2025
This poem begins, “The tile is my alibi— / look down, not out, stay safe. / ¿Qué miras?”
“After Top Surgery” by Birch Rosen
Bellevue Literary Review | 2022
This poem begins, “You do not have to stagger around the house, / unaided and weak, / as the meds wear off or kick in.”
“Transgender Healthcare Has Always Been Feminist” by G. Samantha Rosenthal
Lilith | 2023
This essay begins, “In the early 1970s, a young woman walked into the Gender Identity Service in Boston.”
“Covenant” by Elizabeth Anne Schwartz
Frozen Sea | 2025
This poem begins, “I love her like / David loved Jonathan— / with the depth of / their promise.”
“Simple Instructions” by Sam Simas
New England Review | 2024
This story begins, “Harold is hacking the onion with a bread knife, again. I pass him the santoku and say, ‘Use this.’ He sighs.”
“Twenty-Seven of My Fears at Age 17: A Password-Protected List” by Lauren Smith
Does It Have Pockets | 2025
This essay begins, “1. Rejection / 2. Letting people in / 3. That if I come out, I cannot be platonically affectionate with my girl (space) friends anymore…”
“To Divine, from Grindr” by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Off Assignment | 2024
This essay begins, “You sat next to me on the sofa, and asked to take off my shirt when I told you it was wet from wandering in the rain…”
“Caring For, and Learning From, Queer and Trans Elders” by Carmel Tanaka
Lilith | 2023
This essay begins, “As a child, my mom, Dr. Dalia Gottlieb-Tanaka, a brilliant pioneering gerontologist on creativity and dementia, would bring me along to site visits of senior care homes.”
The Core Review | 2024
This work of visual narrative begins, “Take / me / home, / roots / Home’s / out- / grew / old / a / soda- / stained…”
Anodyne Magazine | 2025
Volume 5 of Anodyne Magazine—which publishes writing and visual art on personal health experiences by FLINTA writers—features writing by Rose Cobb, Raegan Cote, Samantha Sharp, Kal Tayman, and more.
“Rules of the Door” by Wendy Elizabeth Wallace
Does It Have Pockets | 2025
This story begins, “After the thing that happened to Kevin, we make rules for The Door. We’ve decided it’s our duty to go back. Not because we want to re-enter this world, we say, but for Kevin.”
“Paddling Through Hell: Florida’s Nonbinary Wetlands” by Chris Watkins
Terrain.org | 2025
This essay begins, “Graham Creek is a mystical place, running through a tupelo-cypress swamp, lined on all sides by fat-butted, twisting and knobby trees that remind one of long, warty witches’ noses.”
“Before the Wedding” by Cassandra Whitaker
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This poem begins, “Say yes—say yes—say yes say yes / how many appetites demand an answer? / What comes next comes faster faster…”
manywor(l)ds | 2025
This piece begins, “Both of my parents spent kindergarten through twelfth grade in the same tiny private school in rural South Carolina, this latest brainchild of segregationists built around the time of their births.”
“To the Child I Could Not Help” by Mohsin Zaidi
Off Assignment | 2024
This essay begins, “It’s not often that a glass smashes. But it happens. At home, in a restaurant, at a party. And when it does, whether in a gay bar in New York’s West Village or…”
