Carnal Knowledge Is the Sex Guide You Wish You Had In High School
Carnal Knowledge is full of the truths you wish you’d learned from your hip older sister if your hip older sister happened to read a lot of feminist literature.
Lez Liberty Lit: Allow For The Unexpected
Why private eyes are watching you, watching everything (jk) (probably); computers are machines; banned books to read by writers of color; Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the first undocumented person to ever be nominated for a National Book Foundation Award; and more.
Leigh Finke’s “Queerfully and Wonderfully Made” Answers Crucial Questions for LGBTQ+ Christian Youth
“I wish I had these books when I was 15. I needed permission. I needed somebody to tell me, ‘You’re ok.’ If I had had one place to go, one book in my hand, known one person, I could have avoided a lot of trouble.”
Year of Our (Audre) Lorde: September’s Afterimages
I am safe nowhere, the Black women in my family of origin and family of choice are safe nowhere. It’s a fact we’ve known but one that feels all the more threatening in the wake of continuing violent injustice for Black women.
Things I Read That I Love #313: In A “Peeking Around The Dinner Party Host’s House On Your Way To The Bathroom” Kind of Way
Topics include Black voters, a bad reality TV show, murder, Judith Butler, how we quarantine, the tyranny of chairs, TikTok, Bath & Body Works, the Eco-Yogi slumlords of Brooklyn, Emily Ratajkowski and Ramona Quimby!
Talking with Shani Mootoo on the True Story That Became Dark Lesbian Novel “Polar Vortex”
Shani Mootoo is one of the towering lesbian novelists of our time. In her newest novel, Polar Vortex, Mootoo winds the interior lives of its three central characters like a jack- (or jill-) in-the-box: to the point of explosion.
Lez Liberty Lit: Reclaiming Genderqueer Monstrousness
Roxane Gay on Audre Lorde, Emily Hashimoto on writing lesbian sex, Tessa Gratton on reclaiming genderqueer monstrousness and more.
8 Books Featuring Bi+ People in Longterm Relationships
Given that identities are often assumed based on the gender of a person’s current partner(s), how do bi+ folks navigate longterm relationships? What effect does being in a longterm relationship have on a bi+ person’s understanding of self? How does their bi+ identity interact with intersecting identities and those of their partner(s)? How do poly and monogamous relationships differ for bi+ people? All those questions and more are explored in these fiction and non-fiction books about bi+ people!
Queer Arabs Taking Up Space: An Interview With Zaina Arafat
Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much is the bi Arab romance novel l didn’t know I needed. We chat about the book, first-gen traumas, sexual ambiguity and Arab parents.
In “SFSX,” Tina Horn Builds a Purity-Obsessed Sci-Fi Vision of our Dystopian Present
Autostraddle recently spoke with Tina Horn via video call to chat about the first volume of SFSX, her myriad influences, building community around art, the sex worker rights’ movement, and incels.
Lez Liberty Lit: Library Sex
The people who fantasize about library sex, excerpts and fall reading lists galore, Black-owned bookstores and radical bookstores, pandemic creativity and more.
Return of the Space Lesbians: Tamsyn Muir’s “Harrow the Ninth” Is a Maze of Grief, Gore, and Possibly Global Warming
Sometimes, what you really need is a story that understands how grief can ricochet through the entire universe.
How Writing “The Ship We Built,” a Children’s Novel, Helped Me Come Out
The first draft of The Ship We Built was intended as a valentine for one person. Six and a half years later, The Ship We Built has been released as a novel with Penguin Random House and continues to be a valentine – now for anybody who picks it up.
As School Season Begins, Fight for Trans Representation in Public Libraries
The public library is in the unique position to pick up where public education leaves off—to succeed where public education fails. It’s time we start rethinking what a library can be.
65 Queer and Feminist Books Coming Your Way in Fall 2020
I can confirm that no matter what you’re looking for — YA, non-fiction, memoir, romance, literary fiction, comics, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, poetry — there are queer and feminist books on this list that you will love!
Year of Our (Audre) Lorde: August’s New Spelling of My Name
In my own myth, New York has been the cornerstone of what shaped me, finally allowing myself to be in my queerness. While the New York I inhabited and the one of Audre Lorde’s life looked radically different, Lorde’s relationships and the women she loves and lusts for each leave her fuller than before.
Lez Liberty Lit: Boredom Banana Bread
The relationships between boredom, work, art, pandemic, and banana bread; the bourgeois romance of pandemic isolation; read books about “disreputable women” by women writers and more.
Things I Read That I Loved #312: The Key Word is “Oneself,” Which Is Irresistible To 20-Year-Olds
Topics include YouTuber adoptions, romance novels, moldy jam, Sarah Schulman, the future of the fashion business is sweatpants, supermarket sweep and so much more!
8 Queer YA Novels With Coming of Age Hope to Relive Alice Wu’s “The Half of It”
Queer YA novels with themes similar to Alice Wu’s already beloved movie: falling in love through letter writing, figuring out your queer identity, keeping secrets, new friendships, small towns, and slowly getting to new your new girl crush.
Lez Liberty Lit: Traditional Vocabulary Is Defunct
Raven Leilani’s Luster and the new vocabulary for morality, how lesbian pulp fiction made one essayist feel normal, a ton of new memoirs and more.