Hi howdy, pals!
It’s been an, ahem, eventful couple weeks, discourse-wise. The Queen and Coolio both bit it, Adam Levine should read Vanessa’s Autostraddle Guide to Sexting, Lizzo played a sparkly flute that once belonged to a president no one liked (then or now tbh!) but racists are mad anyway, transphobes are losing their shit because a cute cartoon alien doesn’t do human gender, you might or might not be hot enough to write about Marilyn Monroe, some FuzzBeed Attempt Man “lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship”, the list goes on. I’m tired. The internet has worn me out, at least for now, and so pure content fatigue has cured my book hangover and chased me into some delightful new reading territory. My drought is broken! My screen time is down! Praise BE!
Firstly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout Kayla’s novelette Helen House to the high heavens: it’s not too late to preorder a signed special edition hardcover from Miami bookstore Books and Books, and we’ll be celebrating its pub day on 10/18! Are you in Gainesville, Florida by any chance? If so, you won’t want to miss this event with Kayla, Ryan Rivas, and Kristen Arnett, hosted by the fine folks of Third House Books!
Across the board, October is an exciting reading month; so many good books are coming out now in anticipation of the holidays’ sales rush, we’re close enough to smell the tantalizing new releases of 2023, the awards cycle is whirring along, and there are some truly magnificent pieces published each week by amazing queer writers. When (known homosexual) Anne Shirley said “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers”, when Girl in Red sang “We Fell In Love In October”, when this tweeter declared “october is an inherently gay month” — they were right.
Righty-o, let’s make like a trampoline and bounce! This week on Rainbow Reading, we’ve got:
Shelf Care: Reviews, Essays, and other Things of Note
- National Book Award Finalists were named this week! Among them are:
- Fiction: A+ Bookclub and Autostraddle beloved Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different!
- Fiction: Alejandro Varela, author of The Town of Babylon
- Young People’s Literature: Sonora Reyes, author of The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School
- As ever, queer scholars, writers, and historians continue to lead the coverage and analysis of the ongoing monkeypox outbreak.
- A Scatter of Light, Malinda Lo’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to the award-winning Last Night at the Telegraph Club, is out now! Y’all know how much I love Malinda and her work, so I’m sure you can imagine how little chill I have about this one…
- It’s anthology season, folks!
- It Came From The Closet, an anthology of QUEER REFLECTIONS ON HORROR from the legends at the Feminist Press, is out now!
- We got to publish a sneak peek for y’all — check out this piece from Carmen Maria Machado about Jennifer’s Body!
- Unfettered Hexes, a QUEER WITCHES ANTHOLOGY (!!!) is a nominee for this year’s Shirley Jackson Awards! Neon Hemlock Press with the bangers, as always.
- (Side note, speaking to my tarot nerds now, can you believe they made a beautiful oracle deck to go with the book? now THAT’S what I call good promo merch!!)
- Queer Little Nightmares, an anthology of MONSTROUS FICTION AND POETRY, is available for preorder now and will be out this December!
- Moonflower and Nightshade, an anthology of original sapphic horror, is available now on Amazon.
- It Came From The Closet, an anthology of QUEER REFLECTIONS ON HORROR from the legends at the Feminist Press, is out now!
- Applications are now open for the 2023 Latinx in Publishing Writers Mentorship Program — if you’re a Latine/Latinx writer, this is a great opportunity!
- What’s next for Torrey Peterson after the runaway success of Detransition, Baby? Isle McElroy interviews her at Electric Literature!
- “I’m So Glad I Live In A World Where There Are Octobers” — This queer Anne of Green Gables retelling from Mariko Tamaki (author of beloved queer YA classics like Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me and This One Summer) sounds amazing!!
- The Restless Dark, Erica Waters’ latest YA horror-thriller, is out now — this one features a true crime podcast, a contest to unearth the bones of a lost killer, and three girls tangled in fury and fear both past and present. Fans of The Wilder Girls, this one’s for y’all!
- From the Archives: I recently read this 2020 essay from Sabra Boyd about work, death, death at work, work with death, the death of work, life after death, and life after work. It fucked me up in eleventy zillion ways and I loved it. That’s all.
- QUEER LOVE IN SLEEPY HOLLOW? Count me tf in. This new graphic novel from the creator of Lumberjanes sounds like an absolute treat.
- Very, very into this fascinating thread from queer historian Hugh Ryan about the fundamental shift happening in our cultural understanding of queerness.
“Piepzna-Samarasinha beautifully describes how disabled people — especially BIPOC and queer disabled people — have been caring for each other, keeping each other alive, and fighting for justice, as well as how these skills and models can create the future. The book delves into the importance of disabled joy and pleasure, unapologetically claiming these things without feeling the need to justify them to an ableist world.”
— Katie Reilly in her review of The Future is Disabled, which is out now!
Autocorrect: Books content from the last couple weeks at Autostraddle!
Yooooo, it’s been an especially good few weeks here for Autostraddle books coverage — lotta treats in this list!
- Carmen Maria Machado wrote about queer horror classic Jennifer’s Body!
- Chinelo wrote about Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet and Bitter for the latest installment of Queer Naija Lit!
- Casey assembled a swoonworthy list of 8 Queer Books Set in Los Angeles About the Movie Industry. (Casey, you are the light of my heart, you know this list is the list of my dreams!)
- Autumn Fourkiller wrote about Elif Batuman’s The Idiot and its sequel, the new Either/Or!
- Stef reviewed Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam!
- Katie reviewed The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha!
- shea reviewed A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo! (and Malinda was delighted)
- Abeni reviewed It Came From the Closet!
- Stef reviewed Faltas by Cecilia Gentili!
Also, if you haven’t joined A+ yet, now’s the perfect time — you don’t want to miss out on book club events like this one with Sarah Thankam Mathews, or on our subscribers-only series like Things I’ve Never Asked, where my best and dearest childhood friend dropped some gorgeous insights on queer horror, genre-as-inheritance, and what a weird-ass kid I was. Get on in there!
That’s all she wrote, folks! If you’re a queer writer, particularly an early-career queer writer: I’d love to hear about the cool things you’re up to so that I can share links to your published essays, book reviews, short stories, poems, and longform features on LGBTQ+ topics! Please email me links for consideration at [email protected] with the subject line “Rainbow Reading Submission” — I’m an avid browser-tab-collector, and I especially want to hear from you if you’ve just landed your first publication or first major byline.
💜💜💜😊
I’ve been taking a break from YA but I really want to read The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School now. Go queers!