Celebrating Queer Voices
Celebrating Queer Voices
Brave and beautiful stories
The Pride List of Queer Storytelling
June 2023: This Pride month, Audible has teamed up with non-profit organisation, Out on the Page, supporter and champion of LGBTQIA+ writers and writing, to release this extensive Pride List of Queer Storytelling, which features contributions from some of the UK’s most important and exciting voices from the LGBTQIA+ community.
From poems and novellas to memoirs and even speeches, the Pride List of Queer Storytelling celebrates a vast breadth of queer voices, featuring over 100 titles, hand-picked by 42 LGBTQIA+ writers. Accompanied by their compelling and insightful reasons for submitting each title, we encourage you to engage with, discover, and broaden your knowledge of LGBTQIA+ stories and authors.
Read on to discover your next treasured story, as recommended by: Adam Lowe; Alex Bertie; Andrew McMillan; Charlotte Mendelson; Damian Barr; Dean Atta; DJ Fat Tony; Elias Jahshan; Elizabeth Chakrabarty; Emily Ajgan; Gayathiri Kamalakanthan; Huw Lemmey; James McDermott; Jamie Windust; Jeremy Atherton Lin; Joelle Taylor; Jonathan Harvey; Juliet Jacques; Justin Myers; Keith Jarrett; Lauren John Joseph; Lisa Williamson; Liv Little; Luke Turner; Mary Jean Chan; Mary Paulson-Ellis; Meg-John Barker; Mendez; Natasha Carthew; Neil Bartlett; Okechukwu Nzelu; Ollie Charles; Patrick Gale; Paul Bradley; Paul Burston; Phil Stamper; Rosie Garland; Ruby Rare; Scott Aaron Tait; Shivani Dave; Travis Alabanza; Val McDermid.
Scroll across to uncover the recommendations from each contributor, many of which can be listened to on Audible.
Jeremy Atherton Lin recommends...
Jeremy Atherton Lin is an Asian-American essayist based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England. His debut book Gay Bar received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and was named a pick of the year by critics at the New York Times, NPR, Artforum, Spin, The White Review and Vogue. Jeremy has contributed to The Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Frieze, The Face, GQ, Fantastic Man, Granta and The Yale Review, from which his work was anthologised in Best American Magazine Writing 2022. He has been nominated for the Randy Shilts Award, National Magazine Award, Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and Jhalak Prize. Art writing commissions include Hayward Gallery and National Trust. Lecturing engagements include Cornell University, The Courtauld, Royal College of Art, Birkbeck University and Uppsala Universitet. Jeremy has created programmes for NTS Radio and performed at institutions including Moderna Museet Stockholm and UCLA. His next cultural memoir Deep House will be published in 2024.
Jeremy Atherton Lin recommends...
June 30, 1974 by James Schuyler
Poem
In this contemplative poem, it’s Sunday morning after a social night in a country house. As his friends still sleep, Schuyler’s soul is filled with 'tranquil joy' a tender mix of belonging and apartness. He writes: 'I like to be alone with friends.' This takes trust, reminding me of the recent gay buddy film Fire Island or Armistead Maupin’s idea of 'venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one.'
Jeremy Atherton Lin recommends...
To the Class of '92 by Eileen Myles
Poem
A commencement speech/poem that cuts through convention: 'You are clinging to the forms that are handed to you, but you know they are nothing. Isn’t that true.' Myles leans into faux pas, bringing up the inevitability of death and flirting with the crowd. Plainspoken but complex, it showed me anything can be written in a way that feels real. When asked to write a eulogy, this helped me figure out how to make a genuine connection with fellow mourners.
Jeremy Atherton Lin recommends...
A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters by June Jordan
Poem
Also set on a Sunday morning, this poem about a neighbourly chat serves as a rejoinder to ‘the right way’ of thinking and learning. Jordan considers pernicious pseudoscience that dismisses the intelligence of Black children, then asks an elder on the block - 'She sweeping away Saturday night from the stoop' - for her take on Einstein’s theory of relativity. It’s a funny poem about a consequential matter: the relativity of intellectual integrity.
Joelle Taylor recommends...
Joelle Taylor is the author of four collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected.
Joelle Taylor recommends...
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Novel
I don't think I know a contemporary butch or trans masc who has not held this book as something holy. It’s for the most part an agonising read, but even so is a kind of candle in a window for all women who do not fit our own bodies. To be seen is an extraordinary thing.
Joelle Taylor recommends...
Another Mother Tongue by Judy Grahn
Non-fiction
Grahn was revered in 80’s for her queer writing and in particular this text which examines the deep history of the words we use within the LGBT+ communities. I read the book when it first came out and have used it ever since as the basis for much of my own understanding of the etymology of the words that define us, and of those we try to escape from.
Joelle Taylor recommends...
Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
Poetry Collection
This is Adrienne Rich’s seminal poetry collection published in 1973 and the one that introduced me to the idea of woman and lesbian as subject rather than object. Passionate, delicate, and powerful she resurrects our histories not through second hand myths but diving into it herself. She returns with treasures: ourselves.
Jonathan Harvey recommends...
Jonathan is the multi award winning writer of 25 plays. His film Beautiful Thing won many awards internationally, and Best Film at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. For TV, Jonathan wrote the BAFTA nominated sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme and Beautiful People (Best Comedy, Banff TV Festival). He’s written over 300 episodes of Coronation Street, and his six novels are published by Pan Macmillan. His most recent play A Thong For Europe played at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre, and this summer his play Beautiful Thing will receive its 30th anniversary production at Theatre Royal Stratford East.
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Detransition, Baby
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Renata Friedman
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart, and three years on, Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
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A very honest depictions of modern adult life.
- By R . K on 11-02-21
Jonathan Harvey recommends...
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Novel
Trans writer Torrey is a proper talent and this book kept me gripped all the way through. This debut novel irreverently follows the complex relationships of three trans and cis women in New York.
Jonathan Harvey recommends...
Sarah Daniels: Plays 1 by Sarah Daniels
Play
Whenever I hit the buffers when writing a play, I turn to the brilliant lesbian plays of Sarah Daniels from the 80s for inspiration. Funny, shocking, brutal, there’s no-one quite like Daniels.
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Phenomenal
- By Kerri on 19-02-17
Jonathan Harvey recommends...
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Novel
A historical sweep of a novel about prejudice and intolerance in Ireland over a period of seventy years. Following the life of Cyril Avery, struggling to find his place in the world, this book really made me laugh. And cry. The use of language is beautiful and the characters are glorious. It’s read brilliantly on Audible by Stephen Hogan. For anyone interested in gay history this is a must.
Juliet Jacques recommends...
Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London. She has published five books, including Trans: A Memoir, Variations and Monaco. Her fiction, journalism and essays have appeared in numerous publications, and her short films have screened across the world. She teaches at the Royal College of Art and co-hosts Novara FM.
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Lote
- Jacaranda Twenty in 2020
- By: Shola von Reinhold
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Zawe Ashton, Aurora Burghart
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
A literary novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda's fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet Hermia Drumm. Lote is an exploration of aesthetic, beauty and the ephemeral realm in which they exist. This witty and luxurious tale delves into the opposing mental structures and historical platforms of abnegating Thought Artists, and extravagant aesthete black artists.
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Absolutely magnificent!!!
- By Nychenda on 18-02-22
Juliet Jacques recommends...
LOTE by Shola von Reinhold
Novel
Archives are so important for LGBTQ+ authors, as we try to correct the historic erasure of our communities: they allow us to find antecedents and, whenever we can’t prove their existences, they give us the tools to imagine what queer lives might have looked like in the past. Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE revolves around a queer, Black, working-class protagonist looking at the life and work of a long-forgotten, inter-war Black poet, asking searching questions about how and why certain artists, and certain people, were and continued to be marginalised. The novel is a sharp critique of white-centric art movements, written with admirable lightness and humour.
Juliet Jacques recommends...
Eva Perón by Copa
Play
Argentine dramatist Copi’s play about Eva Perón could not be performed in his homeland, and provoked a riot when it premiered in Paris in 1969 – and not just because its openly gay writer insisted that Evita be played by a drag queen. The play is a hilarious, histrionic look at how the hyper-macho Juan Perón manipulated his wife’s public image, while undercutting that image by portraying Evita as a foul-mouthed hedonist, addicted to painkillers and sex. It’s a fantastic piece of satire, and riotously funny.
Juliet Jacques recommends...
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Novel
Alison Rumfitt’s debut novel, issued by new LGBTQ+ publisher Cipher Press in 2021, looks like - and indeed, is - a horror story. The subject of that horror is contemporary Britain, run on spite, hatred, and denial of its historical crimes at home and abroad. There are so many layers to Tell Me I’m Worthless – its use of queer and trans identities, its playing with the trope of the haunted house and the idea of the nation, its sublime use of a famous image of The Smiths, and its exploration of just how rife transphobia is in British media, culture and society. It really is an absolute gem, and I’m excited to see what Rumfitt does next.
Justin Myers recommends...
Justin Myers is an author and journalist from West Yorkshire, perhaps best known for writing under the pseudonym The Guyliner. He’s written three novels: The Last Romeo, The Magnificent Sons, and The Fake-Up; his work has appeared in major publications including the Guardian and GQ; and he also acted as script consultant on Adam Kay’s BAFTA-winning BBC drama This is Going to Hurt.
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Just by Looking at Him
- By: Ryan O'Connell
- Narrated by: Ryan O'Connell
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eliott is a TV writer with a perfect-penised boyfriend. He's living the dream. But behind the glossy veneer, he's been papering over cracks, and they're starting to show. He's creatively stifled, he's drinking a little too often and his cerebral palsy makes him feel like gay Shrek. When River walks in, Elliott's life is turned upside down in the best way. River is funny, charming and makes him feel seen. But maybe that's part of the deal when you hire a sex worker.
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Okay, not bad, not great.
- By David on 08-06-23
Justin Myers recommends...
Just by Looking at Him by Ryan O'Connell
Novel
Ryan O’Connell is an exciting voice in queer fiction and I devoured his 2022 debut. Thoroughly modern, and totally individual, Just By Looking at Him is an examination of intersectionality, sex, disability, and queer culture through the lens of a character who's not always easy to love. A refreshing read, thrumming with personality and energy that left me a) breathless and b) very excited about the future of queer literature. An unmissable read for anyone looking for important commentary on the way we live now, presented with biting, well-observed comedy.
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The Black Flamingo
- By: Dean Atta, Anshika Khullar
- Narrated by: Dean Atta
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
A boy comes to terms with his identity as a mixed-race gay teen - then at university he finds his wings as a drag artist, The Black Flamingo. A bold story about the power of embracing your uniqueness. Sometimes, we need to take charge, to stand up wearing pink feathers - to show ourselves to the world in bold colour. 'I masquerade in makeup and feathers and I am applauded.'
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Peaceful Yet Powerful Coming-of-Age Story
- By Steph on 16-06-21
Justin Myers recommends...
The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta
Play
Sometimes you read a book that’s like no other, that’s a world away from who you are now, but feels like it’s taken a hold of your heart, and your memories. The Black Flamingo, is one such book, told in verse, following Michael, born in London and of Jamaican and Greek-Cypriot heritage, on his journey from baby to man. The agonies of childhood, coming out, gender expression, crushes, friendships, dramas, highs and lows – it’s all there in this wise and evocative story. A reader of any age will adore and find comfort in The Black Flamingo, but it's surely destined to be as dear to future generations as Tales of the City is to me. A must-read for anyone looking for reassurance they’re not alone.
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Tales of the City Audio Collection
- Tales of the City, Books 1-6
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrated by: Armistead Maupin
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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Performance
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Story
Among the cast of this groundbreaking saga are the lovelorn residents of 28 Barbary Lane: the bewildered but aspiring Mary Ann Singleton; the libidinous Brian Hawkins; Mona Ramsey, still in a'60s trance; Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, forever in bright-eyed pursuit of Mr. Right; and their marijuana-growing landlady, the indefatigable Mrs. Madrigal.
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This is not Unabridged as advertised
- By Sheila on 23-06-15
Justin Myers recommends...
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Novel
The unbeatable, irresistible blueprint for queer ensemble novels. This book and I, we go way back. It was the nineties, and I was a teenager, still questioning my own place in the world and searching for role models and coming up blank – until I read Tales of the City. Transported to a world that seemed light years away but felt like home, the adventures of 28 Barbary Lane’s warm, lovable, damaged residents gave me hope, unlocking a few doors along the way. There are indelible traces of this classic in everything I write, and it’s a love affair I’ll never give up on. Essential reading for anyone searching for their logical family and a solid grounding in the queer journey.
Keith Jarrett recommends...
Keith Jarrett is a writer, academic and an international poetry slam champion. He was selected for the International Literary Showcase as one of 10 outstanding LGBT writers. Since his poetry collection, Selah, he has written for BBC Four/Old Vic ( Queers) and Amazon Prime Video ( Just So You Know), among others. He teaches at New York University in London and is completing his debut novel.
Keith Jarrett recommends...
Our Caribbean: a Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles by Thomas Glave
Poetry Collection
This anthology is quietly ground-breaking, gathering poetry, prose and non-fiction from across the diverse lands of the Caribbean, some of it in translation. These are works that rarely get to sit beside each other, with many rarely even acknowledged as queer writing, and some rarely acknowledged as Caribbean. It’s a great introduction to Audre Lorde’s Zami, to Cuba’s Reinaldo Arenas, to Jamaica’s Michelle Cliff, and to several lesser-known writers besides. If, like me, you have wandering tastebuds and can’t always settle on one thing, there’s plenty to enjoy – and to learn.
Keith Jarrett recommends...
Venus as a Boy by Luke Sutherland
Novella
This slim novella haunts me. The intensity of this story lingers, as it recounts the magic and tragedy of Désirée’s life, from Orkney to Soho. You don’t have to be a fan of magical realism to be captivated by this tale, although it helps a little; in any case, it brings a rare perspective to the queer canon.
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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
- By: Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Jeanette Winterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
When Jeanette Winterson left home at 16 because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: "Why be happy when you could be normal?" This book is the story of a life's work to find happiness. It is the story of how the painful past returned to haunt Jeanette's later life, and send her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. It is also a book about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft which supports us when we are sinking.
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Oranges Is Not The Only Book
- By Blake's Tyger on 23-12-12
Keith Jarrett recommends...
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Memoir
I’m cheating here but, of course, you should probably read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit first as this memoir feels like a counterpart to the novel written decades before. If you’ve grown up in a religiously repressive environment, this is required reading; it’s insightful, poignant and a lyrical read.
Keith Jarrett recommends...
A Little Body are Many Parts: Un Cuerpecito son Muchas Partes by Legna Rodríguez-Iglesias
Poetry Collection
Wry and witty, these poems creep up on you. It’s a selection from the Cuban poet’s eight collections, brought together in this bilingual edition. The emotional depth catches you unexpectedly as the book progresses. There's bi representation and, above all, humour in it, something we could all use a little more of. Whilst it’s the winner of an English PEN award, it still feels like a bit of a hidden gem. We definitely need more queer books in translation, and this is a good start for anyone wanting to expand their reading.
Lauren John Joseph recommends...
Lauren John Joseph is the author of the experimental prose volume, Everything Must Go , the plays Boy in a Dress and A Generous Lover and the novel At Certain Points We Meet. Lauren’s recent work has also appeared in Granta, The Refinery, and the Observer.
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Lote
- Jacaranda Twenty in 2020
- By: Shola von Reinhold
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Zawe Ashton, Aurora Burghart
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A literary novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda's fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet Hermia Drumm. Lote is an exploration of aesthetic, beauty and the ephemeral realm in which they exist. This witty and luxurious tale delves into the opposing mental structures and historical platforms of abnegating Thought Artists, and extravagant aesthete black artists.
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Absolutely magnificent!!!
- By Nychenda on 18-02-22
Lauren John Joseph recommends...
** LOTE by Shola von Rheinhold **
Novel
Simply the most nacreous novel of the century thus far; a book about angels, scholars and aesthetes, history restored, fakery as praxis, elegance as liberation. The prose is staggering, the ideas so bountiful it’s almost obscene, everyone who reads this book becomes immediately obsessed and starts proselytising compulsively. Be warned.
Lauren John Joseph recommends...
Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner
Novel
Queer experimental fiction with a socialist twist, Franz Kafka and Brigid Brophy cast long shadows but Sterling Karat Gold is unmistakably now. Giggling with paranoia, panic rings through each page of this sci-fi shaded f*ck you to Austerity which is also (perhaps surprisingly) full of endless fashion inspiration.
Lisa Williamson recommends...
Lisa was born and grew up in Nottingham and studied drama at Middlesex University. Her debut novel The Art of Being Normal was inspired by the time she spent working as an administrator at the Gender Identity Development Service. It went on to win a number of prizes including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize for Best Older Fiction 2016. Her other novels for young adults include All About Mia, Paper Avalanche and First Day of My Life. She also writes non-fiction for younger children and is the author of the upcoming Bigg School series for middle-grade readers.
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Jamie
- A joyful story of friendship, bravery and acceptance
- By: L.D. Lapinski
- Narrated by: Rebecca Hayes
- Length: 3 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Jamie Rambeau is a happy 11-year-old non-binary kid who likes nothing better than hanging out with their two best friends Daisy and Ash. But when the trio find out that in Year Seven they will be separated into one school for boys and another for girls, their friendship suddenly seems at risk. And when Jamie realises no one had thought about where they are going to go, they decide to take matters into their own hands, and sort it all out once and for all.
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Brilliant book about being non-binary
- By Tandri on 02-07-23
Lisa Williamson recommends...
Jamie by LD Lapinski
Novel
A warm-hearted and uplifting story for younger readers told through the eyes of a non-binary child forced to choose whether to attend the local girls or boys school. It's really only now, in adulthood, that I realise just how limited the reading material made available to me was. I know I would have devoured both ( Jamie by LD Lapinski and Boy Like Me by Simon James Green) of these titles.
Lisa Williamson recommends...
Boy Like Me by Simon James Green
Novel
A poignant, powerful and at times very funny coming-of-age/coming-out story. Set in the mid 90s against the backdrop of Section 28, it is a potent reminder of how far we've come, but also how far we still have to go. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, a time when it was rare to come across an LGBTQ+ character in a book. Both the titles I've picked put young LGBTQ+ people (in this case, a gay teen and a non binary child) at the forefront of the action and explore their respective worlds in a way that feels authentic and sensitive as well as being warm, funny and entertaining.
Liv Little recommends...
Liv is a writer of Jamaican and Guyanese descent via South London. Liv tells stories with heart about the people and places that matter to her. Her work spans journalism, audio, TV and curatorial projects for which she's received various accolades. Liv is most at peace in nature, and she now lives by the sea. Rosewater is her debut novel.
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None of the Above
- Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary
- By: Travis Alabanza
- Narrated by: Travis Alabanza
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Travis Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity. These phrases have stayed with them over the years. Some are deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or offensive, some celebratory; sentences that have impacted them for better and for worse; sentences that speak to the broader issues raised by a world that insists that gender must be a binary. Through these seven phrases, which include some of their most transformative experiences as a Black, mixed-race, non-binary person, Travis Alabanza turns a mirror back on society.
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Moving insight into being trans non binary
- By Rikki Arundel on 05-09-22
Liv Little recommends...
None of The Above by Travis Alabanza
Memoir
Travis is the most delicious storyteller. This book is a memoir that reads like philosophy rooted in their lived experience. Travis asks poignant questions about how knowledge is created, shared, and perpetuated in a way that is both imaginative and exploratory. This book will make you laugh, cry, and leave you totally inspired!
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Here Comes the Sun
- By: Nicole Dennis-Benn
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this radiant, highly anticipated debut, a cast of unforgettable women battle for independence while a maelstrom of change threatens their Jamaican village. Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis-Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate.
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Such a brilliant read.
- By Sonia Warner on 31-05-22
Liv Little recommends...
Here Comes The Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn
Novel
The dialogue in this book sings. Dennis Benn maps intergenerational trauma, colourism, colonialism and queer love and is set in Jamaica. Reading this book changed my life - it explores not only how society relates to Black women, but how we interact with each other.
Liv Little recommends...
* Letters to my Trans Sisters * by Charlie Craggs
Non-fiction
Charlie Craggs is an icon and has been a constant inspiration to me. She's unfiltered, unwavering in her values, big hearted and incredibly honest. This collection of letters is an important, heartfelt anthology that captures joy, hope, anger, and humour.
Luke Turner recommends...
Luke Turner’s Men At War is a critically-acclaimed account of masculinity and sexuality during the Second World War and how the conflict impacts our culture today. His first book Out Of The Woods, a memoir of desire and the human identity within ‘nature’, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He is co-founder of online music magazine The Quietus.
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Go the Way Your Blood Beats
- On Truth, Bisexuality and Desire
- By: Michael Amherst
- Narrated by: Harrison Knights
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Using bisexuality as a frame, Go the Way Your Blood Beats questions the division of sexuality into straight and gay, in a timely exploration of the complex histories and psychologies of human desire. A challenge to the idea that sexuality can either ever be fully known or neatly categorised, it is a meditation on desire's unknowability.
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very powerful reflection of monosexism
- By Chantal on 01-09-20
Luke Turner recommends...
Go The Way Your Blood Beats by Michael Amherst
Memoir
Part of my motivation for writing my first book, Out of the Woods, was the feeling that good writing about what it was like to live and love and feel as a bisexual man were as thin on the ground as they had been throughout my teenage years during the 1990s, where straight and gay people alike hit people like me with the same old prejudices – that bisexual men were greedy, or cowards on the way to admitting they were actually gay. Reading Go The Way Your Blood Beats, named after a quote by James Baldwin, was like encountering a much-needed friend and guide. Amherst, a sensitive writer, combines polemic and memoir with addresses to past lovers of unspecified genders and holds up fluid sexuality as a norm, rather than a state of indecision or chaos.
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They
- (Faber Editions)
- By: Kay Dick, Carmen Maria Machado - introduction
- Narrated by: Isabel Adomakoh Young
- Length: 2 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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This is Britain: but not as we know it. THEY are coming closer . . . THEY begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Soon the National Gallery is purged; eerie towers survey the coast; savage mobs stalk the countryside destroying artworks—and those who resist. THEY capture dissidents—writers, painters, musicians, even the unmarried and childless—in military sweeps, 'curing' these subversives of individual identity. Survivors gather together as cultural refugees, preserving their crafts, creating, loving and remembering. But THEY make it easier to forget ...
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Not for me
- By CYA on 29-01-23
Luke Turner recommends...
They by Kay Dick
Novel
This short novel is one of those rare books that demands to be consumed in one sitting and then leaves your mind, and especially your sleeping hours, disturbed and anxious. This is a good thing, for They is a terrible warning of the powers of censorship and philistinism. The protagonists are a group of writers, poets and artists who live in some form of exile in a non-specific time and place. A faceless group of individuals – we never know if they’re state agents or part of some other organisation – remove books, instruments and work of art from their homes, and commit savage acts of violence to prevent them continuing with their creative practices. Meanwhile, as art is devalued, the wider population becomes ever more aggressive, treating each other (and animals) with savagery and hate. Dick was a controversial character in her time, starting feuds with other writers and former lovers, but They offers a timely warning against controls on artistic freedom, wherever they might come from. As one of the characters says, 'what you know becomes protection'.
Luke Turner recommends...
The Cage by Dan Billany & David Dowie
Novel
It’s something of a miracle that this innovative, poignant novel ever reached us at all, and a terrible shame that it is now nearly unknown. The Cage was written by Dan Billany and David Dowie in school exercise books during their incarceration in various Italian prisoner of war camps during the Second World War. A narrative about the privations faced during their lives behind the wire gradually dissolves into a fictionalised account of the real-life love that Billany, a gay man, had for Dowie, and how they managed this impossible situation together with tenderness, acceptance and grace. Love faces not just the seeming impossibility of ever being requited but the absorbed prejudices of the day as the doomed yearning evolves over pages of theatre-script-style dialogue, diary entries and philosophical vignettes. In September 1943, Billany and Dowie walked out of their final POW camp and went into hiding from the German soldiers and Italian fascists still in the local area. After finishing their manuscript, they left it with the family who had been sheltering them, with the promise of it being sent back to England after the war and began the long walk south towards the Allied forces. They were never seen again.
Mary Jean Chan recommends...
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche, which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry. Chan co-edited 1 00 Queer Poems with Andrew McMillan. Their second collection Bright Fear is forthcoming from Faber in August 2023. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan lives in Oxford.
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Swimming in the Dark
- By: Tomasz Jedrowski
- Narrated by: Robert Nairne
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Poland, 1980. Anxious, disillusioned Ludwik Glowacki, soon to graduate university, has been sent along with the rest of his class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together, they spend a dreamlike summer swimming in secluded lakes, reading forbidden books - and falling in love. But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw, and to the harsh realities of life under the Party. Exiled from paradise, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart.
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gay and joyous
- By Waggy From Derby on 31-05-20
Mary Jean Chan recommends...
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jędrowsk
Novel
I found this to be a deeply moving and tender novel centered on a powerful romance between two young men in 1980s Poland whose incompatible political and social values drive an irreconcilable rift between them. Jędrowski's use of language is poetic and sensual, which makes this a truly immersive read.
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Things I Have Withheld
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Kei Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this moving and lyrical collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller explores the silence in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it: to risk words, to risk truths. And he considers the histories our bodies inherit - the crimes that haunt them and how meaning can shift as we move throughout the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood.
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One of the best books audible has to offer
- By Nadine on 09-06-21
Mary Jean Chan recommends...
Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller
Essays
I adore Kei Miller's poetry, so perhaps it was no surprise that his latest collection of essays gripped me from start to finish. Through letters addressing James Baldwin, Miller delves into subjects still deemed unspeakable in different places, and challenges us all to examine our own complicity in scenarios that are often rife with silence and compromise.
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Biography of X
- By: Catherine Lacey
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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When X - an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter - dies suddenly, her widow, wild with grief, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognised as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals and destruction.
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This Book bamboozled me
- By Jammidad on 19-06-23
Mary Jean Chan recommends...
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Novel
The prose in this novel is relentless and propulsive. There is exquisite world-building and an intricate blending of fact and fiction. The narrator is deeply compelling, and her relationship to X acts as a vehicle for larger questions about what it means to build an identity and a life for oneself. The fact of their queerness isn't the point of the story, it's just a given, which I enjoyed immensely.
Mary Paulson-Ellis recommends...
Mary Paulson-Ellis lives in Edinburgh. Her debut novel, The Other Mrs Walker was a Times bestseller and Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year. Mary has written for the Guardian and BBC Radio 4 and was recently appointed Dr Gavin Wallace Fellow by Edinburgh Unesco City of Literature. In 2019 Val McDermid named her one of ten exciting LGBTQ+ writers working today.
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A Boy's Own Story
- A Novel
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Originally published in 1982 as the first of Edmund White's trilogy of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story became an instant classic for its pioneering portrayal of homosexuality. The audiobook's unnamed narrator, growing up during the 1950s, is beset by aloof parents, a cruel sister, and relentless mocking from his peers, compelling him to seek out works of art and literature as solace-and to uncover new relationships in the struggle to embrace his own sexuality.
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awful
- By alex on 17-08-15
Mary Paulson-Ellis recommends...
A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White
Novel
I was shocked recently to take this from my bookshelves after many years to discover I had received it as a prize at school. I had no awareness then of my sexuality, at least that’s what I’ve always thought. And yet, here was a novel that I must have requested - not just one American boy’s coming-of-age tale replete with the intense longing all adolescents recognise, but also a book saturated in sensuous, sometimes graphic, same-sex desire. On publication in 1983 the reviewer for the New York Times described it as, ‘any boy’s story...’ going on to add, ‘…For all I know, it may be any girl’s story as well.’ It certainly was for me.
Mary Paulson-Ellis recommends...
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic & Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
Graphic Novel
Two-for-one here with Bechdel’s pair of classic graphic memoirs depicting her relationship first with her father and then her mother. Hilarious, bleak and heartbreaking in turn, each volume is stuffed full of wonderful observational detail, great literary references and an unusually rich narrative, making them the perfect match of content with form. But the real lure for me is the incredible psychological depths to which Bechdel dives in her attempts to understand the complexities of both her own identity as a lesbian and that of her parents, one a closeted homosexual and the other a straight woman married to a gay man.
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Free Love
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A teenage girl finds unexpected sexual freedom on a trip to Amsterdam. A woman trapped at a dinner party comes up against an ugly obsession. The stories in Free Love are about desire, memory, sexual ambiguity and the imagination. In the harsh light of dislocation, the people in them still find connections, words blowing in the street, love in unexpected places. Ali Smith shows how things come together and how they break apart. She disconcerts and affirms with the lightest touch, to make us love and live differently.
Mary Paulson-Ellis recommends...
Free Love and Other Stories by Ali Smith
Short Story Collection
I am a devotee of all Ali Smith’s work, but this, her first published book, was my gateway drug. A short story collection full of vivid memories and tender joy, I first read it when I was coming new to my own sexuality and its depiction of young, queer love made my head sing and my heart beat fast. It also coincided with my early attempts to write creatively, teaching me the perfect lesson in just how playful and malleable language can be. I have read the title story, Free Love, often since and each time it fills me top to toe with delight.
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