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.
Meg-John Barker recommends...
Meg-John (MJ) Barker is a creator, collaborator, contemplative practitioner, and friend. They’ve written many graphic guides and (anti) self-help books on sex, gender, relationships, and mental health, including Queer: A Graphic History and Life Isn’t Binary. They also publish zines, comics, and free books on their website, rewriting-the-rules.com.
Meg-John Barker recommends...
None of the Above by Travis Alabanza
Memoir
None of the Above is a beautiful, profound, and heart-breaking memoir by Travis Alabanza in which they time travel back through their life via various comments people have made which stayed with them. The book raises vital questions about why it is the non-binary person - rather than the white western capitalist gender binary system - who is called upon to explain themselves. I love Travis’s embracing of paradox, complexity and liminality, as well as how they question all of the binaries imposed on us in order to determine who is valued and who is not.
Meg-John Barker recommends...
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Novel
Becky Chambers is my favourite novelist. Her sci-fi books are filled with tender characters doing their best to relate across differences. A Psalm for the Wild Built is the first in her Monk and Robot series, which features a non-binary lead character as well as imagining beautifully queer, sustainable forms of loving, living, and community building. Becky’s stories are just the kind of gentle, warm, hopeful read so many of us need right now.
Meg-John Barker recommends...
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Novel
Freshwater is non-binary novelist, Akwaeke Emezi’s, semi-autobiographical book about a girl growing up containing ogbanje (Igbo spirits). It’s a stunning book, and a wonderful literary depiction of multiplicity, which meant a lot to me as someone who experiences themselves as plural. I love the way that Akwaeke questions the spirit/body binary as well as the gender binary through their writing, and how they write across multiple genres rather than restricting themselves to one.
Mendez recommends...
Mendez is a London-based novelist and critic. Their debut novel, Rainbow Milk, was published in 2020 and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. Their essays and reviews have appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry Foundation, Attitude and the Guardian. They are currently working on their second novel.
Mendez recommends...
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin
Novel
This is the first Baldwin novel I read, when I was 20, and it seeped deep into my subconscious. I reread it shortly after Rainbow Milk was published and was startled by the parallels between the two: I became embourgeoised by my associations with mostly white liberal creatives; I acted on stage; I worked in restaurants; I lived a bisexual life for a few years. There is even a scene in Train where Leo, its protagonist, juggles requests from his customers, echoed in Rainbow Milk. For me, this is Baldwin’s most underrated novel and one of his queerest – rather than simply give us a sex scene between two Black men in love, he gives us a sex scene between two Black brothers in love. He is constantly questioning the boundaries between bodies.
Mendez recommends...
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Novel
An obvious choice, perhaps, but that’s how good it is. I moved to London in the summer of 2004 to study drama and first became a sex worker during this time. I’d only been “out” for a year, and naively navigating gay life in a new city, I first heard of this novel when it won the Booker, becoming the first queer novel to do so. There were very few queer Black characters with a major role and sense of their own agency in contemporary English literature, as far as I could grasp, but Beauty’s Leo – another Leo – was someone I saw myself in. Things might not have worked out the way he wished, but he spoke from within the sad realities of Black queer life in the midst of the Aids pandemic and talk around Section 28 in a way that felt authentic. Also, perhaps more than any other novel, this one taught me how to write.
Mendez recommends...
The Ministry of Guidance by Golnoosh Nour
Poetry
Tales from the parties and after-parties of Tehran's young, queer and restless. Also a poet, Nour's fearless and exciting short stories foreground the necessary discretion and trust that exists where LGBTQIA+ visibility is punishable and rights are scant, and where politics, religion and tradition perpetually meddle. There is always music, food, dancing, flirting, sexual expression, beauty and self-discovery – all the things that make queer sociality fun – and it is in focusing on these joys that Nour's voice calls out clearest.
Natasha Carthew recommends...
Natasha Carthew is a working-class writer and poet from Cornwall, and is the founder and Artistic Director of the Working Class Writers’ Festival. She is the author of eight books, most recently Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir of Poverty, Nature and Resilience.
Natasha Carthew recommends...
Written on the Body by Jeanette Waterson
Novel
From the moment Jeanette Winterson came onto my radar as a loud, proud Lesbian I was completely hooked, but Written on the Body, a novel that charts a genderless narrator, ardently seduces and confuses with incredible, extraordinary poetry. This, her fourth book, digs itself deep into the physical heart, and for me it was a book that lead me to read about other non-binary characters, such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and to think about the bigger question of gender.
Natasha Carthew recommends...
The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay
Poetry
I first met Jackie Kay when I was twenty-one years old. I had won a commendation from the Lesbian Feminist publisher Onlywomen Press, and had been invited to a prize giving in London where the two prize judges, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy, would be in attendance, and I immediately fell in love with Jackie, which led me to buy this, her first book of poetry. The Adoption Papers tells the story of a Black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints; her mother, her birth mother, and her, the daughter. A groundbreaking book that for me as a young poet, made me think about how to tell my story from different perspectives.
Natasha Carthew recommends...
Side by Side by Isabel Miller
Novel
Lesbian lovers in New York City during the time of Stonewall, Side by Side is a book is about celebration and joy. I read this book in 1990 as a young gay teenager growing up in rural poverty, and its setting couldn’t have been further from the isolation and loneliness that I was experiencing at the time. It is a story full of hope and heart, and the Lesbian sisterhood that sits at its centre of this book gave me the impetus to go out and find a community to call my own.
Neil Bartlett OBE recommends...
Neil is a leading author, adaptor and theatre director. In 1994 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith, collaborating with a host of talent including Joanna Lumley, Martin Freeman, Neil Tennant & Robert Lepage. His plays, translations and adaptations include Camus, Dickens, Dumas, Genet, Kleist, Labiche, Marivaux, Moliere, Racine and Wilde and have been performed by leading cultural producers the world over.His most recent works include Blue Now, a live version of Derek Jarman’s seminal film starring Russell Tovey, the acclaimed adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando starring Emma Corrin & directed by Michael Grandage, Jekyll & Hyde for Derby and the Queen’s Theatre, Albert Camus’ The Plague for the Arcola and a roof-raising contribution to the celebration of queer Georgian London entitled Princess staged by Duckie in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in 2021.
You can find out more about his work at www.neil-bartlett.com.
Neil Bartlett OBE recommends...
Here Again Now by Okechukwu Nzelu
Novel
' Here Now Again is the second novel from brilliant young Mancunian Okechukwu Nzelu; a profoundly moving investigation of love, grief and belonging across boundaries. Voices like this - and stories like this - make me so proud of how the art and scope of LGBTQ storytelling has grown in my lifetime. This book made my heart almost burst.'
Neil Bartlett OBE recommends...
Man Enough to Be a Woman by Jayne County & Rupert Smith
Memoir
' Man Enough To Be A Woman is the autobiography of Jayne County- punk starlet, trans pioneer and irrepressible human being. To say this memoir is trashy is to do the word an injustice; Jayne tells it totally like it is, and no-one and nothing is spared. A true cult classic.'
Neil Bartlett OBE recommends...
Smiling In Slow Motion by Derek Jarman
Memoir
' Smiling In Slow Motion is the last volume of the late, great Derek Jarman's diaries. Writing your own life while it happens is a very special form of storytelling, and Derek did it supremely well. This last volume is full of the marvellously out and proud sound of his voice, and because he was dying of HIV/AIDS as he wrote it, this astonishing book it is also full of wisdom about the only three things that ever really matter; courage, death and love.'
Okechukwu Nzelu recommends...
Okechukwu Nzelu’s debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel, Here Again Now was was shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
Okechukwu Nzelu recommends...
Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
Novel
This is a breathtaking novel following a young man, Niru, as he comes to terms with what it means to be a gay Nigerian-American today. A relatively short novel, it packs a hell of a punch, with an ending that is both surprising and yet totally in keeping with reality.
Okechukwu Nzelu recommends...
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
Novel
Set during the Biafran War, Okparanta's novel follows Ijeoma as she falls in love with another young woman - and realises what this means for her relationships with her family, and in society.
Okechukwu Nzelu recommends...
Lives of Great Men by Chike Frankie Edozien
Poetry Collection
This memoir, by an openly-gay Nigerian man, is partly remarkable just because it exists, and it has earned a place in LGBTQIA+ history. Moving between the personal and the political, this is a moving, miraculous, enlightening text.
Ollie Charles recommends...
Ollie Charles is a queer film publicist from London where he currently works on global publicity for MUBI. Ollie is also a writer of poetry and short stories, having been published in Inkandescent‘s MAINSTREAM short story collection as well as in Queerlings, Streetcake and Poem Atlas. He is also co-founder of UNTITLED, an organisation for underrepresented writers (currently on hiatus).
Ollie Charles recommends...
Guapa by Saleem Haddad
Novel
Haddad's novel is an absolutely gorgeous piece of storytelling - and one that is important being set in the Middle East during the Arab Spring. This is a vibrant and pulsating novel, which dares to tell stories that are so rarely thought about - especially in the west. Guapa is about community at its core, about a group of people trying to find a way to live their authentic lives without putting themselves in danger from those who wish to oppress them. Haddad's writing is evocative and urgent, from the opening line 'The morning begins with shame...' until the very end.
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The Hours
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation
- By: Michael Cunningham
- Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar, full cast, Rosamund Pike, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 52 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Three separate women, living in different locations and eras, are linked by their passion for Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. As they each live through a Tuesday in June, their thoughts and experiences mirror each other and become interwoven. In Richmond in 1923, Virginia Woolf struggles to write a novel whose protagonist is Mrs Dalloway. In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura ignores her chores and small son to sit in bed reading Mrs Dalloway. In 1990s New York, Clarissa goes to buy flowers for a party, mirroring the start of the fictional Mrs Dalloway’s day.
Ollie Charles recommends...
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Novel
For me, The Hours, was the first novel I remember completely wrapping me up in its storytelling. It was also the first time I remember experiencing a queer narrative and was part of forming my own personal taste and interests in queer reading and writing. As an experience of storytelling, Cunningham cleverly tells three stories from different eras, all tied together by the novel Mrs Dalloway. In all these stories, there is no getting away from the queerness of the relationships between characters, between the feeling of being on the outside and different-ness, but finding a way to struggle through (or not if the matter may be).
Ollie Charles recommends...
Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Poetry Collection
Queer poetry has become one of the most powerful ways for queer writers to tell their stories, a battle cry using words as political weapons. Smith's Don't Call Us Dead is a fierce and compelling cry to readers - an act of resistance where so often POC, queer and trans bodies are relegated as unimportant but these poems vocalise the struggle and grip the reader by the throat through every word, line and verse.
Patrick Gale recommends...
Patrick Gale is the author of seventeen novels, two collections of short stories and the TV drama Man in an Orange Shirt. He‘s patron of the Penzance LitFest and the Charles Causley Trust, a founder director of Endelienta Arts and artistic director of North Cornwall Book Festival. He lives on the westernmost farm in Cornwall with his husband, the sculptor Aidan Hicks.
Patrick Gale recommends...
Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward
Novel
Ward’s debut novel is a bravura exercise in queer daring. She uses every literary form from social comedy to sci-fi opera to explore queer love and the urge to settle down and parent and, as if that were not clever enough, she frames each chapter around the premise of a different thought experiment. This may sound dry as dust but, trust me, it’s dazzling, funny and compelling. Her follow-up, The Schoolhouse, was every bit as good.
Patrick Gale recommends...
Address Book by Neil Bartlett
Novel
I was hard pressed to choose between his books but this extraordinarily deft novel from one of our consistently undercelebrated LGBTIQ writers should have received far more attention when it came out. It drills down into the essence of gay lives from the Wilde era to the present by focussing on the places we call home and on how privacy becomes triply precious in times of oppression. Its chain of linked narratives neatly illustrates the hidden links of influence and support that have held our fragile communities together over the decades.
Patrick Gale recommends...
And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Novel
It is far, far too easy for queer readers in Europe and America to chafe at small infringements on our liberty or to fight amongst ourselves over the minutiae of gender identity. A novel like this astonishingly assured debut, entirely written, for safety, on the author’s iPhone, is a healthy corrective. Drawing on his own, often terrifying experience as a fearless activist, Somtochukwu uses the anguished love story of a “straight” university athlete and an openly gay student to portrays the near-impossibility of living anything approaching a rounded gay life in Nigeria’s systematically homophobic culture.
Paul Bradley recommends...
Paul is the Founder and Director of Out on the Page. He is an experienced project manager and activist for social change. He writes under the name Sam Jenks with published short stories and inter-textual art books. Website Sam Jenks Writer.
Paul Bradley recommends...
Not A Virgin by Nuril Basri
Novel
Funny, fierce, and brave. I've loved his books from the first page. Not a Virgin is a coming of age novel with a difference. We follow four Indonesian high-school students in a tragic comedy that moves between an Islamic boarding school and a gay bar in Jakarta, and in so doing illuminates the mindset and yearning of a new generation of Indonesians.
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Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
- By: Andrea Lawlor
- Narrated by: Dani Martineck
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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It’s 1993, and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shape-shifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women’s Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco - a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.
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Great this book exists
- By Anonymous User on 16-02-24
Paul Bradley recommends...
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
Memoir
I love the sheer audacity of the story and the shapeshifting main character, Paul. Witty, sexy, with lots of sex, yet at the same time about love, set in a carefully crafted 90s USA LGBTQ+ scene. It also taps into my love of Woolf's Orlando and Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Paul Bradley recommends...
Queer as Folk by Russell T Davies
TV Drama
Great LGBTQ+ writing often finds it home outside of traditional publishing. This groundbreaking drama, set in Manchester and at the time I lived there, gave voice to LGBTQ+ lives and experience as never before. I remember ringing my rural farmer Mum from my flat in Manchester's Gay Village - she cut short the call with, 'Sorry, can't talk now, we're just about to watch Queer as Folk.'
Paul Burston recommends...
Paul Burston is the author of six novels and five non-fiction books. He is the founder of Polari literary salon and the Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ writers. His memoir We Can Be Heroes is the tale of living through two pandemics, surviving two near-death experiences and battling his own demons.
Paul Burston recommends...
Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
Novel
Set in 1967, as politicians debate the Sexual Offences Act which partially decriminalised male homosexuality in England and Wales, Skin Lane is Bartlett’s queer take on Beauty and the Beast. The author takes us into the world of Mr F, a sexually repressed fur trader who becomes obsessed with a beautiful young man. Like all of Bartlett’s best work, it’s a dark jewel of a book, laced with danger and driven by desire. The characters are beautifully drawn. The tension builds to an almost unbearable degree. There are shades of Patricia Highsmith in the smouldering passions and sexual obsession. It’s a book which reminds us that gay life didn’t begin with the 67 act or the Stonewall Riots. We have always been here. We are part of history.
Paul Burston recommends...
Modern Nature by Derek Jarman
Novel
I had the great privilege of knowing Derek. I even appear in one of his later journals. But I was watching his films and reading his books long before we became friends. Modern Nature is the best known of his journals. It begins in 1989 and describes his life as “a hermit in the desert of illness” in his beloved Prospect Cottage in Dungeness. 1989 was the year ACT-UP formed in the UK and I threw myself into the life of an AIDS activist. Homophobia and bigotry about people with HIV and AIDS were rife. Derek took a brave stand by being so open about his HIV status at a time when few others were. Despite his illness, he made many of his best films during this period, including The Garden, Edward II and Blue. He was a hero to a great many people, myself included. I defy anyone not to be moved and inspired by this book.
Paul Burston recommends...
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Novel
I was given this book by a friend called Vaughan Michael Williams in 1988. It was the first book I read in which I recognised myself and life I was living. I was 22 years old. I grew up at a time before we had YA books aimed at young gay readers, so to discover the world of Barbary Lane was hugely affirming. Like Maupin’s characters, I was searching for my logical family, looking for love, developing friendships and making plenty of mistakes along the way. This is a book I return to time and again. I chose it when I appeared on Radio 4’s A Good Read. I last read it during lockdown. It also reminds me of Vaughan, who sadly passed away in 1990 – the first of many friends who died of an AIDS related illness. The Tales of the City series tackles AIDS, too – but this first book captures a gay world before the epidemic and is one of my comfort reads.
Phil Stamper recommends...
Phil Stamper is the bestselling author of The Gravity of Us, Small Town Pride, the Golden Boys series, and other queer books for kids and teens. He currently works in author development for a major book publisher near New York City, where he lives with his husband and daughter.
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The Honeys
- By: Ryan La Sala
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline's radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who'd grown tragically distant. Mars's genderfluidity means he's often excluded from the traditions—and expectations—of his politically connected family. This includes attendance at the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister poured so much of her time. But with his grief still fresh, he insists on attending in her place.
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great story, phenomenal audio
- By Amazon Customer on 24-06-23
Phil Stamper recommends...
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Novel
In this darkly compelling young adult horror novel, a genderfluid teen named Mars navigates the intricate workings of a prestigious summer camp, investigating the camp's ties to their sister's tragic death. Enthralling and disturbing all at once, this story brilliantly explores grief and gender roles.
Phil Stamper recommends...
The Best At It by Maulik Pancholy
Novel
This pitch-perfect middle grade debut by award-winning actor Maulik Pancholy follows seventh grader Rahul Kapoor as he navigates small-town midwest life, having the overwhelming urge to be the best at... something. He just doesn't know what that something is, yet. Rahul's growth through the course of the story was so realistic and sweet, and readers will root for him from the very first page.
Phil Stamper recommends...
Here for it by R Eric Thomas
Memoir
In this brilliant memoir—told through a series of hilarious and heartfelt personal essays—R. Eric Thomas takes a hard look at what it means to be othered. Packed with joy, this book will stay with me for years.
Rosie Garland recommends...
Writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. Her poetry collection What Girls do the Dark (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize, & her novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as ‘a delight...with shades of Angela Carter.’ Val McDermid has named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT writers.
Rosie Garland recommends...
I see that Lilith hath been with thee again by Shivanee Ramlochan
Poem
I was first introduced to the work of Shivanee Ramlochan when I read her stunning poem I See That Lilith Hath Been with Thee Again. I was blown away by the power of her storytelling. In her magical and transgressive retelling of the myth of Lilith, she explores queer families, what it means to be a queer parent, and the tangled relationships with our queer children. She shows special tenderness in her exploration of how younger generations grow up queer in different ways. At its heart, the poem celebrates the redemptive power of love and acceptance. Shivanee’s use of language is breathtaking and left me wanting a great deal more. I grabbed a copy of her first poetry collection, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting. I am so excited to read her next book, Unkillable.
Rosie Garland recommends...
We Can Be Heroes by Paul Burston
Memoir
Where do I begin? Paul’s memoir is a tour-de-force: compassionate, urgent and angry by turns. So many of its themes resonate with me (and I’m guessing will resonate for many, many readers). For example: the struggles of growing up the outsider in a small village, and how escaping our past is anything but straightforward. Paul is unflinchingly honest, detailing the myriad ways we can get things monumentally and colourfully wrong as we grow into our authentic selves. And most importantly, Paul celebrates how we endure. Especially, how music and creativity can help us go from shame and hurt and into rebellious pride in who we are.
Ruby Rare recommends...
Ruby Rare is a pink-haired sex educator on a mission to get people talking more confidently and inclusively about sex. Her work is influenced by her experiences as a queer, non-monogamous, dual-heritage person. Ruby is a proud ambassador for Brook, the UK’s leading sexual health charity for young people, co-founder of life drawing collective Body Love Sketch Club, and has spoken at TedXLondon, Women of the World Festival, and on BBC Woman’s Hour. They’ve built a 84K strong following on Instagram and has become a public figure in the sex positive community, and was listed as one of 24 figures making a positive change to social media in Cosmopolitan’s 2021 Positivity Index. Her first book, Sex Ed: A Guide for Adults cover art, is published by Bloomsbury. In their spare time, Ruby eats an obscene amount of vegan jelly, watches the powerpuff girls, and collects vintage peignoirs.
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Rosewater
- By: Liv Little
- Narrated by: Suhaiyla Hippolyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Elsie is out of options. She's exhausted from being pushed in and out of social housing, she's deflated by debt and she's disturbed by the dark reality of having bailiffs show up at her door. With nowhere to go, there's only one person left to turn to: her best friend, Juliet. She finds friendship and safety in Juliet's flat, but when Elsie loses her bar job and all creative inspiration for her poetry dries up, she hits rock bottom.
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Beautifully written
- By dontbeasquare on 01-08-23
Ruby Rare recommends...
Rosewater by Liv Little
Novel
I'm in love with Liv's storytelling, this novel is soft and gentle and centres themes of belonging, vulnerability, and the messiness of weaving a life together. Plus it's set in South London, where I grew up, which makes my heart happy.
Ruby Rare recommends...
Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird
Poetry collection
This poetry collection is weird and wonderful in all the best ways; there's a particular skill in writing poetry that makes you gasp and laugh out loud and then get surprisingly weepy. I particularly enjoy her poems Bisexuality and Ways of Making Love.
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My Romantic Love Wars: A Sexual Memoir
- By: Betty Dodson
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Betty Dodson's memoir is the story of one woman's struggle to liberate female sexuality while enjoying her own. In the 70s, as the feminist movement evolved, Betty latched on to sexual liberation as a symbol for self empowerment. Realizing that so many women weren't enjoying sex, she asked, "How could women ever be truly equal if they were reliant on men for their sexual satisfaction?" She quickly became the leader of the sex-positive feminist movement.
Ruby Rare recommends...
My Romantic Love Wars: A Sexual Memoir by Betty Dodson
Memoir
Betty Dodson is an absolute icon in the sex positive movement. She fought for pleasure education at a time when it was too taboo for second wave feminists, and her memoir takes you through all her vastly varied experiences across 60 years. It's not all aged brilliantly as there are some moments that feel out of touch by 2023 standards, but I found it fascinating reading about her life.
Scott Aaron Tait recommends...
Scott Aaron Tait is a gay autistic writer with work published in Untitled Voices, Warning Lines, Stone of Madness Press and En^gendered amongst others. They are currently editing their debut YA novel with mentoring support from Bloomsbury Publishing. In addition to writing, Scott is the editor-in-chief of LGBTQ+ magazines Queerlings and Powders Press.
Scott Aaron Tait recommends...
Modern Nature by Derek Jarman
Novel
For me Modern Nature is both an insight into an incredible artist's mind but also a heartwarming reflection on their life and the looming prospect of death. Jarman was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and decided to plant a garden at his now famous Prospect Cottage. The often poetic prose is a meditation that brings together the solace he found in nature with a celebration of gay sexuality and Jarman's passionate love of life.
Scott Aaron Tait recommends...
Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell
Poetry
Since I Laid my Burden Down is an uncensored exploration of growing up both queer and Black. It's hilarious and at times heartbreaking as we follow our protagonist DeShawn from memories of his religious childhood in Alabama to his sexually liberated life in San Francisco. This is a rough around the edges somewhat frantic story with an unreliable narrator that somehow remains true to life drawing on Purnell's own experiences as a gay Black man. Much like Purnell's novel, 100 Boyfriends, this book is brash but beautifully written and really captures the complexities of sexuality.
Shivani Dave recommends...
A journalist, broadcaster, and physicist. Shivani specializes in busting myths around science and misconceptions surrounding LGBTQ+ issues. They produced the award-winning history podcast, The Log Books, sharing the untold stories of Britain's LGBTQIA+ history. Shivani is also a Drag King and performs under the name Dishi Sumac.
Shivani Dave recommends...
A Short History of Queer Women by Kirsty Loehr
Non-fiction
I came across this book by chance and feel like everyone needs to read it. There were moments I genuinely laughed out loud because of Loehr's comic writing ability. The book covers the political and cultural attitudes towards lesbians from the ancient times of Sappho in 570 BCE to today. The history is told in an engaging way framed with a modern-day twist.
Shivani Dave recommends...
Trans by Juliet Jacques
Memoir
Jaques takes the reader on a journey through her life, in a way these experiences are specific to her, but the themes she explores are somewhat reminiscent of wider LGBTQ+ experiences. This book was important for me to read when I did. As trans people are being persecuted in the media in the UK, Jaques reminds the reader that trans people have been persevering for decades and shares the joy of finding community.
Shivani Dave recommends...
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Graphic Novel
I'd always admired the inventor of the Bechdel test, but reading this graphic novel made me love her. These stories highlight shared experiences many lesbians will be able to relate to and is full of laughter and feeling seen. Knowingly or unknowingly, Bechdel highlights key elements of lesbian culture that are relevant today. My favourite one is a carabiner or 'ring of keys' used as a signal to indicate queerness.
Travis Alabanza recommends...
Travis Alabanza is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker. Alabanza’s debut show Burgerz toured internationally to sold-out performances in the Southbank Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and HAU, Berlin, and won the Edinburgh Fringe Total Theatre Award. In 2020 their theatre show Overflow debuted at the Bush Theatre to widespread acclaim. Their recent play Sound of The Underground was awarded five stars in the Guardian after its Royal Court Theatre run. In 2022 they published their debut, None of The Above, with Canongate.
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The Transgender Issue
- An Argument for Justice
- By: Shon Faye
- Narrated by: Shon Faye
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.
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A timely and much needed work
- By Laura Leigh on 19-09-21
Travis Alabanza recommends...
The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
Non-fiction
Non-fiction paints a story too. It takes a good storyteller to make non fiction compelling, clear and also aptly sum up the time they are distilling. Shon Faye does that in this book and creates a piece of UK work that was so needed.
Travis Alabanza recommends...
Femme in Public by Alok Vaid Menon
Non-fiction
Alok's work as a gender non-conforming artist and storyteller has shaped a lot of my own desire to archive my experience. Alok was an artist with this work who reminded me of the importance of gender non-conforming people telling our stories about going outside is important, it's part of our visibility.
Travis Alabanza recommends...
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Novel
I think a lot of queer writers have, or will have, their 'this is my Baldwin' moment. The gateway in, Giovanni's Room was mine as a teenager, and it unlocked a breadth of Black Queer Literature for me.
Val McDermid recommends...
Val McDermid was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife. She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she was JCR President. She graduated in 1972 and began her award-winning career in journalism. Val is a number one bestseller, translated into more than forty languages, and selling over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Grand Prix des Romans D’Aventure. Val has been a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She lives in Edinburgh and the East Neuk of Fife.
Val McDermid recommends...
Venus Touch & Evensong by Maureen Duffy
Poetry Collections
Venus Touch and Evensong are two collections of poetry by Maureen Duffy from the early 1970s. There's a lot of really bad lesbian poetry out there - the feelings are sincere but the execution is disappointing! Maureen Duffy was the first poet I'd encountered who had a command of form coupled with lyrical expression. Reading her work was one of the main reasons I gave up writing poetry - I realised I'd never be good enough! Now I can just enjoy it...
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Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
- By: Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Jeanette Winterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles.
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Weighing up the church and personal beliefs
- By Sue on 14-08-17
Val McDermid recommends...
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Novel
Like me, Jeanette came from a working class background and went to Oxford. There were many differences in our experiences, but nevertheless, this was the first time I'd seen crucial elements of my own life and my lesbian identity explored in a novel. Winterson's prose is vibrant and engaging - and often funny - and it was a book that really spoke to me at a time when being out and proud was seldom easy.
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