Adult Nonfiction

Through the lens of horror—from Halloween to Hereditary—queer and trans writers consider the films that deepened, amplified, and illuminated their own experiences.

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.

It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.

An inclusive and essential new resource for reproductive health―including period problems, pelvic pain, menopause, fertility, sexual health, vaginal and urinary conditions, and overall wellbeing―from leading expert and fierce advocate Dr. Karen Tang

"Dr. Karen Tang is a literal godsend to women in a time still filled with great ignorance in medical research and financing of women's health initiatives. Please read her book, follow her on Instagram as I have, and feel blessed as I do to have an advocate for our body, our health, and our human rights." ―Sharon Stone

Did you know that up to 90% of women experience menstrual abnormalities or pelvic issues in their lifetime? Yet these conditions are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed. The root causes for these issues, such as PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, PMDD, or pelvic floor dysfunction, don’t receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite affecting up to half the population.

Dr. Karen Tang is on a mission to transform how we engage with our bodies and our healthcare. It’s Not Hysteria is a comprehensive guide to common conditions and potential treatment options, with practical tools such as symptom prompts and sample questions for your provider, to equip readers to take control of their gynecologic health.

Reproductive healthcare, from abortion to gender-affirming care, is under siege. The onus continues to fall on patients to find and advocate for the care they need. In the face of uncertainty and misinformation, It’s Not Hysteria is destined to become a new classic that educates and empowers women and those assigned female at birth.

From a star of the climate justice movement, a fresh, radical perspective for real climate action and “an indispensable toolkit for a new generation of activists” (Naomi Klein). 

For too long, representations of climate action in the mainstream media have been white-washed, green-washed and diluted to be made compatible with capitalism. In It’s Not That Radical, Loach addresses head-on the issues at the root of the climate crisis.

As Loach shows, we are living in an economic system which pursues profit above all else; harmful, oppressive systems that heavily contribute to the climate crisis, and environmental consequences that have been toned down to the masses. Tackling the climate crisis requires us to visit the roots of poverty, capitalist exploitation, police brutality, and legal injustice. Climate justice offers the real possibility of huge leaps towards racial equality and collective liberation as it aims to dismantle the very foundations of these issues.

Written with candor and hope, It's Not That Radical will galvanize readers to take action, offering a practical and transformative appraisal of our circumstances to help mobilize a majority for the future of our planet.

By: James Baldwin (Author), 2014, Paperback

Listen up! Humans are kinky!

Kink has been around as long as humans have existed, but comes with an astonishing amount of myths and misunderstandings. This is a sex-positive, shame-free guide to kink for everyone from curious beginners to seasoned kinksters.

This book delves deep in every corner of the kink sphere. It jumps headfirst into the foundations of powerplay, at the differences between kink and fetish, and gives you the low-down on all kinds of bondage and impact play styles, while putting mental and physical health at the forefront. Whether you want a 101 in flogging safely, to plan a roadmap for experimenting with different kinds of niche play, or to learn how to explore what your desires and boundaries are in a fun, consensual and trauma-informed way - this is the guide for you.

With kink exercises, journal prompts, worksheets and agony aunt letters, this has all the practical tools you'll need for a spicy, shame-free kink journey.

Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved, Toni Morrison, investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation’s collective unconscious

In a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University, Toni Morrison interrogates America’s most famous works and authors, drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the country’s canonical white writers imagined in their work. Morrison sees these fictions as a form of creation and projection, arguing that they helped manufacture American racial identity – these “Africanist” presences are “the shadow that makes light possible,” as Morrison writes, and the reflections of the authors’ own deepest fears, insecurities, and longings.

With profound erudition and wit, Morrison breaks wide open the American conception of race with energetic, enlivening readings of the nation’s canon, revealing that our liberation from these diminishing notions comes through language. “How,” Morrison wonders, “could one speak of profit, of economy, of labor, or progress, of suffragism, or Christianity, of the frontier, of the formation of new states, the acquisition of new lands … of practically anything a new nation concerns itself with – without having as a referent, at the heart of the discourse or defining its edges, the presence of Africans and/or their descendants?”

To read these lectures, collected here for the first time, is to encounter Morrison, not just the writer but also the teacher, in the most profound and subversive way yet. With a foreword from her son, Ford Morrison, and an introduction from her Princeton comparative literature colleague, Claudia Brodsky, Language as Liberation is a revelatory collection that promises to redefine the American canon.

(Abolitionist Papers)

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.

The book is intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.

Illustrator Kaz Rowe’s graphic biography Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, reveals how the creative and courageous Surrealist artist championed freedom at every turn, from rejecting gender norms and finding queer love to risking death to sabotage the Nazis.

Winner of the 2024 PROSE Award, Non-fiction graphic novels

At the turn of the 20th century in Nantes, France, Lucy Schwob met Suzanne Malherbe, and lightning struck. The two became partners both artistically and romantically and transformed themselves into the creative personas Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Together, the couple embarked on a radical journey of Surrealist collaboration that would take them from conservative provincial France to the vibrancy of 1920s Paris to the oppression of Nazi-occupied Jersey during World War II, where they used art to undermine the Nazi regime.

Cahun and Moore challenged gender roles and championed freedom at a time when strict societal norms meant that the truth of their relationship had to remain secret. Featuring 10 photographs by Cahun and Moore, this graphic biography by cartoonist Kaz Rowe brings Cahun’s inspiring story to life.

“Claude Cahun lived at the crossroads of masculine and feminine, of artist and activist, of blessed and cursed by the circumstances and time period they were born into. Rowe weaves together historical photos, direct quotes, and lyrical imagery to tell the tale of this brave queer icon to great effect.” —Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer

“The ubiquity of torrid love affairs in the lives of artists has often been used to entice readers, to give us a bit of gossip to pass on after we read. In Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, Kaz Rowe presents a different kind of love story—one in which love offers freedom and the passion it ignites isn't only romantic, but something more liberating. Here love is used as an anchor for radicalization and for art, and combined, for freedom. Liberated invites us to fall in love with—and alongside—Cahun. A wonderful read.” —Isabel Quintero, author of Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide and Gabi, a Girl in Pieces

“A gift to future generations.”—Cecile Richards, author of Make Trouble

“Our storytellers meet the moment with powerful insight and testimonials.”—Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley

A galvanizing history of abortion recentering people of color to put forth a timely argument that we must liberate abortion for all.

People of color have been having abortions since the dawn of time, yet our access is continuously under attack. In Liberating Abortion, award-winning abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman and journalist Regina Mahone illustrate the long racist history that brought us to this moment, uncover the hidden figures who set the foundation that activists and storytellers are building on today, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities.

Liberating Abortion will take you back to the basics of sex education, detailing the traditions of abortion over centuries while examining how society makes us feel about our experiences. You’ll find rigorous research, never-before-heard stories, and eye-opening interviews with more than fifty people of color who’ve had abortions, including activists, actresses, television writers, politicians, and two Black members of Jane, the Chicago feminist service that provided abortions before Roe.

With poignant storytelling and precise analysis, Liberating Abortion will change how you think about abortion forever.

"Sometimes, it's easy to feel like the only lesbian in the world - let alone in the village. But wherever you are with your sexuality, you've just picked up a book with the word 'lesbian' in the title and I know baby you would be so proud."
From strap-ons and Lesbian Bed Death to dealing with homophobic microaggressions in the workplace and finding your second family, Helen Scott, lesbian big sister and lipstick femme in chief is here to hold your hand as you travel your own unique path to Gay Town.
Half memoir, half guide, and 100% big lesbian hug, plunge with Helen into the highs and lows of navigating lesbian life in the modern world and emerge with all the lesbian life hacks you'll need to get out there and live the life of your dreams.
Candid, wise, bold and hilarious - it's time to reclaim the L in LGBTQ+

In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin B. Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors' holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together.

Curtice shows that we can learn to practice embodied ways of belonging and connection to ourselves and one another through everyday practices, such as getting more in touch with our bodies, resting, and remembering our ancestors. She explores four "realms of resistance"--the personal, the communal, the ancestral, and the integral--and shows how these realms overlap and why all are needed for our liberation. Readers will be empowered to seek wholeness in the various spheres of influence they inhabit. Now in paperback.

"Readers will find abundant wisdom in this accessible guide."--Publishers Weekly

In this inspiring self-help handbook, a trans activist dares us to be the change we want to see—both out in the world, and amongst our closest connections.

Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Many activist projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age. 

How do we divest from the idea that one romantic partner will be the solution to all our problems? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom and justice into step with our desires for healing and connection?  

Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, preparing us for the work of changing the world.

A tender, funny, stunningly candid memoir about the joys and challenges of parenting a neurodivergent young adult that reads like a heady concoction of Dorothy Allison, Anne Lamott, Alison Bechdel and David Sedaris.

"This book sparkles with life, humor and infinite chutzpah."—Michelle Tea, author of Valencia

"Suzette Partido has written the handbook we've been waiting for. Love Will Save Us, Right? is a knockout memoir . . . Essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America's broken promises while finding beauty in all the broken places. A stunning debut from an exciting new voice in American literature."—Ariel Gore, author of Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer

When Suzette Partido's family receives a shut-off notice due to an unpaid water bill, the timing couldn't be worse. She's just left her job to take over round-the-clock caregiving for her neurodivergent child.

Once she finds the money to pay off the bill, Suzette sits down and begins to write about her life, one that centers around mental health struggles, special needs parenting, and "the infallible exhaustion of queer love." That essay grew into this groundbreaking memoir, destined to become a modern classic.

In an irreverent, time-traveling coming-of-age story about family, love, and resilience, Partido strikes a balance between two perspectives — motherly and subversive. She engages her readers in an easy intimacy, bringing them along with her on the relentless pursuit of safe harbor for her family while navigating a revolving door of struggle, exasperation, kindness, community, and laugh-out-loud naughtiness, wrapped in a promise of unyielding love.

A young, aspiring writer desperate for a break…and the legendary Andy Warhol superstar who gave him the story of a lifetime.

By the mid-1980s, Holly Woodlawn, once lauded by George Cukor for her performance in the 1970 Warhol production and Paul Morrissey directed Trash, was washed up. Over. Kaput. She was living in a squalid Hollywood apartment with her dog and bottles of Chardonnay. A chance meeting with starry-eyed corn-fed Missouri-born Jeff Copeland, who moved to Hollywood with dreams of ‘making it’ as a television writer, changed the course of BOTH of their lives forever.

Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn is a story of how an unlikely friendship with a young gay writer and an, ahem, mature trans actress and performer created the bestselling autobiography of 1991, A Low Life in High Heels. This book about writing a book is a celebration of chutzpa and love as Holly, the embodiment of Auntie Mame, introduces Jeff to the glamorous (and sometimes larcenous) world of a Warhol Superstar. In turn, Jeff uses his writing (and typing) talent to give Holly the second chance at fame she craved.

In turns hilarious and heartwarming, Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn is a portrait of the real Holly who loved deeply, laughed loudly, and left mayhem in her wake. Foreword by queer icon and author, Simon Doonan.