Adult Nonfiction

'Barker and Iantaffi have written the book we all need for this moment in time.' - CN Lester

Much of society's thinking operates in a highly rigid and binary manner; something is good or bad, right or wrong, a success or a failure, and so on. Challenging this limited way of thinking, this ground-breaking book looks at how non-binary methods of thought can be applied to all aspects of life, and offer new and greater ways of understanding ourselves and how we relate to others.

Using bisexual and non-binary gender experiences as a starting point, this book addresses the key issues with binary thinking regarding our relationships, bodies, emotions, wellbeing and our sense of identity and sets out a range of practices which may help us to think in more non-binary, both/and, or uncertain ways.

A truly original and insightful piece, this guide encourages reflection on how we view and understand the world we live in and how we all bend, blur or break society's binary codes.

By: Janaka Bowman Lewis

An engaging examination of Black Girl Magic and its significance in American literature

In Light and Legacies, author Janaka Bowman Lewis examines Black girlhood in American literature from the mid-twentieth century to the present. The representation of Black girlhood in contemporary literature has long remained underexplored. Through this literary history of "Black Girl Magic," Lewis offers one of the first studies in this rapidly growing field of study. Light and Legacies poignantly showcases the activist dimensions of creative literature through work by women writers such as Toni Morrison and Toni Cade. As vectors of protest, these stories reflect historical events while also creating an enduring space of liberation and expression. The book provides didactic and reflective portrayals of the Black experience—an experience that has long been misunderstood. In a work both enlightening and personal, Lewis brilliantly weaves accounts of her own journey together with the liberating stories that shaped her and so many others.

By: Patrick Bex (Author), 2025, Paperback

In his debut poetry collection, Patrick Bex explores the vast, often misunderstood, dimensions of love, identity, and belonging. Through evocative and heartfelt verses, Bex offers a window into the experiences of those who exist beyond society's traditional definitions of romance and sexuality.

From navigating friendships that transcend romantic norms to finding self-acceptance in a world that expects conformity, Limitless embraces the beauty of being aromantic and asexual. This collection is a celebration of individuality, community, and the power of defining love and connection on your own terms.

Whether you are a part of the aro/ace spectrum or an ally seeking insight, Limitless: Poetry of an Aromantic & Asexual Journey invites you to journey through the emotions, challenges, and joys of living authentically. Written and organized as a progression of his journey, Patrick Bex reflects on experiences before discovering asexuality, through stages of denial, acceptance, coming out, then repeating this process again when learning of aromanticism. It is a trial of constant growth, education, and relearning what it truly means to love.

By: Shawna Kenney

 A history of harDCore Punk in the Nation's Capital 1988-1998

By: Kaitlin B. Curtice (Author), 2023, Hardcover

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.

By: Randa Jarrar (Author), 2023, Paperback

Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this "exuberant, defiant and introspective" memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called "politically incorrect" (Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times). As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in Connecticut.

Coloring this road trip are journeys abroad and recollections of a life lived with daring. Reclaiming her autonomy after a life of survival--domestic assault as a child, and later, as a wife; threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush--Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived.

Hailed as "one of the finest writers of her generation" (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. I am joyful.

The issues that make monogamous dating daunting for people of color―shaming and exclusion by white partners, being fetishized, having realities of everyday racism ignored―occur in polyamorous relationships too, and trying “not to see race” only makes it worse. To make polyamorous communities inclusive, we must all acknowledge our part in perpetuating racism and listen to people of color. Love's Not Color Blind puts forward the framework―through research, anecdotal testimony, and analogy―for understanding, identifying, and confronting racism within polyamorous communities.

By: adrienne marre brown, 2024, paperback

New York Times-bestselling author adrienne maree brown knows we need each other more than ever, and offers “loving corrections”: a roadmap towards collective power, righting wrongs, and true belonging 

This selection of prescient, compassionate essays explores patterns we engage in that are rooted in limited thinking. Through a lens of “loving correction” rather than mere critique, author adrienne maree brown helps us reimagine how to hold ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities accountable by setting clear boundaries, engaging in reflection, and nurturing honest relationships.

Loving Corrections is divided into two sections, with the first portion featuring new essays including “A Word for White People” and “Relinquishing the Patriarchy” and writing on topics like moving from fragility to fortitude, disability, and navigating critique within activist communities. The second section expands and updates pieces from brown's popular monthly column “Murmurations” in YES! Magazine that explore accountability—within oneself and community—with depth, inventiveness, and empathy.

Along with allowing us more authentic access to ourselves and to each other, the “corrections” in the book’s title are intended to explore and break identity-based patterns including white supremacy, fragility, patriarchy, and ableism. brown also offers practical guidance on how to apologize and be accountable from our nuanced positions of power, history, and resources.

Building on her previous work—especially Holding Change and We Will Not Cancel Us—brown reminds us how much we need each other: "It is only through relationship that we learn how to be, understand our impact on others and explore small shifts that may yield remarkable collective change."

By: Jeff Mann (Author), 2023, Paperback

A Gay man chronicles his relationship to his native Appalachian culture and society. Appalachians are known for their love of place, yet many LGBTQ+ people from the mountains flee to urban areas in search of community and broader acceptance. Jeff Mann tells his story as one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and sexual identities. In memoir and poetry, Mann describes his life as an openly gay man who has remained true to his mountain roots. Mann recounts his upbringing in Hinton, a small town in southern West Virginia, as well as his realization of his homosexuality, his early encounters with homophobia, his coterie of supportive lesbian friends, and his initial attempts to escape his native region in hopes of finding a freer life in urban gay communities. Mann depicts his difficult search for a romantic relationship, the family members who have given him the strength to defy convention, his anger against religious intolerance and the violence of homophobia, and his love for the rich folk culture of the Highland South. His character and values shaped by the mountains, Mann has reconciled his sexuality with both traditional definitions of Appalachian manhood and his own attachment to home and kin. Loving Mountains, Loving Men is a compelling, universal story of making peace with oneself and the wider world.

By Joshua Whitehead, 2022, Hardback

The novel Jonny Appleseed established Joshua Whitehead as one of the most exciting and important new literary voices on Turtle Island, winning both a Lambda Literary Award and Canada Reads 2021. In Making Love with the Land, his first nonfiction book, Whitehead explores the relationships between body, language, and land through creative essay, memoir, and confession.

In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Deeply rooted within, he reaches across the anguish to create a new form of storytelling he calls “biostory”—beyond genre, and entirely sovereign. Through this narrative perspective, Making Love with the Land recasts mental health struggles and our complex emotional landscapes from a nefarious parasite on his (and our) well-being to kin, even a relation, no matter what difficulties they present to us. Whitehead ruminates on loss and pain without shame or ridicule but rather highlights waypoints for personal transformation. Written in the aftermath of heartbreak, before and during the pandemic, Making Love with the Land illuminates this present moment in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are rediscovering old ways and creating new ones about connection with and responsibility toward each other and the land.

Intellectually audacious and emotionally compelling, Whitehead shares his devotion to the world in which we live and brilliantly—even joyfully—maps his experience on the land that has shaped stories, histories, and bodies from time immemorial.

Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQIA+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.

“She is the preeminent and foremost scholar on Marsha P. Johnson. . . . To us, Tourmaline is the expert.”—Janet Mock, Allure

“Thank god the revolution has begun, honey.” Rumor has it that after Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she picked up a shard of broken mirror to fix her makeup. Marsha, a legendary Black transgender activist, embodied both the beauty and the struggle of the early gay rights movement. Her work sparked the progress we see today, yet there has never been a definitive record of her life. Until now. 
 
Written with sparkling prose, Tourmaline’s richly researched biography Marsha finally brings this iconic figure to life, in full color. We vividly meet Marsha as both an activist and artist: She performed with RuPaul and with the internationally renowned drag troupe The Hot Peaches. She was a muse to countless artists from Andy Warhol to the band Earth, Wind & Fire. And she continues to inspire people today.
 
Marsha didn’t wait to be freed; she declared herself free and told the world to catch up. Her story promises to inspire readers to live as their most liberated, unruly, vibrant, and whole selves.

By: Martin Luther King Jr. (Author), 2017, Paperback (The Last Interview Series)

As the Black Lives Matter movement gains momentum, and books like Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine's Citizen swing national attention toward the racism and violence that continue to poison our communities, it's as urgent now as ever to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr., whose insistence on equality and peace defined the Civil Rights Movement and forever changed the course of American history.
 
This collection ranges from an early 1961 interview in which King describes his reasons for joining the ministry (after considering medicine), to a 1964 conversation with Robert Penn Warren, to his last interview, which was conducted on stage at the convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, just ten days before King's assassination.

By: Cicely Moore (Author), Saira Riaz (Illustrator), 2024, Hardcover

Step into the enchanting world of "Masc Magic Girl," a compelling anthology featuring the empowering stories of 20 extraordinary women who embrace their masculine-presenting identities with courage and authenticity. This collection weaves a tapestry of resilience, love, and the transformative power of self-discovery.

Within these pages, each narrative unfolds as a testament to the strength found in breaking free from societal expectations. From personal triumphs to navigating the complexities of love, each story is a celebration of the unique journey that comes with embracing one's true self. "Masc Magic Girl" is not just a book; it's a source of inspiration for those seeking empowerment and connection.

Meet these remarkable women who have forged their paths with determination, challenging stereotypes and leaving an indelible mark on the world. The stories within "Masc Magic Girl" resonate with universal themes, inviting readers to reflect on their own experiences and find solace in the shared struggles and triumphs of these magical individuals.

This anthology is a testament to the beauty of diversity, the strength found in authenticity, and the transformative magic that comes with living life unapologetically. Order your copy of "Masc Magic Girl" today and be captivated by these 20 inspiring stories that will undoubtedly leave you spellbound, urging you to embrace your own unique magic with pride and authenticity.

By Esther Perel, Paperback

Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, PSYCHOLOGY/Human Sexuality

One of the world's most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love.