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By: Melissa Febos, 2017, Hardcover

Named One of the Best Books of 2017 by:
Esquire, Refinery29, LitHub, BookRiot, Medium, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Largehearted Boy, The Coil and The Cut.

Winner of the Lambda Literary Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Finalist, Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
An Indie Next Pick

For readers of Maggie Nelson and Leslie Jamison, a fierce and dazzling personal narrative that explores the many ways identity and art are shaped by love and loss.

In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment.

In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection -- with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession -- and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another.

At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer’s life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.

By: A K Andrews, 2015, Paperback

“An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Unlike celibacy, which people choose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are.” (www.asexuality.org) This is an anthology of 17 true stories by real people about asexuality -- the invisible orientation that everyone's heard of, but few actually talk about or understand. Whether you’re a newly-discovered asexual, someone who’s known they’re asexual for years, the friend or family of someone asexual, or someone who’s just intrigued by asexuality in general, you’re sure to find something in this anthology that interests you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy a selection of personal experiences, insights, and anecdotes from asexual writers around the world! The contents of this book include: Foreword by Victoria Beth (AVEN Project Team) "My Self-discovery, Thus Far"—Rebecca Nesor shares her experience as a 21st century asexual teenager, which involves an amusing anecdote about phone shopping and Minecraft. "A Geeky Love Story"—Suma walks us through the romantic tale of how sie joined a comics group looking for friendship and good times, and ended up falling in love. "Growing Up"—Phil Dalton offers a series of vignettes stretching over 30 years, from his childhood to the present day, about his attempts to fit into a sexual society. "Coming Out"—Melissa Keller explains why she has chosen not to come out to her friends and family, and explores the struggles that many asexual people face when coming out. "Being 'Normal' Is Overrated Anyway"—Ren describes how she discovered she wasn’t as “normal” as she’d thought, and how she’s come to embrace her asexuality. "Finding Grace"—Betty Badinbed reflects on the 20+ years of relationships—brief and lengthy, platonic and romantic, failed and successful—which have helped her hone her gray-ace identity. "Black Women Can Be Asexual Too"—Gabriella Grange explores her experiences as a black asexual young woman, including a sweet story about a handsome cellist and their shared passion for philosophy. "Fixing What Isn’t Broken"—Emma Hopwood shares a humorous piece of prose poetry about how tough it is to be asexual in a sexual world. "I Just Don’t Get It"—Jennifer Dyse offers insight into how hard it is to navigate school and relationships as an asexual, and the dangers that can come from trying too hard to be “normal.” "An Asexual Teen"—Kaya Brown ruminates on her experiences as an asexual teen, on coming out to her mother, and on dealing with distrust from adults who don’t understand asexuality. "Dream Guy"—Cionii shares a poem about inner beauty. "It’s All Asexual To Me"—Jarrah Shub describes how learning about her asexuality early in her teenage years has helped her be more self-assured and happy with who she is. "When I Grow Up"—Shannon Brown debunks the myth that “everyone wants to have sex,” and describes the various ways she’s come out to her high school friends. "Just A Small Town Boy"—Cameron explains how growing up in a small town shaped his knowledge of sexuality, and how discovering asexuality has helped him better understand himself. "Coming Out To Myself: Not A Piece Of Cake"—Ennis discusses her journey, as a young lady with Asperger’s syndrome, toward accepting her aromantic and asexual identity. "Copper Weddings"—Martin Spangsbro-Pedersen explains why he cast off his gay identity to instead identify as asexual, and describes his experiences as an activist within Denmark’s LGBTQ+ community. "My Happily Ever After"—Cecily Summers explains how her definition of her own “happily ever after” changed after she identified herself as asexual. To find out more about asexuality, please visit the AVEN website (www.asexuality.org). To find out about future Ace & Proud projects, please visit purplecakepress.wordpress.com.

By:  Angela Chen, 2021, Paperback

An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity.

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, about romance and consent, and the pressures of society? This accessible examination of asexuality shows that the issues that aces face—confusion around sexual activity, the intersection of sexuality and identity, navigating different needs in relationships—are the same conflicts that nearly all of us will experience. Through a blend of reporting, cultural criticism, and memoir, Ace addresses the misconceptions around the “A” of LGBTQIA and invites everyone to rethink pleasure and intimacy.

Journalist Angela Chen creates her path to understanding her own asexuality with the perspectives of a diverse group of asexual people. Vulnerable and honest, these stories include a woman who had blood tests done because she was convinced that “not wanting sex” was a sign of serious illness, and a man who grew up in a religious household and did everything “right,” only to realize after marriage that his experience of sexuality had never been the same as that of others. Disabled aces, aces of color, gender-nonconforming aces, and aces who both do and don’t want romantic relationships all share their experiences navigating a society in which a lack of sexual attraction is considered abnormal. Chen’s careful cultural analysis explores how societal norms limit understanding of sex and relationships and celebrates the breadth of sexuality and queerness.

By: Gracie Mae Bradley (Author), Luke de Noronha (Author), 2022, Paperback

By: Shawna Kenney

These are photographs from my early days of documenting music as a student in Washington, DC and as a journalist living in Los Angeles. I developed much of the film myself in a university darkroom, printed what I could afford, and put the rest into boxes I would drag from east coast to west coast and back again for many years.

I was never comfortable calling myself a photographer. Words came easily to me. A camera, the money for film, the right lighting, the right situation -I found those to be harder to get. Many of these photos were taken with borrowed cameras until I received my own Pentax k1000 in 1995 as a graduation gift.

I feel lucky to have witnessed and captured some of this generation's greatest artists. If punk rock taught me anything, it is that everyone can participate. We all belong. Moving in these alt-rock, hard rock or whatever genre spaces, I was often the only female photographer in the photo pit, on stage or backstage. In the punk scene, this was usually a non-issue, but in bigger venues, it could be frustrating. I wrote the Womanifesto' sometime in the early 2000s, after all of these photos were made.

I stopped shooting on film as soon as cameras were embedded into phones. Now thanks to technology it's easier to sort through what I have. I wanted to put a bunch of it all in one place. I wanted to hold something in my hands. I wanted to share it with you.

Love, Shawna

By:  Billie Jean King, Johnette Howard, & Maryanne Vollers, 2021, Hardcover, Autobiography

In this spirited account, Billie Jean King details her life's journey to find her true self. She recounts her groundbreaking tennis career—six years as the top-ranked woman in the world, twenty Wimbledon championships, thirty-nine grand-slam titles, and her watershed defeat of Bobby Riggs in the famous "Battle of the Sexes." She poignantly recalls the cultural backdrop of those years and the profound impact on her worldview from the women's movement, the assassinations and anti-war protests of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, and, eventually, the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

She describes the myriad challenges she's hurdled—entrenched sexism, an eating disorder, near financial peril after being outed—on her path to publicly and unequivocally acknowledging her sexual identity at the age of fifty-one. She talks about how her life today remains one of indefatigable service. She offers insights and advice on leadership, business, activism, sports, politics, marriage equality, parenting, sexuality, and love. And she shows how living honestly and openly has had a transformative effect on her relationships and happiness.

Hers is the story of a pathbreaking feminist, a world-class athlete, and an indomitable spirit whose impact has transcended even her spectacular achievements in sports.

By: EbonyJanice Moore (Author), 2023, Paperback

“Who would black women get to be if we did not have to create from a place of resistance?”

Hip Hop Womanist writer and theologian EbonyJanice’s book of essays center a fourth wave of Womanism, dreaming, the pursuit of softness, ancestral reverence, and radical wholeness as tools of liberation.

All The Black Girls Are Activists is a love letter to Black girls and Black women, asking and attempting to offer some answers to “Who would black women get to be if we did not have to create from a place of resistance?” by naming Black women’s wellness, wholeness, and survival as the radical revolution we have been waiting for.

By: Hailey Piper (Author), 2024, Paperback

A visceral and heartbreaking work of gothic horror about small town mysteries, local folklore and the things we leave behind when we're gone, from the Bram Stoker Award winning author of Queen of Teeth.

What really happened to Cabrina Brite?

Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?

Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina’s closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina’s death.

Because Cape Morning isn’t a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.

By: Foz Meados (Author), 2024, Paperback

The follow-up to Foz Meadows's A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, All the Hidden Paths is a sultry political & romantic fantasy exploring gender, sexuality, identity, and self-worth.

With the plot against them foiled and the city of Qi-Katai in safe hands, newlywed and tentative lovers Velasin and Caethari have just begun to test the waters of their relationship. But the wider political ramifications of their marriage are still playing out across two nations, and all too soon, they’re summoned north to Tithena’s capital city, Qi-Xihan, to present themselves to its monarch.

With Caethari newly invested as his grandmother’s heir and Velasin’s old ghosts gnawing at his heels, what little peace they’ve managed to find is swiftly put to the test. Cae’s recent losses have left him racked with grief and guilt, while Vel struggles with the disconnect between instincts that have kept him safe in secrecy and what an open life requires of him now. Pursued by unknown assailants and with Qi-Xihan’s court factions jockeying for power, Vel and Cae must use all the skills at their disposal to not only survive, but thrive.

Because there’s more than one way to end an alliance, and more than one person who wants to see them fail…and they will resort to murder if needed.

By Ruth Marievsky, 2023, Paperback

*A NATIONAL BESTSELLER*
Winner of the California Book Award
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards

Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch in this fever dream of an LA novel about a young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes without a trace

On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears.

Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics.

With prose pulsing like a neon sign, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister, or allow her to remain a relic of the past.

By: Paul Ortiz (Author), 2018, Paperback

An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.

Drawing on rich narratives and primary source documents, Ortiz links racial segregation in the Southwest and the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, known as International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers—Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth—united in resistance on the first “Day Without Immigrants.” As African American civil rights activists fought Jim Crow laws and Mexican labor organizers warred against the suffocating grip of capitalism, Black and Spanish-language newspapers, abolitionists, and Latin American revolutionaries coalesced around movements built between people from the United States and people from Central America and the Caribbean. In stark contrast to the resurgence of “America First” rhetoric, Black and Latinx intellectuals and organizers today have historically urged the United States to build bridges of solidarity with the nations of the Americas.

Incisive and timely, this bottom-up history, told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans, reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights.

By: Randy Stilts (Author), 2007, Paperback

Upon its first publication more than twenty years ago, And the Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigative reporting.

An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed movie, Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80's while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat. One of the few true modern classics, it changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years. Now republished in a special 20th Anniversary edition, And the Band Played On remains one of the essential books of our time.

By: Ricky Tucker (Author), 2022, Paperback

A 2023 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Nonfiction

An Electric Literature “Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of 2022” Selection

A love letter to the legendary Black and Latinx LGBTQ underground subculture, uncovering its abundant legacy and influence in popular culture.

What is Ballroom? Not a song, a documentary, a catchphrase, a TV show, or an individual pop star. It is an underground subculture founded over a century ago by LGBTQ African American and Latino men and women of Harlem. Arts-based and intersectional, it transcends identity, acting as a fearless response to the systemic marginalization of minority populations.

Ricky Tucker pulls from his years as a close friend of the community to reveal the complex cultural makeup and ongoing relevance of house and Ballroom, a space where trans lives are respected and applauded, and queer youth are able to find family and acceptance. With each chapter framed as a “category” (Vogue, Realness, Body, et al.), And the Category Is . . . offers an impressionistic point of entry into this subculture, its deeply integrated history, and how it’s been appropriated for mainstream audiences. Each category features an exclusive interview with fierce LGBTQ/POC Ballroom members—Lee Soulja, Benjamin Ninja, Twiggy Pucci Garçon, and more—whose lives, work, and activism drive home that very category.

At the height of public intrigue and awareness about Ballroom, thanks to TV shows like FX’s Pose, Tucker’s compelling narratives help us understand its relevance in pop culture, dance, public policy with regard to queer communities, and so much more. Welcome to the norm-defying realness of Ballroom.

By: Tony Kushner (Author), 2017, Paperback

Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Winner of the 1993 Tony Award for Best Play. In the first part of Tony Kushner's epic, set in 1980's New York City, a gay man is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, and a closeted Mormon lawyer's marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls. Other characters include the infamous McCarthy-ite lawyer Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg, a former drag queen who works as a nurse, and an angel.

"Daring and dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least the absconding of God." —Jack Kroll, Newsweek

"A vast miraculous play … provocative, witty and deeply upsetting … a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama …" —Frank Rich, New York Times

"Something rare, dangerous and harrowing … a roman candle hurled into a drawing room …" —Nicholas de Jongh, London Evening Standard

"An epic theatrical fever dream … a three-hour cliffhanger that leaves you wanting more." —Variety

"A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty." —John Lahr, New Yorker

"Establishes Kushner as a poet and moral visionary in love with the theater yet awake in the world." —Don Shewey, Village Voice