Memoir and Biography

In this one of a kind memoir, author Monique Jenkinson tells the story of her time as a drag queen, and what it meant for her to win a major drag queen pageant as a cis woman. Naming her drag persona Fauxnique, Jenkinson consciously pays tribute to the queer men and trans woman for whom drag has held so much meaning even as she recognizes how unusual it is for a cis woman to dress in drag. A Valentine to a queer culture that Jenkinson nonetheless finds herself on the outside of, Faux Queen is a fascinating glimpse into the politics of gender and sex that permeate the world of drag and inflect the ways that people of various identities and orientations can participate in it. 

By: Chase Faulkner (Author), 2024, Paperback

"Jesus & the LGBTQ Christian hit home for me. It's like Chase Faulkner is speaking directly from my own experiences—dealing with the pain that comes from growing up in a non-affirming faith environment. This book is filled with truths that are hard to face but impossible to ignore."

Is it OK for me to be both LGBTQ and Christian?
If I accept my LGBTQ sexual identity, am I living in sin?

Chase Faulkner, an experienced pastor, crisis counselor, and LGBTQ advocate, shares his personal journey of struggling with the intersection of faith, sexuality, and identity through the lens of God's Word. Join him in discovering the transformative power of love, faith, and acceptance as he guides LGBTQ believers toward a path of hope, healing, and wholeness.

In his groundbreaking book, "Jesus & the LGBTQ Christian," Faulkner weaves his personal story with five powerful strategies that integrate psychology, spirituality, and theology. He explains step-by-step how to experience the profound unconditional love of Jesus, embrace your authentic identity, and address any wounds you may have experienced in your church or family.

With a Master's Degree in Theological Studies, he explores the often-debated Clobber Passages, examining them thoughtfully within their cultural and historical contexts alongside our evolving scientific understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity.

What you will learn:

• Find Healing and Wholeness: Discover transformative strategies to overcome religious trauma and embrace the fullness of your God-given identity, free from the constraints of celibacy, guilt, or shame.

• Experience Unconditional Love: Engage in Christ-centered spiritual practices to help you experience God's presence more fully and renew your connection with an unwavering love that knows no conditions except faith in Christ. Learn how to walk in God's love, providing comfort and strength to face life's challenges with confidence.

• Build Affirming Relationships: Surround yourself with people who celebrate your authentic identity, providing a nurturing environment where you can thrive and belong while distancing yourself from people who trigger guilt, shame, fear of rejection and judgment.

• Navigate Scripture with Confidence: Equip yourself with tools to interpret scripture in a way that affirms your LGBTQ identity, reflecting God's view of you as fearfully and wonderfully made, empowering you to reconcile your faith with the person God created you to be.

• Embrace Your Authentic Identity: Embrace your unique identity and approach God's throne of grace with confidence, shedding the weight of church and family expectations and embracing the fullness of who you are in Christ.

Faulkner addresses the wounds of religious trauma, such as anxiety, depression, discrimination, guilt, shame, internalized homophobia, and suicidal thoughts, dismantling harmful teachings like "Homosexuality is a Choice" and "The Only Option for LGBTQ Christians is Celibacy." If you or someone you know has experienced harm from religious teachings or struggles with accepting LGBTQ identity, this book can offer a lifeline.

Faulkner recognizes the urgency of his message in light of alarming statistics regarding LGBTQ individuals: In the U.S. alone, over 1.8 million young people seriously contemplate suicide annually, with at least one attempting suicide every 45 seconds. "Jesus & the LGBTQ Christian" offers a beacon of hope, providing practical advice and comfort free from judgment or conditions.

You are God's masterpiece! Reclaim your place in the Kingdom of God, and don't wait another minute to live the abundant life Jesus promised you. Get your copy today.

"Jesus & the LGBTQ Christian" is the full-length unabridged version of "Escaping the Christian Closet," offering 25 more pages of insightful material.

By: Carmen Maria Machado (Author), 2020, Paperback

A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.

And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

By: Barb Morrison (Author), 2023, Paperback

Bottoming For God: A story about gender euphoria, sobriety, old skool NYC, true love, past lives and coming home.

By: George M Johnson (Author), 2023, Paperback

New memoir from George M. Johnson, the New York Times bestselling author of All Boys Aren't Blue—a "deeply impactful" (Nic Stone), "striking and joyful" (Laurie Halse Anderson), and "stunning read" (Publishers Weekly, starred) that celebrates Black boyhood and brotherhood in all its glory. 

This is the vibrant story of George, Garrett, Rall, and Rasul -- four children raised by Nanny, their fiercely devoted grandmother. The boys hold one another close through early brushes with racism, memorable experiences at the family barbershop, and first loves and losses. And with Nanny at their center, they are never broken.

George M. Johnson captures the unique experience of growing up as a Black boy in America through rich family stories that explore themes of vulnerability, sacrifice, and culture.

Complete with touching letters from the grandchildren to their beloved matriarch and a full color photo insert, this heartwarming and heartbreaking memoir is destined to become a modern classic of emerging adulthood.

By: Elton John (Author), 2020, Paperback

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NOW UPDATED WITH A NEW CHAPTER

In his first and only official autobiography, music icon Elton John reveals the truth about his extraordinary life, from his rollercoaster lifestyle as shown in the film Rocketman, to becoming a living legend.

Christened Reginald Dwight, he was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in the London suburb of Pinner and dreamed of becoming a pop star. By the age of twenty-three he was performing his first gig in America, facing an astonished audience in his bright yellow dungarees, a star-spangled T-shirt, and boots with wings. Elton John had arrived and the music world would never be the same again.

His life has been full of drama, from the early rejection of his work with song-writing partner Bernie Taupin to spinning out of control as a chart-topping superstar; from half-heartedly trying to drown himself in his LA swimming pool to disco-dancing with Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth; from friendships with John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, and George Michael to setting up his AIDS Foundation to conquering Broadway with Aida, The Lion King, and Billy Elliot the Musical. All the while Elton was hiding a drug addiction that would grip him for over a decade.

In Me, Elton also writes powerfully about getting clean and changing his life, about finding love with David Furnish and becoming a father. In a voice that is warm, humble, and open, this is Elton on his music and his relationships, his passions and his mistakes. This is a story that will stay with you by a living legend.

By: Alison Bechdel (Author), 2013, Paperback

From the New York Times bestselling author of Fun Home, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama is a brilliantly told graphic memoir of Alison Bechdel becoming the artist her mother wanted to be.

A New York Times, USA Today, and Time Best Book of the Year

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother — to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

By: Alicia Roth Weigel (Author), 2023, Paperback

"One of the most brilliant thought leaders I have been able to share space with."—Jonathan van Ness, from the foreword

"The must-read memoir of fall 2023."—Them

"Powerful and vital."—Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Song of Achilles

From a celebrated activist on the forefront of fighting for intersex representation and rights—and a subject of the forthcoming documentary Every Body, from the filmmakers behind RBG—a funny, thought-provoking collection of essays about owning your identity and living your truth.

Two percent of the world’s population—the same percentage of humans who have naturally red hair—is born intersex. Yet many people aren’t even familiar with the word.

Intersex individuals are born with both male and female reproductive organs, yet many are stripped of their identity at birth when a parent designates M or F on a birth certificate. That subjective choice is often followed by invasive, life-changing surgeries, performed without the individual’s consent. Intersex people have become a target of politicians, attacked for who they are and threatened by legislation that attempts to categorize and define them.

Alicia Weigel is fighting back against the hate and fearmongering to protect the rights and lives of everyone. In this book, she boldly speaks out about working as a change agent in a state that actively attempts to pass legislation that would erase her existence, explores how we can reclaim bodily autonomy, and encourages us to amplify our voices to be heard.

Disarming, funny, charming, and powerful, this is a vital account of personal accomplishment that will open eyes and change minds.

By: Robert P Graves (Author), 2022, Paperback

"When I was nine years old and in the fourth grade, I had my first thought of self-harm. I shared with my mother my plan to kill myself. She hugged me, told me it would be okay, and sent me back to the kitchen to finish my homework."

Robert Graves has spent his life dealing with chronic clinical depression and bipolar disorder. I, Rob Graves offers a candid and poignant story about his life as a gay man suffering from these mental health issues and a genetic disposition for substance abuse-which morphed into an anonymous sex addiction during the height of the AIDS Epidemic. Graves chronicles his personal story, illustrating the dangers of misdiagnosis and treatment noncompliance, but rather than teach or preach any specific cure, his memoir lets the reader decide whether the life choices described are right or wrong for their own life path. He shares the journey he took to come to terms with his homosexuality and overcome tremendous health odds-through years of therapy, medication management, and learning the arts of forgiveness and acceptance-to find success and peace with himself and thrive in the present. He aims to provide an inspirational example of breaking the cycle of mental health stigmas and addiction, both in the gay community and the community at large.

By: P. Carl (Author), 2020, Hardback

“A memoir that is jolting, honest, passionate, and beautifully written” (Claudia Rankine), Becoming a Man explores one man’s gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America.

Becoming a Man is the striking memoir of P. Carl’s journey to become the man he always knew himself to be. For fifty years, he lived as a girl and a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout—the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement. He writes intimately about how transitioning reconfigures both his own inner experience and his closest bonds—his twenty-year relationship with his wife, Lynette; his already tumultuous relationships with his parents; and seemingly solid friendships that are subtly altered, often painfully and wordlessly.

Carl blends the remarkable story of his own personal journey with incisive cultural commentary, writing brilliantly about gender, power, and inequality in America. His transition occurs amid the rise of the Trump administration and the #MeToo movement—a transition point in America’s own story, when transphobia and toxic masculinity are under fire even as they thrive in the highest halls of power. Carl’s quest to become himself and to reckon with his masculinity mirrors, in many ways, the challenge before the country as a whole, to imagine a society where every member can have a vibrant, livable life. Here, through this brave and deeply personal work, Carl brings an unparalleled new voice to this conversation.

By: Jackie Pelletier, 2021, Paperback

"Loud Secrets" is a gripping autobiography about trauma, struggle, and growth as it shares the life story of a girl who was born as Betty Ann but grew up to become Jacqueline Marie. This book recounts the secrets and struggles that arose through early childhood molestation, adoption, and having an alcoholic father. The book also shares the author's experience being catholic and a gay public-school teacher and administrator in a school system set in a narrow-minded, rural town in Maine. This unforgettable story is told with the rawness and candor that can only come from someone who spent a lifetime learning that she had done nothing wrong.

Although this story is filled with trauma and struggle, it serves to remind others in similar situations that they are not alone. Those who have lived through sexual abuse, adoption, alcoholic parent(s), and sexual identity issues, will be able to connect with the author's experience and hopefully be inspired to accept and love themselves. Regardless of who you are, this is a must-read autobiography filled with vulnerability and honesty.

By: Precious Brady-Davis (Author), Joey Soloway (Introduction), 2021, Paperback

A powerful memoir of independence, releasing the past, and living the dream by award-winning trans advocate Precious Brady-Davis.

Precious Brady-Davis remembers the sense of being singular and grappling with “otherness.” Born into traumatic circumstances, Davis was brought up in the Omaha foster care system and the Pentecostal faith. As a biracial, gender-nonconforming kid, she felt displaced. Yet she realized by coming into her identity that she had a purpose all along.

In I Have Always Been Me, Brady-Davis reflects on a childhood of neglect, instability, and abandonment. She reveals her determination to dream through it and shares her profound journey as a trans woman now fully actualized, absolutely confident, and precious. She speaks to anyone who has ever tried to find their place in this world and imparts the wisdom that comes with surmounting odds and celebrating on the other side.

A memoir, a love story, and an outreach for the marginalized, Precious’s sojourn is a song of self-reliance and pride and an invitation to join in the chorus.

By: John Brown (Author), 2014, Hardcover

Part memoir and part social criticism, The Glass Closet addresses the issue of homophobia that still pervades corporations around the world and underscores the immense challenges faced by LGBT employees.

In The Glass Closet, Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP, seeks to unsettle business leaders by exposing the culture of homophobia that remains rampant in corporations around the world, and which prevents employees from showing their authentic selves.

Drawing on his own experiences, and those of prominent members of the LGBT community around the world, as well as insights from well-known business leaders and celebrities, Lord Browne illustrates why, despite the risks involved, self-disclosure is best for employees—and for the businesses that support them. Above all, The Glass Closet offers inspiration and support for those who too often worry that coming out will hinder their chances of professional success.

By: Raquel Willis (Author), 2023, Hardcover

A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation.

In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women’s March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the South. Despite having her speaking time cut short, the appearance only deepened her commitment to speaking up for communities on the margins.

Born in Augusta, Georgia, to Black Catholic parents, Raquel spent years feeling isolated, even within a loving, close-knit family. There was little access to understanding what it meant to be queer and transgender. It wasn’t until she went to the University of Georgia that she found the LGBTQ+ community, fell in love, and explored her gender for the first time. But the unexpected death of her father forced her to examine her relationship with herself and those she loved. These years of grief, misunderstanding, and hard-won epiphanies seeped into the soil of her life, serving as fertilizer for growth and allowing her to bloom within.

Upon graduation, Raquel entered a career in journalism against the backdrop of the burgeoning Movement for Black Lives, intersectional feminism going mainstream, and unprecedented visibility of the trans community. After hiding her identity as a newspaper reporter, her increasing awareness of the epidemic of violence plaguing trans women of color and the heightened suicide of trans teens inspired her to come out publicly. Within just a few short years of community organizing in Atlanta, Oakland, and New York, Raquel emerged as one of the most formidable Black trans activists in history.

In The Risk It Takes to Bloom, Raquel Willis recounts with passion and candor her experiences straddling the Obama and Trump eras, the possibility of transformation after tragedy, and how complex moments can push us all to take necessary risks and bloom toward collective liberation.

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.