Memoir & Biography

By Dawn Staley, 2025, Hardcover

For the first time, Dawn Staley shares powerful and inspiring stories that have shaped her journey on and off the court.

A three-time Olympic gold medalist, six-time WNBA All-Star, and the first person to win the Naismith College Player of the Year award as both a player and coach, Staley has shattered expectations at every level of the game. While her name resonates with both longtime WNBA fans and newcomers, she has kept her personal life private.

Uncommon Favor reveals the journey that led to Staley’s success, including the challenges she faced. From dealing with sexism on the court to feeling isolated in new environments, Staley honed her skills and learned valuable life lessons about mental fortitude and maturity that have grounded her throughout her career. Beginning with her humble origins on the North Philadelphia basketball court and her rise to national fame at the University of Virginia—where she led her team to three Final Fours—Staley recounts the key moments that shaped her winning mindset.

Staley’s iconic career in the WNBA and her groundbreaking coaching journey at the University of South Carolina highlight the milestones and turning points that have defined her success, both on and off the court. Fearless and authentic, Uncommon Favor shares the rewards of leading with conviction and the courage to redefine the limits of what is possible.

By: Sara Soler (Author), Joamette Gil (Illustrator), Silvia Perea Labayen (Translator), 2023, Paperback, Graphic Novel

What happens when the life you thought you had does a 180º turn? Everything, and yet…nothing.

Us is Sara and Diana’s love story, as well as the story of Diana’s gender transition. Full of humor, heartache, and the everyday triumphs and struggles of identity, this graphic memoir speaks to changing conceptions of the world as well as the self, at the same time revealing that some things don’t really have to change.

Written, drawn, and colored by Sara Soler, with English translation by Silvia Perea Labayen and letters by Joamette Gil.

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: Lou Sullivan (Author), Ellis Martin (Editor), Zach Ozma (Editor), Susan Stryker (Preface), 2019, Paperback

"Celebratory, even radical"―The New Yorker

"Monumental"―Hyperallergic

We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan narrates the inner life of a gay man moving through the shifting social, political, and medical mores of the second half of the 20th century. Sullivan kept comprehensive journals from age 11 until his AIDS-related death at 39. Sensual, lascivious, challenging, quotidian and poetic, the diaries complicate and disrupt normative trans narratives. Entries from twenty-four diaries reveal Sullivan’s self-articulation and the complexity of a fascinating and courageous figure.

2020 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER

By: Samra Habib (Author), 2019, Paperback

CANADA READS 2020 WINNER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2020 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER
ONE OF BOOK RIOT'S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL QUEER BOOKS OF ALL TIME

How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don't exist?

Samra Habib has spent most of their life searching for the safety to be themself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, they faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From their parents, they internalized the lesson that revealing their identity could put them in grave danger.

When their family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage. Backed into a corner, their need for a safe space--in which to grow and nurture their creative, feminist spirit--became dire. The men in Samra's life wanted to police them, the women in their life had only shown them the example of pious obedience, and their body was a problem to be solved.

So begins an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes them to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within them all along. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one's truest self.

From a fearless, internationally acclaimed activist comes an impassioned memoir about an indigenous childhood, a clash of cultures, and the fight to save the Amazon rainforest

We Will Be Jaguars is an astonishing memoir by an equally astonishing woman. Nenquimo is a winner of TIME magazine's Earth Award, and MS. magazine named this book among the Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2024.

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest--one of the last to be contacted by missionaries in the 1950s--Nemonte Nenquimo had a singular upbringing.

She was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. At age fourteen, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened.

Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism. She has spearheaded the alliance of indigenous nations across the Upper Amazon and led her people to a landmark victory against Big Oil, protecting over a half million acres of primary rainforest. Her message is as sharp as a spear--honed by her experiences battling loggers, miners, oil companies and missionaries.

In We Will Be Jaguars, she partners with her husband, Mitch Anderson, founder of Amazon Frontlines, digging into generations of oral history, uprooting centuries of conquest, hacking away at racist notions of indigenous peoples, and ultimately revealing a life story as rich, harsh, and vital as the Amazon rainforest herself.

For a generation that has seen the legalization of gay marriage, increasing numbers of families with two mothers or two fathers, and the respected presidential candidacy of an openly gay man like Pete Buttigieg, the 1960s - 1990s can seem a time remote in every regard. Yet the present grows out of the past, and understanding the ways in which life was different in another era deepens our thinking about the present and the future.

Where the Pulse Lives is a personal memoir, the author's account of growing up in Connecticut at a time when gay desire represented an unspeakable shame, experiencing in New York City the highly sexual and politically charged climate of the 1970s, and coming to terms with what it meant to be a gay man in the years dominated by the tragedy of AIDS, the empowering activism of gay men and lesbians in ACT UP, and a growing interest in gay history. These were the years in which gay men no longer wanted to be defined by the values of the dominant culture. Self-definition proved more complicated than expected, however.

John Loughery is the author of six books, including Alias S.S. Van Dine (winner of an Edgar Award), John Sloan: Painter and Rebel (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography), The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives and Gay Identities, a Twentieth-Century History (winner of a Lambda Award), Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America (winner of the Lehman Prize from the New York Academy of History), Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century, and most recently a self-published account of his uncle's World War II experiences, An American at War: Surviving Bataan, Mukden, and the Trauma of Recovery. He lives in Berlin, CT.

By: Victor Esses (Author), 2019, Paperback

What makes a home for you?

Victor Esses is Jewish-Lebanese, Brazilian, and gay. In 1975, Victor's mother flees Lebanon as a refugee of the Civil War. In 2017, Victor visits Lebanon for the first time. In 2018, amidst the elections that will see Brazil choose a far-right president, he travels from London to São Paulo to show his partner the city of his childhood.

Where to Belong is the tender, moving story of these journeys – an exploration of how to find your place in a rich and complex world of identities.

Zami: A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers

“Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.”—Off Our Backs

“Among the elements that make the book so good are its personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness, characteristics that shine through the writing bespeaking the evolution of a strong and remarkable character.”—The New York Times