Personal Growth & Empowerment

By Leah Jo Carnine and Fizz Percale, 2020, Zine

Zine / pamphlet. Published by Microcosm! Queer Attachment: An Anti-Oppression Toolkit for Relational Healing Weaves together mainstream attachment theory with study of trauma and the nervous system, with a focus on bringing in the knowledge of the queer and PoC practitioners in this field. This zine offers a guide to healing that is rooted in social justice, considerate of diverse identities, and deeply aware of how mental health is tied to systems of oppression.

By: Dom&Ink, 2019, Paperback

Every rainbow-coloured page is packed with LGBTQ+ activities, advice and attitude.

With spreads to colour, scribble, design and glitter, you'll meet dancing drag queens, rainbow donuts and the world's sassiest LGBTQ+ dinosaur: Brett the Sassysaurus!

Read quotes from real-life rainbow icons, find out how to throw your own Pride Party, and learn about the history of gay rights. Most importantly: celebrate being yourself and what makes YOU amazing!

Warm, hilarious, caring and insightful, Free To Be Me will fill every reader with self-esteem, confidence, colour and pride.

By: Ashley Molesso (Author), Chess Needham (Illustrator)

Explore queer identity and plan for your best year ever with My Queer Year, a guided journal and planner that centers and celebrates LGBTQ+ identity, created by queer and trans artist team Ash + Chess.

By: Rae McDaniel, 2024, Paperback

A first-of-its-kind practical guide to achieving gender freedom with joy, curiosity, and pleasure for transgender and non-binary individuals, gender explorers, and those who love them—perfect for readers of The Body is Not an Apology and Schuyler Bailar's He/She/They.   

Taking everything they know from more than a decade of work with the queer and trans community, their personal journey of gender exploration, and clinical best practices, licensed therapist, coach, and speaker Rae McDaniel created the Gender Freedom Model. A uniquely supportive narrative for gender exploration and transition grounded in queer joy, their nine-pillar model has helped thousands of transgender and nonbinary individuals explore gender through play, pleasure, and freedom. And now, it can help you too. 
 
Whether you're transgender, non-binary, cisgender, or still exploring, this compassionate and practical guide will help you experience your gender in new, expansive ways by teaching:

• How to move from anxiety, self-doubt, and fear to a confident, proactive state of mind.
• How to navigate discomfort and celebrate your inherent worth as you develop genuine self-love.
• How to design relationships, community, and a sex life that lights you up.
• Practical tools to align your gender identity and expression with your most authentic self through play, pleasure, and possibility. 

Brimming with warmth, celebration, and practical advice Gender Magic is essential reading for anyone who yearns to step into their fullest self and imagine a life beyond gender binaries. Because you—yes YOU—are magic. 

"Rae McDaniel is a leader in their generation, matching compassion with clear-sighted vision for a sex-positive future.” –  Emily Nagoski, Ph.D, author of Come As You Are and Burnout 

By:  Adam Eli (Author), Ashley Lukashevsky (Illustrator), 2020, Paperback, Pocket Change Collective

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility. Eli calls on his Jewish faith to underline how kindness and support within the queer community can lead to a stronger global consciousness. More importantly, he reassures us that we're not alone. In fact, we never were. Because if you mess with one queer, you mess with us all.

Paperback, published by Microcosm What turns you on? Maybe it's something vanilla, but chances are good that there's more to it than that. Dr. Faith G. Harper, sexologist, therapist, and author of bestselling titles like Unfuck Your Intimacy and Unfuck Your Blow Jobs, tackles the whys, whats, and how-tos of the very wide range of human erotic experience—much of which doesn't involve actual touching. She debunks myths, explains the science behind why we like what we like, and discusses how to engage safely, shamelessly, and satisfyingly in BDSM, pornography, fantasies, role-play, and fetishes both common and rare. Whatever gets you off, there's a way for you to feel good while feeling good about yourself. Leave shame behind and let the sex positivity resound!

Zine / pamphlet. Published by Microcosm! Unfuck Your Dating: It's Not Relationshipping (and That's a Good Thing) Dating used to be a thing that most people did for a while. Now it's faded to take up a cramped and awkward space in between hooking up and instantly moving into together. If you woke up all alarmed and find yourself wanting all that old shit, letters and sodas, read this zine and get on with doing the stuff that makes up dating. Like having FUN, remember that? And trusting your guts. And taking it slow. Microcosm Publishing bestseller Dr. Faith breaks it down for you with good boundaries, wise counsel, funny jokes, and of course lots of swearing. Thickness: 0.2.

Zine / pamphlet. Published by Microcosm! What does consent mean? Where does this idea come from, and why is it being talked about in a different way now than it was 20 years ago? More importantly, what does it have to do with any of us? How do we make sure we have the informed consent of everyone we interact with for the stuff we do that affects them? How do we make sure other people know what is and isn't okay with us? How do we navigate life in the post-#metoo era with dignity, respect, and confidence?

Paperback book. Published by Microcosm! Boundaries are the ways we communicate our needs. They are what allow us to feel safe among strangers, in everyday interactions, and in our closest relationships. When we have healthy boundaries and consent, we have a strong foundation in an uncertain world. And when someone crosses your boundaries, or you cross someone else's, the results range from unsettling to catastrophic. Check out the accompanying workbook and conversation cards.

Paperback book. Published by Microcosm! Every autistic person is capable and worthy of having happy, healthy, fulfilling friendships and relationships. This workbook takes you step-by-step through getting to know your own wants and needs and engaging with others whose wants and needs are compatible. The result of a collaboration between autistic publisher Joe Biel and Dr. Faith G. Harper, bestselling author of Unfuck Your Boundaries and Unfuck Your Intimacy, this workbook can be completed on its own or alongside The Autism Relationships Handbook. Exercises include evaluating your relationship history, figuring out what you want in your relationships and what steps you need to take to achieve your goal, how to identify someone who's a good potential friend or date, how to express your needs and boundaries, how to hear and respect the other person's needs and boundaries, and how to have relationship building or strengthening conversations.

By: Sonya Renee Taylor (Author), Ijeoma Olio (Foreword), 2021, Paperback

"To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves...'The body is not an apology' is the mantra we should all embrace."
--Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum

"Taylor invites us to break up with shame, to deepen our literacy, and to liberate our practice of celebrating every body and never apologizing for this body that is mine and takes care of me so well."
--Alicia Garza, cocreator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Strategy + Partnerships Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

"Her manifesto on radical self-love is life altering--required reading for anyone who struggles with body image."
--Claire Foster, Foreword Review

Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.

The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.

By: Emily Nagoski PhD (Author), Amelia Nagoski DMA (Author), 2020, Paperback

“A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves, Burnout is essential reading [and] . . . excels in its intersectionality.”—Bustle
 
This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a roadmap to minimizing stress, managing emotions, and living more joyfully.
 
Burnout. You, like most American women, have probably experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to exist as a woman in today’s world are two different things—and we exhaust ourselves trying to close the gap. Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the all-too-familiar cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. They compassionately explain the obstacles and societal pressures we face—and how we can fight back. 
 
You’ll learn
• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering from and preventing burnout
 
With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in Burnout—and will be empowered to create positive change.

By: Essie Dennis, 2022, Paperback

As a young, queer, plus-size person, Essie Dennis has spent a lot of time feeling like they weren't enough - not queer enough, not feminine enough, not perfect enough. When they took to social media to share how they felt, they were overwhelmed by how many others felt the same.

I look too masculine to be non-binary
I look too feminine to be a lesbian
Am I too fat for drag?

Inviting you to challenge accepted beauty standards and the concept of 'the perfect body', Essie takes everything they have learned on their journey to self-acceptance and body satisfaction to help guide you towards loving your queer body. From gender, sexuality and reclaiming your body, through to food, politics, social media and fatphobia, this radical book starts a conversation about body image and mental health that queer people are so often left out of.

Fiercely and unapologetically written, and with honest advice and powerful stories from a diverse range of queer people throughout, this is an inspiring and necessary book that will show you that you areenough.

Published by Microcosm! Paperback book. Unfuck Your Worth: Overcome Your Money Emotions, Value Your Own Labor, and Manage Financial Freak-outs in a Capitalist Hellscape Without fear and shame holding you back, it's more possible to move past all those social barriers to actualizing whatever your money aspirations are, whether that's getting a raise, getting out of debt, having honest conversations about money with your family, saving for the future, or wherever your values lead you. Dr. Faith, author of the bestselling Unf*ck Your Brain and Unf*ck Your Intimacy, tackles one of the toughest emotional topics there is with her trademark mix of neuroscience, gentle encouragement, and no-nonsense language. This book isn't about getting rich quick (or necessarily at all)—it's about figuring out your own economic values and baggage, and learning to be the person in the world you know you have it in you to be.

Zine / pamphlet. Published by Microcosm! Unfuck Your Parenting #1: Doing our Best to Raise Intersectional Feminist, Empathic, Engaged, and Generally Non-Shitty Kids Dr. Faith G. Harper (bestselling author of Unfuck Your Brain) and counselor Bonnie Scott collaborated to write this short guide to raising intersectional feminist, empathetic, engaged, and generally non-shitty kids in these troubled times. Good info for parents of infants and adolescents alike on teaching the skills every human needs to be good, connected, happy, and change the world for the better.