so I've been doing the Prideopoly reading challenge created by BookasaurusBex on IG (thanks to @rainbowcrate for boosting) and the latest square I landed on was to provide queer book recs, so I wanted to share my reads (so far) from this month's challenge!
A lot of my focus has been on queer poetry, so I've read a lot of truly magical verse from the pens of Brontez Purnell (Ten Bridges I've Burnt), H. Melt (There Are Trans People Here), Paul Trans (All The Flowers Kneeling), Mary Lambert (Shame is An Ocean I Swim Across), Yanyi (Dream of the Divided Field), jaye simpson (it was never going to be okay), and Saeed Jones (Alive At The End of the World). Each text is gorgeous, devastating, and spectacularly inventive in its own style; the creativity and courage I've encountered really beggars belief.
I've also read some queer nonfiction material like the Camp Trans zine and A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them pronouns, which have provided a fascinating look at trans advocacy two decades apart. I've also read Sarah Gailey's brilliant neowestern novella Upright Women Wanted, the story of a queer girl trying to rediscover self-love and community in a hateful world, and Hansol Jung's gorgeously devastating drama Wolf Play, which follows of the lives of a burgeoning prize fighter and their partner as they navigate a rocky new adoption. And of course there's the excellent comic Carmilla: The First Vampire, which explores the legendary vampire in the context of a 90s chinatown in a timeless story of love, legacy, and appetite.
My (mostly likely) final read will be Bad Fire: A Memoir of Disruption, a book with maybe one of the greatest summaries ever
I've been so grateful for the chance to do this challenge, and I play to do it for next year if it's still running. I hope to see some of you there!
