LGBTQ+ Pride Month is celebrated every June to celebrate and commemorate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer pride. Pride Month began after the Stonewall riots, a series of gay liberation protests in 1969, and has since spread outside of the United States.
The Exact Editions’ LGBTQ+ Pride Month Reading List has been created in collaboration with 12 publishers, who have recommended books that mark how far the Pride movement has come, as well as those that highlight what still needs to be done to ensure fair treatment for all without discrimination.
Readers can access the the LGBTQ+ Pride Month Reading List here (this collection link to previews of each book will expire at the end of 30th June).
Carcanet
Records of an Incitement to Silence by Gregory Woods
Gregory Woods is the leading British critic and historian of gay literature. Ten years in the making, Records of an Incitement to Silence revisits many of the original themes, but here Woods brings them closer to the endgame. Longlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2022.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Steep Tea by Jee Leong Koh
Singapore-born poet Jee Leong Koh’s first book to be published in Great Britain is rich in detail of the worlds he explores and invents as he follows his desire for an unknown other, moving tentatively, passionately, always uncertain of himself.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Cicada Books
Alex and Alex by Ziggy Hanaor and illustrated by Ben Javens
A simple, engaging story introducing ideas of non-binary identities, tolerance and acceptance to very young readers, from the writer of the critically acclaimed picture book, The Pocket Chaotic.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Cornell University Press
Pink Triangle Legacies by W. Jake Newsome
Traces the transformation of the pink triangle from a Nazi concentration camp badge and emblem of discrimination into a widespread, recognizable symbol of queer activism, pride, and community.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Places of Tenderness and Heat by Olga Petri
Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize, Places of Tenderness and Heat is a ground-level exploration of queer St. Petersburg at the fin-de-siècle.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Edinburgh University Press
Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory by Clara Bradbury-Rance
The unprecedented increase in lesbian representation over the past two decades has, paradoxically, coincided with queer theory’s radical transformation of the study of sexuality. In Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory, Clara Bradbury-Rance argues that this contradictory context has yielded new kinds of cinematic language through which to give desire visual form.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World by Jennifer Dyer and Allison Surtees
This book explores how binary gender and behaviours of gender were actively challenged in classical antiquity, offering an interdisciplinary approach, appealing to Classicists, Ancient Historians, and Archaeologists, as well as audiences working outside the ancient world.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Fordham University Press
Boy With the Bullhorn by Ron Goldberg
2023 Lammy Finalist, and Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction at the 34th Annual Triangle Awards. Boy with the Bullhorn is a coming-of-age memoir of life on the front lines of the AIDS crisis with ACT UP New York.
Glimpse inside the book here.
What’s Queer About Europe? by Mireille Rosello and Sudeep Dasgupta
What’s Queer about Europe? examines how queer theory helps us initiate disorienting conjunctions and counterintuitive encounters for imagining historical and contemporary Europe. This book queers Europe and Europeanizes queer, forcing a reconsideration of both.
Glimpse inside the book here.
MIT Press
The Digital Closet by Alexander Monea
In The Digital Closet, Alexander Monea argues provocatively that the internet became straight by suppressing everything that is not, forcing LGBTQIA+ content into increasingly narrow channels — rendering it invisible through opaque algorithms, automated and human content moderation, warped keywords, and other strategies of digital overreach.
Glimpse inside the book here.
New York University Press
Video Games Have Always Been Queer by Bonnie Ruberg
Bonnie Ruberg pushes the concept of queerness in games beyond a matter of representation, exploring how video games can be played, interpreted, and designed queerly, whether or not they include overtly LGBTQ content.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Bi: Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid, and Nonbinary Youth by Ritch C. Savin-Williams
Drawing on interviews with bisexual youth from a range of racial, ethnic, and social class groups, Savin-Williams reveals to us how bisexuals define their own sexual orientation and experiences — in their own words.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Omnibus Press
Queer Blues by Darryl W Bullock
From the very beginning, the blues has had a close connection with the LGBTQ community. Queer Blues tells the story of the pioneering LGBTQ composers and entertainers that wrote, performed and recorded wonderfully outlandish, life-affirming songs and chronicles, including: Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Josephine Baker to Frankie ‘Half-Pint’ Jaxon and many more.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Prototype Publishing
Pleasure Beach by Helen Palmer
Pleasure Beach is a queer love story from the North West’s saucy seaside paradise, Blackpool, on one day: 16 June 1999. Written in multiple voices and styles, the book follows the interconnecting journeys and thoughts of three young women over the course of 24 hours and over 18 chapters which are structured and themed in the same way as James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Renard Press
The Green Indian Problem by Jade Leaf Willetts
Set in the valleys of South Wales at the tail end of Thatcher’s Britain, The Green Indian Problem is the story of Green, a seven year-old with intelligence beyond his years — an ordinary boy with an extraordinary problem: everyone thinks he’s a girl.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Queer Ukraine: An Anthology of LGBTQI+ Ukranian Voices During Wartime by The Dvijka Collective
Against the backdrop of brutal invasion, it is much easier for right-wing figures to target marginalised groups, and during wartime the queer community is exceedingly vulnerable to persecution, scapegoating and censorship. What is queerness without defiance — the linking of arms, the echo of a hundred voices? Every voice tells a story, and this anthology is a platform for these voices, an archive of their existence.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Scala
Breaking the Rules by Scott A. Shields
Breaking the Rules is the most in-depth examination of the rich and varied careers of one of California’s premier artistic couples: Paul Wonner and William “Theophilus” Brown.
Glimpse inside the book here.
University of Nebraska Press
Making My Pitch by Ila Jane Borders, Jean Hastings Ardell and Mike Veeck
Making My Pitch tells the story of Ila Jane Borders, who despite formidable obstacles became a Little League prodigy, MVP of her otherwise all-male middle school and high school teams, the first woman awarded a baseball scholarship, and the first to pitch and win a complete men’s collegiate game.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Nepantla Squared by Linda Heidenreich
Nepantla Squared addresses the erasure of transgender mestiz@ realities from history, by employing an intersectional analysis that critiques monopoly and global capitalism.
Glimpse inside the book here.
Publishers can create their own virtual book collections for events, reading lists and awareness days using Exact Editions’ book marketing platform, Reading Rooms for Books.
For more information about Reading Rooms for Books and a free virtual demo, please get in touch at publisher@exacteditions.com
Or, sign up here for free to get started.
6 Pingbacks