In this stunning collection of intertwined short fictions, the characters’ vastly different experiences are at the intersection of queerness, Indigeneity and Canadian identity. The tender, poetic probing of psychological and physical loneliness are among the latest tales of lived experience from Belcourt, the award-winning writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation and assistant professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia, whose work always offers, as one critic observed, “an expansive view of intimacy that resists colonial expectations.”

Sante, the renowned New York cultural critic and author of Low Life, the classic urban history about Manhattan’s demimonde, chronicles the challenges and triumphs of her recent gender transition in 2021, at 66. It’s a moving memoir-in-essays, as much about finding herself as a woman as  finding herself as a writer. A New York Times reviewer posits the memoir’s effect could be similar to Will Ferrell’s lauded Sundance Film Festival documentary, Will & Harper, about his road trip with a longtime friend who came out as transgender at 61, which another critic called  “so generous and gentle about explaining trans-ness to older generations.” 

The Toronto writer who penned the popular Modern Love essay “The Ghost Was the Least of Our Problems” draws from her life and identity as a queer/bisexual femme woman, and mother of daughters, in this haunted (literally!) and humorous debut essay collection on femininity and queerness. Entertaining and eerie interlinked essays, many reflecting on horror – like the film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (hence the title’s reference to the cinematic trope) – explore and critique the ’80s and ’90s pop culture moments that shaped her.

The Syrian-Canadian author and advocate for LGBTQ+ refugees, whose novel The Clothesline Swing was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads, upends pat refugee narratives by sharing his own diasporic story. The book traces the journey from his Damascus birthplace through queer spaces in Cairo and Beirut, Arab Spring uprisings and even traumatic imprisonment. But escaping homophobia of the Middle East to making a home in Vancouver comes with its own reckoning: The reality of racism and discrimination upon arrival figures in this powerful memoir.

The British scholar behind the Dressing Dykes blog has carved a niche surveying lesbian history through the lens of clothing. In a rich and fascinating addition to this under-researched field, she travels through decades of fashion identities and subcultures in the margins and mainstream – like gender non-conformity and Black lesbian style – with an accessible exploration of the value of fashion’s overlooked role in politics and social history. The range delivers on its promise “from Sappho and suffragettes to t-shirts and TikTok.”

The Edinburgh-based journalist and founding editor of Slate’s Outward LGBTQ section revisits the legacy of six iconic lesbian gathering grounds, where innovative women carved out spaces for themselves and shaped queer women’s culture. Chapters are devoted to feminist bookstores, lesbian bars, softball teams and sex-toy shops, like San Francisco pioneer Good Vibrations. A chapter on WomanShare Collective, formed in 1974 Southern Oregon, is a way of talking about its larger phenomenon – in this case, the lesbian-feminist back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s.

The Brooklyn journalist, who writes for The Atlantic and New Yorker, excavates early stories of gender-non-conforming athletes who transitioned publicly, such as Czech sprinter Zdeněk Koubek and British field athlete Mark Weston, who each went from female to male in the mid-’30s. The meticulous research traces how the current culture wars and gender surveillance in sport are rooted in sexism (the beginning of women’s sports at the turn of the last century) and fascism (the IOC turning a blind eye to Nazi Germany’s atrocities in 1936, while the Berlin Games were under way). It’s an essential read, on the eve of the Summer Olympic Games in Paris.

This beautifully designed anthology collects essays, art, photography and interviews from the archives of Hello Mr., the groundbreaking indie magazine that ran from 2012 to 2018, and was the first home of the most prestigious queer voices of a generation. Edited by founder Ryan Fitzgibbon, selections showcase figures like John Waters, Alexander Chee, Kehinde Wiley, Saeed Jones and Pulitzer Prize winner Wesley Morris writing about inspiring themes of “growth, belonging and queer possibilities.”