queerliblib

[queerliblib]

Hey there! You've probably gotten asks for reccomendations like this before, but I was wondering if you had any queer detective (or detective-like) book recommendations? Preferably with like, PI stuff and not actually police detectives? if thats possible. because acab. like Sherlock Holmes vibes but. gay(er)

you know, we actually haven’t gotten that one before. acab my friend! but shit I’ll be honest, I’m not a mystery or detective reader at all so this is not my strong suit. howmstever I have solicited other folks on the QLL team to weigh in for this one.

we do have a mysteries list in our Genre Fiction Guide! so I’d absolutely recommend checking that out. for specific titles though:

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older. a "cozy holmsian murder mystery & sapphic romance set on jupiter"

The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth. “be gay, solve crime, take naps”

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy. instead of a cop, the investigator is a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun

The Adventures of Isabel Candas Jane Dorsey by features a queer, nameless, amateur detective

we also don’t have these two yet, but one member of our team recommends the Dave Brandstetter Series by Joseph Hanson, “old, cheesy, very fun”, and another the Evander Mills series by Lev A.C. Rosen

[queerliblib]

I did an illustration for Trans Day of Remembrance today at work.

Our little community contains so much anger and grief, but it's because we love each other so fiercely. We remember our dead because their memory keeps us stubborn.

I love all of us today, and I hope you do too.

[queerliblib]

Hello! I adore the work you do!

Do you have any religious horror stories that feature any queer characters? I've been on a religious horror spree ahah ;;

Thank you so much!

ahhh great minds think alike! see this ask i answered yesterday

(& thanks so much!! we love doing it for y’all)

[queerliblib]

honoring all our trans siblings who are no longer with us on this trans day of remembrance. we love you, we miss you, we hold you in our hearts always.

[queerliblib]

So the question about books not available on Libby raised another question in my mind. If one of us following you on social media has one of those books that’s unavailable on Libby could we scan it and submit it to you as a PDF somehow so others could access it? I don’t have the several hundred dollar book that was mentioned, and I know this could be dipping my toes into copyright law territory, but it could be beneficial to try and crowd source some of our history, Zine style

ah. okay, love the crowdsource-y punk vibes. however we are NOT in a position to play fast and loose with copyright laws. we can’t even take pdf’s directly from the authors! we have formal non-profit status* and for us, it’s really important that we maintain access nationwide to as many folks as possible, for as many books as we can (and we’re still buying more as fast as our budgets allow - we’re not close to being done yet!)

we’ve got lots of plans to keep growing and expanding our catalogue, but what you’re suggesting is not one of the feasible options for us.

in the meantime, some other great options are to keep requesting queer books from your local public libraries, to use InterLibrary Loan if you (or a friend) has access to a university system, and explore some (legal) Open Access or Public Domain projects that are out there (queer zine archive project, directory of open access books, project gutenberg, etc..)

[queerliblib]

Maybe a bit specific, but any recommendations for queer horror with themes of religious trauma that aren't Camp Damascus or Hell followed with us. (I've already read those lol)

Recs for queer horror in general would be awesome too :D

You guys are great<3

hello! we love some specificity, you might enjoy checking out these:

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

possibly also Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil

Angels Before Man by Rafael Nicolás (perhaps not exactly horror per-se, but! it is a queer retelling of satan’s fall with a jealous god)

Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass

you can also browse our whole horror tag here! or peruse our Genre Fiction Guide for lists like Monsters, Thrillers, & more

[queerliblib]

For Native American Heritage Month, we’ve put together a list of works highlighting queer & trans Indigenous voices! Check it out in your Libby App or at tinyurl.com/QLL-NAHM 🩷

[queerliblib]

Happy trans awareness week! Allow me to make you aware of these trans bisexuals

Books listed:

Hugged by Verity Ritchie

Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao

Minuet by A.M. Leibowitz

The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier by Felicia Davin

Foxhunt (Foxhunt, #1) by Rem Wigmore

The Flowered Blade by Taylor Hubbard

Homegrown Magic by Jamie Pacton and Becca Podos

How to Survive a Slasher by Justine Pucella Winans

[queerliblib]

Hi, I was wondering if you have any books you think I might recommend to my mother. I'm trans, and so is my sister, but we were both in the closet from our parents... Until the hospital outted her to our parents.

I'm going to be putting myself as trans soon to help give my sister some breathing room during a difficult time, but I'm honestly pretty nervous. My parents, my mom especially, is very conservative and has pretty extreme anti-lgbt+ opinions. I'm wondering if there are books that I can recommend her to help her work through her biases and accept her trans children.

Obviously I can't force her, it's up to her if she's going to take steps to work through things for us, but I wanted to have some resources ready for her if she's willing to take them.

hello! I’m so sorry you and your sister have been dealing with all that. I hope things go okay (or even better than expected) and that you and your sister will continue to be wonderful supports for each other 💖

from our collection, some books which we hope may ease your journeys are:

My Child is Trans, Now What?: a joy-centered approach to support by Ben V. Greene

American Teenager by Nico Lang

Letter to my Transgender Daughter by Carolyn Hays

a book that’s not available for us to purchase & add to our collection in libby, but which may be useful for your mother is Thriving Through Transition: Self-Care for Parents of Transgender Children by Denise O’Doherty.

there’s also a lot more out there (specifically for parents) from orgs like Trans Youth Equity, PFLAG, etc.. that can help

[queerliblib]

you can browse all the poetry we’ve got (so far!) in QLL here <3

Screw Goodreads: Poetry Recommendations

Since goodreads doesn't think poetry matters, here's a random rec list for anyone who wants to read more poetry. You may find many of these titles on Libby and the Queer Liberation Library @queerliblib

Poetry books I can personally recommend:

bone - Yrsa Daley-Ward

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound - torrin a. greathouse

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities - Chen Chen

Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics - Edited by T.C. Tolbert and Trace Peterson

Postcolonial Love Poem - Natalie Díaz

Thrown in the Throat - Benjamin Garcia

The Hurting Kind - Ada Limón

Night Sky with Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong

And here are some of the many poetry books on my tbr (libby, my beloved, please... I'm not above begging) but I figured I'd add them for folks to do their own exploring.

Eating the Archive - Yousif M. Qazmiyeh

If My Body Could Speak - Blythe Baird

Helium - Rudy Francisco

There Should Be Flowers - Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

Corazón - Yesika Salgado

The Orange and Other Poems - Wendy Cope

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde - Audre Lorde

I am Schizophrenic: Poetry from a Beautiful Brain - Kerenza Ryan

Blood Orange - Yaffa As

MARIPOSAS: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry - Edited by Emanuel Xavier

Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul - Ryka Aoki

Under Her Skin: A Women in Horror Poetry Showcase, Vol 1 - Edited by Lindy Ryan and Toni Miller

Life on Mars - Tracy K. Smith

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On - Franny Choi

Call Us What We Carry - Amanda Gorman

We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival - Edited by Andrea Gibson

Crush - Richard Siken

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head - Warsan Shire

The Tradition - Jericho Brown

The End of the Alphabet - Claudia Rankine

Beautiful Zero: Poems - Jennifer Willoughby

Calling a Wolf a Wolf - Kaveh Akbar

Individual poems:

Check out my poetry blog @thispoemisaboutyou

Poem-a-Day (also a podcast)

Appreciating Poetry:

If Poetry Confuses You, Watch This - Introduction to Poetry Appreciation

Disclaimer: I do not personally know if any of these authors are scumbags. I'll be doing research on each one soon (but a lot that goes on happens on twitter, and I don't touch twitter so I might miss shit). I encourage you to do your own research as well, and feel free to message me if you know something I don't.

**And as always, make sure you read the blurbs and check content warnings if you need to. Storygraph is great for content warnings if the author doesn't have them on their website**

okay stopping cuz this post is getting too long, but I'll make a part two at some point

[queerliblib]

hmm queer + nature writing. will cast a wider net than the quotes above, but yes! we’ve got some in that vein.

Been Outside eds. Amber Wendler & Shaz Zamore

GOT TO mention Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem

The Queerness of Water by Jeremy Chow

Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Fieldwork by Iliana Regan

In England Have My Bones [T.H.] White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: ‘Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.’ He could not imagine a human love returned. He had to displace his desires onto the landscape, that great, blank green field that cannot love you back, but cannot hurt you either. [...] But the countryside wasn’t just something that was safe for White to love: it was a love that was safe to write about.

"It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak."

Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water, for example: the tale of a lonely man on the Scottish coast with an Iraqi otter on his sofa. Or the books of the BBC radio naturalist Maxwell Knight, former MI5 spymaster and closet queen. Doubly disallowed to speak openly of his allegiances, Knight wrote a book about hand-rearing a cuckoo called Goo. His obsession with this small, greedy, feathery, parasitic bird is terribly moving; it was a species made of all the hidden elements of Knight’s life: subterfuge, deceit, passing oneself off as something one is not. [...]

[T.H. White] kept [grass snakes] because ‘it was impossible to impose upon them, or steal their affections’. He loved them because they were misunderstood, maligned, and ‘inevitably themselves.’

----------- Chapter 4, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014)

Does anyone know other sources that talk about the intersections between queer writers and nature writing? As a queer lady who does exactly that, this passage has always stuck with me.

[queerliblib]

Transgender Australia: A History Since 1910 (Noah Riseman, 2023, Melbourne University Press)

this is a recommendation? to add to the library? i assume.

unfortunately it looks like it’s simply not available on overdrive for us to purchase (that’s something the author can talk to their publisher about)

in the meantime though, perhaps you’d enjoy some other queer australian lit we’ve got?

Unspoken a collection of stories by intersex folks in australia & aotearoa/new zealand

No Strings Attached a coffee shop romance in suburban Sydney

Dirt Creek small town mystery with a greek chorus in rural australia - winner of a lambda literary award

Kindred a collection of YA short stories from 12 aussie authors

(if folks have other recs you can either put a 'notify me’ tag on things in libby - we track those! - or submit an acquisitions request here. we are a US based library though, so while we’re very happy to keep slowly collecting some international & translated work it’s not our core focus)

[queerliblib]

This is a some what strange request for you guys, but what are some of your top queer texts that Libby DOESN'T HAVE. I ask largely because I'm looking to maybe expand my personal library and definitely to have different things to suggest my local library purchases (they just agreed to buy Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture). I figure that may also other queers who are Feeling the Urge to Spiral and Want Something Productive to Do could use this.

no, no. thanks for asking. I’m going to be so for real with you

STONE BUTCH BLUES

we can’t get it. it cannot be purchased as an ebook or audiobook. every time we do a survey or ask for feedback there are at least a few people who say something along the lines of ‘can’t believe you, a queer library, don’t have that book’. which like. fair! it’s great! it’s a cornerstone classic! we would love to! we just simply cannot purchase it

HOWEVER the good news is, it’s available FOR FREE at the AUTHOR’S REQUEST from HIR OWN WEBSITE TO DOWNLOAD

also, Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist by Cecilia Gentili. sadly cannot get that one. None of Richard Siken’s books are available for us to get in Libby either 😔

(congrats on getting Original Plumbing in your local library, also not available on libby)

[queerliblib]

Hi QLL! Thank you so much for all the work you do!

Would you happen to have have any recommendations for fiction books featuring queer, physically disabled protagonists? YA or otherwise? I’ve been reading lots of fiction with disabled characters lately, but almost everything I’ve read has been (YA) romance and mostly straight, so I’d love any other recommendations! A lot of the lists I find online either focus on queer characters who are neurodivergent or mentally ill, or don’t have many queer characters.

you’re so welcome <3

we do, for sure! here’s a few:

Hunger Pangs by @thebibliosphere (deaf werewolf MC, adult fic)

So Lucky by Nicola Griffith (multiple sclerosis, adult fic)

Redsight by Meredith Mooring (blind MC, adult fic)

Brooms by Jasmine Walls (one MC is deaf, YA graphic novel)

The Secret Summer Promise by Keah Brown (MC with cerebral palsy, YA)

Queer Disability Anthology (fiction, poetry, non-fic, comics etc)

Time & Time Again by Chatham Greenfield (chronic pain, YA)

[queerliblib]

we’ve got that one too!

If you haven’t already, I may like a reading list of books with transfem protagonists/focuses

hello! highly recommend browsing our Trans* stories collection (located in the Pride guide which you can find from our home page on the libby app) but I’ll pull out a few transfem titles for you!

For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes (actually not in the collection I linked above yet, because we just added it; a contemp. romance)

OKPsyche by Anya Johanna DeNiro (epic journeys! parenthood, finding yourself, anxieties)

Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel (nostalgic, warm, dis/relocations, new starts)

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante (fictional musician’s memoir, healing through music, queer kinship)

[queerliblib]

Hey QLL!

I was wondering if you could help me!

I am notoriously terrible at googling.

I am looking for cozy queer fantasy SPECIFICALLY with a nonbinary AGENDER main character. Preferably with the mc using they/them or otherwise pronouns that are not she or he.

When I try to Google, every list seems to erase "nonbinary" and "agender" :( and every book I find in these lists, is about every other identity EXCEPT agender, nonbinary, or gender identities that do not align with the binary male or female. It makes me really sad because I just want to read books with main characters who are like me, and I don't have the skills to write books....

the first cozy fantasies with non-binary MC’s who use either they/them or neopronouns that comes to mind are:

Awakenings by Claudie Arseneault

The Baker & The Bard by Fern Haught

there’s also Transmogrify! which is a fantasy anthology with many non-binary authors & characters.

[queerliblib]

books save lives 🌈