This week’s post is sponsored by Scott Alderman in honor of his new novel, Pier 45!
“Pier 45 is a powerful, moving, important novel. A blend of The Basketball Diaries, Angels in America, and Requiem for a Dream, Scott Alderman has written a brutal, honest story that is not without humor and hope. 10/10.” —Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller Award finalist
“An impactful, unforgettable read” —Independent Book Review
When a drag queen rescues a brutalized teenage hustler in 1981 New York City, it ignites a decade-long saga of prostitution, heroin, AIDS, murder, and supernatural reckoning—told by a child of Holocaust survivors who carries the dead on his tattooed arm and is learning that just surviving isn’t always enough.
“Scott Alderman gives us an intimate rendering of young life in desperate times, telling his story with compassion, dark humor, and wild imagination.” —Vivian Heller, author of Analysis and Exile: Boyhood, Loss and the Lessons of Anna Freud
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Young Adult
Showstopper by Tom Ramsay
Larger-than-life Olly is back at the UK’s most prestigious competition for teen performers to prove he has what it takes to be a leading man. After being sabotaged last year, he is determined to stand out ahead of his drama school auditions.
Nervous newbie Tarun was nominated after stepping in from the chorus to a leading role. This is his week to explore if his secret hobby could be something more serious. But imposter-syndrome is real, and his dad’s derisive comments threaten to derail him.
When the two boys are paired together, Olly can’t comprehend being with someone who doesn’t get his niche musical references, whilst Tarun thinks Olly is “way too much”. But they soon discover they’ve more in common than the opening number might reveal. Amidst the drama of rehearsals, could two boys be falling in love?
Like Glass by Jen Ferguson
When Tatum Nova Lambert boards a plane to Chamonix, a town in the French Alps, she has one half-formed plan: to drag her Michelin-star-winning dad home. Since her older sister Bronwyn’s death a year ago, Tate and her dad don’t talk. They barely even text. So when he doesn’t pick her up at the transit station like he said he would, it’s no surprise.
What is a complete and very unwelcome surprise? Her dad is unexpectedly living in Bronwyn’s apartment, and Tate discovers she’ll be sleeping in her sister’s bed—the one Bronwyn died in. In the apartment and at her dad’s restaurant, it’s hard to bear both her dad’s broken promises and her sister’s ghost.
While trying to untangle the secret life Tate’s sister left behind, Tate meets Agatha, a schedule-obsessed Olympic ski-jump hopeful, and Beetle, a pickpocket and general teenaged dirtbag. As the unlikely trio explore in the mountains’ shadow, Tate brings her distinct kind of chaos to everyone’s lives—all while she tries to figure out if she can forgive her dad and her sister for leaving her behind.
Where the Bones Took Root by Juniper Klein
Jayde will do anything to bring back Soleste, the girl she loved, even highly taboo necromancy―or she would, if the spell would work. When a stranger named Barrick catches her after the murder that marks her fourth failed attempt, he blackmails her into using her illegal magic to help him infiltrate a local alchemy cult. Jayde agrees, hoping that the cult will provide answers about Soleste’s murder, and binds Barrick with a magical oath that enforces a truce between them until the final initiation.
She’s certain that the lifeblood of Soleste’s murderer is the missing ingredient to her resurrection spell, but which cult member is responsible? Her investigation reveals that Soleste may have been keeping secrets of her own. As Jayde and Barrick cheat their way through the cult’s hierarchy, she feels drawn to him in a way that can’t be fully attributed to their magically-enforced alliance―which, due to a translation error in the spell, makes her swoon every time their skin touches.
In the end, she’ll have to choose between allowing her grief to sink her deeper into dark magic, or claiming her frightening power in service of a new and uncertain future.
Kill Your Darlings by Yvashri Harish
Thulasi is the perfect daughter: she’s responsible, she never breaks the rules, and she’s always willing to babysit her seven-year-old cousin. Even on Halloween night.
But the night takes a horrifying turn when a simple playdate leads to accidentally summoning a horde of monsters out of a book of horror tales, along with her small town’s most famous author, Addison Greer—Thulasi’s literary hero. Except Addison has a more sinister scheme planned for her miraculous return: revenge on the family that wronged her.
Drawn into a bloodthirsty bargain with Addison, Thulasi will have to team up with Sam, the super cute quarterback in her class, and the only other teen stuck with babysitting duty on Halloween. They only have until midnight to foil Addison’s plans—while keeping their seven-year-old charges safe—or her monsters will destroy their town and everyone they love.
Fangs and All by Tas Mukanik
Meet the Parents meets Wednesday in this queer, tongue-in cheek YA graphic novel about every young couple’s worst nightmare: meeting the family.
Sam and Boots are relationship goals: stupidly cute, super supportive, and so in love. Of course, the natural next step is for Sam to join Boots for a weekend back home. So what if Boots says her family is a little weird and that they’d never expect her to bring a girlfriend home? Sam is sure she’ll win them over. Besides, meeting the parents is a big deal, but it’s not life or death, right?
Wrong! Because it turns out the Blackwoods aren’t just weird, they’re monsters—literally. Soon enough, Sam isn’t just dealing with the realization that her girlfriend is a vampire but also dodging a myriad of family members who can’t help but try to curse, hunt, drown, or eat her. And while Boots grapples with her own monstrous tendencies, Sam struggles to be supportive…while also staying alive. This not-so-perfect-after all couple will have to fight tooth and claw if they want to escape the weekend with their relationship and their humanity intact.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
Adult Fiction
A Bad Deal in Mormon Land by T.I.M. Wirkus
Sometimes things are not as they appear, especially when religion, magic and shady dealings mix.
It’s 1908, and itinerant spirit medium Madame Ilsa von Hoffmann is at the end of her professional rope, facing down two unappealing options: join an ill-conceived commune founded by some fellow trans ex-vaudevillians, or take on a high-paying but mysterious job offered by a religious extremist in Salt Lake City. Madame Ilsa opts for Utah and the employ of one Roger Marsh who, it turns out, wants her to summon the ghost of Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder, to give his blessing to Marsh’s fledgling offshoot of the mainstream church.
Unsure how she’ll pull off this near-impossible task, Ilsa finds an ally in Francie Bream, an East Coast journalist in town to profile Mormon women at the dawn of the twentieth century. Bream’s motives remain obscure to Ilsa, though she begins to suspect the journalist has an agenda far more sinister than she could have imagined. Complicating the situation further are an inept and volatile henchman, a relentlessly orthodox Mormon apostle, a copper magnate with a fetish for polygamists, Marsh’s rogue third wife, and a vengeful private investigator from Ilsa’s past. As dead bodies accumulate around her, Madame Ilsa worries less and less about saving her career, and more about making it out of Salt Lake City alive.
The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain
This daring and emotional tale of an illicit affair is narrated by a Mrs. Danowski, known as Danni, who is hired as housekeeper at Manderville Hall, Lord Grenville-Whithers’ mansion on the wild coast of Cornwall. A loyal and lonely woman troubled by childhood memories of alienation, Danni dreams of finding love.
Those dreams are fulfilled when Daphne du Maurier arrives at Manderville Hall for lunch with Grenville-Whithers. Succumbing to her secret sexual desire for women, Daphne begins a love affair with Danni, meeting on the housekeeper’s days off in the secluded boathouse at Manderville Cove. For both women, this forbidden passion is both beautiful and terrifying.
But of course such a love cannot last—and both Danni and Daphne must deal with the aftermath of their passion. While Danni struggles to find a new place in the world, Daphne reconfigures the experience into her most famous work, Rebecca, with surprising results.
Carrying by Samantha Josephs
Everything Martha’s wanted, she’s made for herself.
Meet Martha: perfect wife, perfect stepmother, perfect woman. She’s got an adoring husband who wants more kids with her, a loving stepdaughter who looks up to her, and a body to die for. She’s an absolute pro: Salon-quality blowouts at home? Done. Perfectly plated meals on the table every day? Effortless. Meticulously faked miscarriages so her husband won’t suspect the truth? Just hand over the Oscar now.
Martha is trans, so stealth even her family has no idea. She carved the woman she is out of the marble of a boy, and she’ll do whatever it takes to protect what she’s built. When a mysterious chronic illness and its debilitating symptoms threaten to upend her existence, she starts experimental treatments and gives in to her new, unsettling cravings. She’s even more shocked to discover that she’s undeniably, impossibly pregnant.
With her body changing rapidly outside of her control and her choices dwindling, Martha struggles to maintain the life she’s fought so hard to live while preparing for the motherhood she never thought she’d have.
The Finalist by Faith Gladwin
Seven ballerinas. One fallen primadonna. The audition of a lifetime. And a mysterious house that swallows the weakest one by one . . .
There is no performance art as punishing as ballet—and no top-tier ballerina is as punished as Eden. While others practice their steps over and over, Eden waits, knowing her body can perform only so many times before it breaks.
But Eden will need to be perfect—or even better—at Deveraux Manor, secluded amid snowy mountains, where she and six other hopefuls are sequestered in a month-long audition for the mysterious, alluring, tragic former ballerina Leanora Karagianni. Only one finalist will join Leanora’s company and dance the lead.
Eden wants it more than anything, but not more than anyone. Her competitors will take every advantage they can. And the cursed house twisting around them will push each ballerina to the bloody edge—and over it. As Eden fights her attraction to the seductive Leonora and the stakes turn lethal, she’ll discover that only the dancer who pays the house’s terrible price can become the finalist.
Vengefully Matched by Audrey Goldberg Ruoff
Priscilla Hart does not do regret—except maybe for the small matter of fleeing her own wedding in a cloud of magical fireworks. Now the town’s most infamous runaway witch, she’s determined to rebuild her reputation on the Witchery Council and prove she’s more than a scandal in heels.
Agatha Vanderbilt Voisin, the newly elected council president, is everything Priscilla can’t stand: composed, proper, and infuriatingly perfect. But when a string of dangerous magical explosions points to Priscilla as the culprit, Agatha makes an impulsive move—announcing that they’re dating—to save her from exile.
Faking a relationship in public should be simple…until late-night arguments turn into slow-burn attraction, and the two discover that something wicked is brewing in Hallowcross. To survive the magic—and their feelings—they’ll have to stop pretending and risk falling for real.
My Violent Muse by Rosie Sycamore
Would you still love me if I were a murderer…?
Morello is a nobody: a homeless orphan and starving artist with nothing but impossible dreams of escaping obscurity. Then Florence appears—dazzling, dangerous, and offering Morello a way out, on one chilling condition: each year, they must hunt and kill one of the art world’s predatory men. In return, Morello will inherit a life of privilege and promise.
Together, they transform revenge into twisted performance art, staging each murder with meticulous, theatrical flair. But when Morello falls for Jude, a wealthy art student who offers her a glimpse of a life sans murder, her carefully curated reality begins to unravel, and she’s one lie away from losing everything she’s killed for. With the body count rising and anonymous threats closing in, Morello must finally ask herself: Is the cost of vengeance ever truly paid? And after a life shaped by violence and manipulation, will she ever become the artist of her own fate, or will she remain forever someone else’s muse?
A Wall is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz
Gardenpath is a graduate student. They also happen to be an amoeba–a slime mold, to be exact–from an ancient civilization that dwells in the space between the stars. And when they turn their many eyes to researching a remote spot on one spiral arm of the galaxy, they stumble upon a discovery that will change everything they thought they knew: a mysterious planet teeming with unexpected life, language, and culture.
One of these alien animals is a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known as “the lupanar.” Unfazed when her strange visitor says she’s from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by.
Before they met Murtis, Gardenpath expected to finish their research, present their discovery, and return home to become an acclaimed scientist. But as they look into their new friend’s bizarre sensor bulbs from within the suit that allows them to survive and blend in on her surprising planet, they are beginning to wonder if there’s more to life than academic achievement.
They’re not sure what it is, but they’re going to use science to find out.
Quaint Folk by Bitter Karella
From the outside, it looks like Jessica has the perfect life. She’s a stay-at-home mom, married to a man with a respectable job, raising a son they adore. Her family is as wholesome as all-American pie. But deep down, Jessica knows there’s something wrong with her; she knows she can’t escape her past.
When her husband’s job has them move abroad, Jessica thinks this is her chance for a fresh start. On the remote island of Hasenhurst, the modern world can’t get in. The people there grow their own herbs, make their own jam, and mind their own business. They believe in folk tales and the power of dreams. They tell visitors, we’re a quaint, quiet people.The right sort of family would do well here.
Jessica is determined to be the right kind of person for a family—and a life—like this. But as she tries to befriend the townsfolk and learn their ways, she soon realizes that beneath the town’s cozy idyll, something sickly-sweet and rotten lays buried…
My Faire Lady by Haley J Munroe
Lottie doesn’t believe in magic.
Scarlet is the lady knight at the Renaissance Faire.
And she’s a witch.
When the magic starts to drain from the enchanted Renaissance Faire, they discover that Lottie’s presence is the only thing keeping the mythical creatures from getting sick. Before the season ends, Scarlet must find a way to break through Lottie’s skepticism—including swallowing her own pride about asking for help—or risk extinction for the magical creatures who call the faire home.
Buy it: Amazon
The Angels Came to Sodom in the Evening by Paul Russell
In 1970s Memphis, two boys lock in battle. They’re best friends, but when your body floods with longing, sometimes all you can do is fight. Then one summer, at a Christian camp, Rory Singleton meets a fellow teenager who shows him the wonders of dragonflies and sex— episodes of stolen pleasure that awaken a hunger he’ll spend a lifetime trying to bury.
As an adult, Rory is the pastor of a thriving megachurch, his life built on secrets, careful silences, and furtive encounters. But when he’s sent to Africa to promote a homophobic crusade, the contradictions become unbearable. A reckoning begins—one that will take him from the pulpit to underground queer spaces, from respectability to radical honesty, from denial to a raw, dangerous freedom, and finally to a confrontation with everything he’s built and everyone he’s betrayed.
Your Beloved Remains by Quinn Connor
Archivist Celia Kiel has spent her life on the remote campus of Basin College in the Southern Ozarks. Once a jewel of women’s higher education in the South, the school now molders on its mountaintop, its endowment thinly supported by the bequeathed estate of 19th century writer, Beatrice Donahue. Celia guards the legacy of this venerated, yet scandalous author, who has been the object of her illicit desire since childhood.
When the administration announces the college’s imminent closure, Celia discovers a manuscript pickled in formaldehyde, and with it, a chance to save the only home she’s ever known. She will forge Beatrice’s infamous lost work, a spellbinding horror written toward her life’s tumultuous end. To do it, she is forced to recruit her professional rival, literature postdoc Joan Harriot, who has both an astounding talent for mimicry and a dark secret of her own. As their world closes in and the ghosts of the Victorian past encroach, their creative collaboration spirals into an obsession more twisted than even their beloved Beatrice could have penned.
Sad Man Happy Hour by Aileen Keown Vaux
SAD MAN HAPPY HOUR is a four-part poetry collection rooted in the Pacific Northwest that resists regional mythmaking in favor of lived experience. With wry humor and earned wisdom, S hi hi ad Man Happy Hour aims to deconstruct queer alienation and our ever-changing relationship with the natural world. Determined to be more celebration than elegy, the book suggests “if you thought that life would end when the world did / then you don’t know anything about life.” Drawing on county fairs, 90’s true crime TV, and the COVID-19 pandemic, Sad Man Happy Hour locates meaning in memory in unexpected places, while situating itself in the tradition of Northwest writers who treat the land not as backdrop, but as an active force-and in doing so, offers a portrait of the Pacific Northwest as it is: fractured, funny, enduring, and alive.
The Heresy of Thieves by Mia V. Moss
Vael stole magic from the gods for Her people and put an end to centuries of unrest. Now magic is gone, and the battle for the Witchlands’s soul begins
After a millennium of prosperity and magic, one catastrophic night undoes the realm of Yvaelen. Magic has fallen, and prayers to Vael the Giver go unanswered.
Jal Riago knows when it’s time to move on from a con. She can’t maintain her false refugee heiress story forever, and her benefactors grow weary of playing host. Just when she’s about to confess and cut ties, a deadly raid sets Jal’s life on a collision course with a powerful entity reckoning with its own madness.
The young, steadfast King Thealys Vorrine inherited the throne of Dynestra after her parents’ deaths at Spellfall. But sparks of unrest flare all too quickly into the unpredictable wildfire of rebellion, and King Vorrine must forge headlong into unknown territory.
Royal knight and notorious rake Ember Carrado is trying his best to get fired. Instead, when he’s paired with a judgmental paladin and sent on a mission to hunt down a rampaging mythical beast, he finds himself face-to-face with the past he’s been running from since Spellfall.
Beacon Wylda Lorcanthas wields a sharp tongue and the second-highest office in the Church of Vael. When the head of the Faith dies, Wylda must seek out a biddable successor. Unfortunately, the clergy’s clear favorite is a charismatic priest who promises the restoration of magic-for those willing to partake of a bloody cost.
The dark betrayal behind Spellfall, and the very fabric of Yvaelen’s faith, will be hidden no longer. What began with a thief’s touch will end with a reckoning. And salvation for some may be a waking nightmare for others.
Comfort Read by Dylan Morrisson
Kit Forrest is officially the saddest man in Cedar Falls. A year after his boyfriend turned down his proposal and left town, Kit’s beloved bookstore is falling down around him. The old brick firehouse has overstuffed shelves, a resident orange cat with an attitude problem… and repairs Kit can’t begin to afford.
Sage Ballard is a hometown boy who got famous, then became a tabloid disaster, and now urgently needs a nice, ordinary boyfriend to convince one very rich investor he’s a changed man. Three months of fake dating, and Sawyer’s Books will get the cash injection it needs to survive. And it’s not like he has to actually be nice to the guy, right?
Kit thinks Sage is a rude, sunglasses-indoors diva. Sage thinks Kit is an earnest nerd who talks too much. But then something shifts. Sage starts turning up at the bookstore for no particular reason. Kit starts saving him the good armchair. And the cat—who bites everyone—won’t leave Sage alone.
By the time the first snow falls, pretending has begun to feel a bit too real. Which would be wonderful, if the whole thing weren’t built on lies. You know what they say about small towns and secrets…
See You in the Mail by Jamez Terry
A cozy queer romance about zines, coffee, and snail-mail. As long as Greg has a typewriter, strong coffee, and a pocket full of postage stamps, he’s alright with the world. His zine, LONG WALKS ON THE BEACH, parodies Craigslist personal ads — an ode to the sweet absurdity of public declarations of desire. But hidden somewhere in each issue, there’s one quiet ad that reveals something of Greg’s actual self. No one has ever found him there. Until a letter arrives from a reader called “M.” Their snail-mail correspondence becomes the most honest relationship Greg has ever had, but M. disappears every time Greg suggests they meet. As Greg gets closer to the truth, he’s forced to confront the walls around his own heart.
The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork by Kiri Callaghan
This is the sequel to The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder
“I suggest you brush up on your hexes, babes. Sounds like you got a nasty one on your hands.”
As the bastard child of the late Erlking, Detective Avery Hemlock is used to being alone. Two-hundred years ago, she preferred it. But after endangering Saga Trygg’s life by involving her in a case, Avery must choose solitude for Saga’s safety. For once, alone is starting to feel a lot more like lonely.
Following her grandmother’s murder, and the discovery of the fey world, Saga is trying to find direction, heal, and figure out where she fits in in this new version of normal. Though she longs to enlist Avery’s help, after jeopardizing their last case together and nearly getting herself killed, she knows it’s best she stay out of the detective’s way.
But when the death of a local witch might be the result of a vicious revenge hex, the enigmatic circumstances and puzzle are too curious to keep them apart. With a case bigger than it appears, the two must uncover secrets even the Winter Council wants to keep.
Nothing is initially as it seems, even the truths they themselves have held for years.
Legends & Lattes: the Graphic Novel by Travis Baldree, Adapted by Samuel Sattin and Illustrated by Sarah Webb and Shanti Rittgers
After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword. The battle-weary orc aims to start afresh, opening the city of Thune’s first-ever coffee shop. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success, not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her dreams a reality, she won’t be able to go it alone. After all, the true rewards of an uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether they are drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup―Viv may find something deeper here than she ever imagined…
Nonfiction
The Girl Who Became King by Melissa King
Embracing my love of food has empowered me to embrace every layer of who I am: my Chinese heritage, my American upbringing, and all the parts of me that felt too much and not enough. When I chose myself, I set her free. Just me. The girl who became king.
As a kid, Melissa King lived for the moment she would come from elementary school, grab her prized Chinese meat cleaver, and prepare dinner for her family. She already knew cooking was her future, but she didn’t know how hard she’d have to fight to make that dream a reality.
Growing up, King felt like she was stuck in a box that was only getting smaller. Her Shanghainese and Cantonese immigrant parents had certain expectations—none of which included going to culinary school or falling in love with women. American culture also dictated that kitchens were a man’s world. But trying to live by these rules felt like no life at all.
Determined to forge her own path, she fought her way into the demanding world of Michelin-starred kitchens, while discovering a home in the queer community. When she entered Top Chef as a reluctant contestant, inspired by her grandmother’s advice to follow her heart, she began embracing the flavors, culture, and parts of herself she had once forgotten. This journey of self-discovery through food leads her back to her parents, where love creates room for their strengths and imperfections.
We’re Here, We’re Queer!: A History of LGBTQ+ Activism by David Roberts
This illustrated history of LGBTQ+ activism brings to life stories of resistance, friendship, love, fear, division, unity, and astonishing perseverance in the face of discrimination and oppression. From the secret slang adopted by gay Londoners in the 1960s to decades of sit-ins and marches, from the Stonewall uprising to the dazzling history of drag, this is a wide-ranging and inclusive account of a multifaceted movement that continues to this day. Evocative prose puts readers deeply into key moments and showcases the words and personalities of figures from queer history, including Harvey Milk, Julian Hows, Carla Toney, Crystal LaBeija, We’wha, Vincent Jones, Marsha P. Johnson, Alan Turing, Sylvia Rivera, and many more. Masterful and joyful artwork by beloved author-illustrator David Roberts makes this a keepsake book for queer families and anyone who values the history of this struggle. David Roberts includes hundreds of portraits, giving faces AND voices to often overlooked heroes. He includes a personal introduction and fact-filled timelines; back matter includes a bibliography and an afterword from This Book Is Gay author Juno Dawson.
The Royal We: A Memoir by Roddy Bottum
This is the paperback release.
THE ROYAL WE is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Roddy Bottum, a musician and artist, that documents his coming of age and out of the closet in 1980s San Francisco, a charged era of bicycle messengers, punk rock, street witches, wheatgrass, and rebellion. The book follows his travels from Los Angeles, growing up gay with no role models, to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went on to tour the world relentlessly, surviving heroin addiction and the plight of AIDS, to become a queer icon.
The book is an elevated wallop of tongue and insight, much more than a tell-all. There are personal encounters with public figures like Kurt and Courtney and Guns N’ Roses, and recaps of gold records and arena rock—but it’s the testimonies of tragedy and addiction and preposterous life-spins that make this work so unique and intriguing. Bottum writes about his dark and harrowing past in a clear-eyed voice that is utterly devoid of self-pity, and his emboldened and confident pronouncements of achievement and unorthodox heroism flow in an unstoppable train that’s both captivating and inspirational.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon
Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man by Murray Hill
For more than three decades, Murray Hill has been a staple of New York City’s downtown comedy scene. A trailblazing comic in a borrowed tux, the self-proclaimed “hardest working middle-aged man in show business” has turned feminist performance art into a way of life, delighting audiences around the world with his signature blend of campy humor and subversive showmanship. Much like Fred Rococo, his breakout role on HBO’s award-winning Somebody Somewhere, Murray radiates relentless positivity and an indomitable spirit as entertaining as it is inspiring.
But behind the one-liners lies a deeper truth. Growing up in a conservative, New England household where abuse ran rampant, and silence reigned, Murray took refuge in showbiz memoirs and watching old-school comedians on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. These tales of survival, in the face of abuse and discrimination, offered him hope and the possibility of reinvention through the world of entertainment.
After leaving home for college in Boston and attending graduate school in New York, Murray began the slow process of finding and defining his identity as a newly emancipated adult, a queer artist testing the boundaries of visual and performance art, and a nightlife king living by the mantra: “If you don’t see yourself represented, go out and represent yourself.”
His evolution, however, came at a cost. He drank to escape his past, and the depression he masked with alcohol spiraled into a mental health crisis that nearly cost him his life. Lovingly supported in his recovery by his chosen family and community, Murray not only found his people but also found himself.
