It’s World Mental Health Day, the perfect day to check out some great queer fiction revolving around mental health. These books have characters with anxiety, OCD, depression, agoraphobia, PTSD, and more, and of course, for a more extensive list of fiction about mental health or starring main characters who have mental illnesses, check here.
Rahul Kapoor is heading into seventh grade in a small town in Indiana. The start of middle school is making him feel increasingly anxious, so his favorite person in the whole world, his grandfather, Bhai, gives him some well-meaning advice: Find one thing you’re really good at and become the BEST at it.
Those four little words sear themselves into Rahul’s brain. While he’s not quite sure what that special thing is, he is convinced that once he finds it, bullies like Brent Mason will stop torturing him at school. And he won’t be worried about staring too long at his classmate Justin Emery. With his best friend, Chelsea, by his side, Rahul is ready to crush this challenge…. But what if he discovers he isn’t the bestat anything?
Funny, charming, and incredibly touching, this is a story about friendship, family, and the courage it takes to live your truth.
Eleven-year-old Matteo has never felt like one of the other boys. He’s sure that will change when he joins the Blue Whales, the baseball team his dad once played for. This is his chance to grow into a son his father can be proud of.
And grow Matteo does, but not the way he expected. Instead, he starts sprouting leaves and finding bark all over his skin. Alarmed, Matteo starts digging for the truth about what’s happening to him—and finds that all clues lead back to the oak tree at the center of town, which Creeksiders have always believed is a little bit magic. As his parents start noticing something is wrong, the truth gets harder to hide—and Matteo makes some surprising discoveries about himself, his hometown, and his entire family tree.
That’s how Sadie feels, on a perfect summer day, wrapped in her girlfriend’s arms. School is out, and even though she’s been struggling to manage her chronic anxiety, Sadie is hopeful better times are ahead. Or at least, she thought she was safe. When her girlfriend reveals some unexpected news and the two witness a violent incident of police brutality unfold before them, Sadie’s whole world is upended in an instant.
I’m not safe anywhere.
That’s how Sadie feels every day after—vulnerable, uprooted. She retreats inside as the weeks slip by and relies on her phone to stay connected to the outside world. When Sadie’s therapist gives her a diagnosis for her debilitating panic—agoraphobia—she starts on a path of acceptance and healing. Meanwhile, Sadie’s best friend, Evan, updates her on the protests taking place in their city. Sadie wants to be a part of it, to use her voice and affect change. But how do you show up for your community when you can’t even leave your house?
I can build a safe place inside myself.
That’s what Sadie learns over the course of one life-changing summer, with some help from her family, her best friend, an online platform for activists, and a magnetic crush she develops for the new boy next door.
On the worst day of her life, Madison is dumped by her girlfriend, then fired as said (ex)girlfriend’s campaign manager… plus she accidentally rear-ends the student government advisor—the one person whose good word might help her win a spot at a prestigious youth politics summer camp.
But Madison is nothing if not a girl with a plan, and she isn’t going to let a little thing like heartbreak (or a slightly dented bumper) get in her way. Soon, she has a new junior class president candidate to back—although the two of them might be getting a little too close on the campaign trail. Between navigating her growing crush and corralling a less than enthusiastic election team, Madison has had it with unexpected changes to her carefully laid plans. But when she and a group of queer classmates discover a pattern of harassment within the student government, Madison’s forced to shift gears once again.
In this queer graphic novel that’s equal parts romance, softball, and magical girl drama, Mickey Monsoon and Astra Maxima are best friends . . . and maybe more. That is, until Astra unceremoniously dumps Mickey to become a softball wunderkind at a private girl’s school in Switzerland. Years later, Mickey is the hotshot pitcher for the Belle City Broads, and their team is poised to sweep the league this season. But Micky is thrown off their game when Astra shows up to catch for the Gaiety Gals, the Broads’ fiercest rival. Astra is flirty, arrogant, and reckless on the field—everything the rule-abiding Mickey hates.
Astra thinks Mickey’s cute and wants to fool around, even despite their rocky history and the trail of jilted softballers that Astra leaves in her wake. Too bad the only thing Mickey wants is vengeance for their broken heart and wounded pride! But even they have to admit—Astra is a certified babe. And that’s not all: Astra isn’t just a softball superstar, she’s a full-fledged magical girl.
The only way for Mickey to defeat Astra is to betray the Broads and join the Danger Dames, a secret elite team, and start dating Astra’s ex! OK, that last bit wasn’t part of the plan . . . Mickey’s rapidly getting in too deep, but is she just in trouble or is she actually in love?
Femme, gay teen podcaster Riley Weaver has made it to junior year, which means he can finally apply for membership into the Gaybutante Society, the LGBTQ+ organization that has launched dozens of queer teens’ careers in pop culture, arts, and activism. The process to get into the Society is a marathon of charity events, parties, and general gay chaos, culminating in the annual Gaybutante Ball. The one requirement for the ball? A date.
Then Riley overhears a cis gay classmate, Skylar, say that gay guys just aren’t interested in femme guys or else they wouldn’t be gay. Riley confronts Skylar and makes a bet to prove him wrong: Riley must find a masc date by the time of the ball, or he’ll drop out of the Society entirely. Riley decides to document the trials and tribulations of dating when you’re gay and femme in a brand new podcast. Can Riley find a fella to fall for in time? Or will this be one massive—and publicly broadcast—femme failure?
For the most hated crew on Requiem, the only way out is up.
It’s been four months since runaway heiress Asa crash-landed on matriarchal outlaw colony Requiem, bringing a nasty AI and host of deadly secrets with her. Now, she runs with almost-girlfriend Riven’s smuggler crew, stealing kisses between gunfights and heists. But when a mysterious hacker sabotages their latest job, other gangs turn against them, blaming them for the destruction the rogue AI caused. Nowhere in the city is safe.
The only way to protect their crew is a series of trials for control of an underworld faction–and vying for a matriarch’s throne is a dream Riven can’t let go. But as the trials intensify, the saboteur hounds Asa and Riven’s every step, determined to kill Asa and right her father’s wrongs. When the saboteur reveals a horrific conspiracy threatening all of Requiem–one involving the crew member they thought they’d lost–the girls must decide whether to risk their own skins for a city that loathes them.
Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.
Luis’s attention soon turns to something more and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no.
Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker which eventually leads her to an unlikely group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done.
This summer, Elsie is finally going to confess her feelings to her longtime—and long-distance—crush. Ada’s fanfics are to die for, and she just gets Elsie like no one else. That is, until Joan, Elsie’s childhood best friend, literally walks back into her life and slots in like she had never moved away to Hong Kong and never ignored Elsie’s dozens of emails and letters.
Then Ada mentions her grandmother’s own long-lost pen pal (and maybe love?), a woman who once lived only a train ride away from Elsie’s Oxford home, and Elsie gets the idea for the perfect grand gesture. But as her plan to reunite the two older women ignites a summer of repairing broken bonds, Elsie starts to wonder if she, too, can recover the things she’s lost…
Anoor is the first blue-blooded ruler of the Wardens’ Empire. But when she is accused of a murder she didn’t commit, her reign is thrown into turmoil. She must solve the mystery and clear her name without the support of her beloved, Sylah.
Sylah braves new lands to find a solution for the hurricane that threatens to destroy her home. But in finding answers, she must make a decision, does she sacrifice her old life in order to raise up her sword once more?
Hassa’s web of secrets grows ever thicker as she finds herself on a trail of crimes in the city. Her searching uncovers the extent of the atrocities of the empire’s past and present. Now, she must guard both her heart and her land.
The three women find their answers, but they’re not the answers they wanted. The drumbeat of change thrums throughout the world.
And it sings a song of war.
Ready we will be, when the Ending Fire comes, When the Child of fire brings the Battle Drum, The Battle Drum, The Battle Drum. Ready we will be, for war will come.
The gym is Lizzie’s life—it’s her passion, her job, and the only place that’s ever felt like home. Unfortunately, her bosses consider her a glorified check-in girl at best, and the gym punching bag at worst.
When their son, Lizzie’s best friend James, begs her to be his plus one at his perfect sister Cara’s wedding, things go wrong immediately, culminating in Lizzie giving a drunken pep talk to a hot stranger in the women’s bathroom—except that stranger is actually the bride-to-be, and Lizzie has accidentally convinced her to ditch her groom.
Now, newly directionless Cara is on a quest to find herself, and Lizzie—desperate to make sure her bosses never find out her role in this disaster—gets strong-armed by James into “entertaining” her. Cara doesn’t have to know it’s a setup; it’ll just be a quick fling before she sobers up and goes back to her real life. After all, how could someone like Cara fall for someone like Lizzie, with no career and no future?
But the more Lizzie gets to know Cara, the more she likes her, and the more is on the line if any of her rapidly multiplying secrets get out. Because now it’s not just Lizzie’s job and entire future on the line, but also the girl of her dreams.
Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.
And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora’s perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to suspect Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually coming to know.
As it turns out, you can go home again. But sometimes, you really, really don’t want to . . .
Home, for Noah York, is Oakland, New Hampshire, the sleepy little town where Noah’s mother, Virginia, had a psychotic
breakdown and Noah got beaten to a pulp as a teenager. Then there were the good times—and Noah’s not sure which ones are
more painful to recall.
Now thirty-seven and eking out a living as an artist in Providence, Rhode Island, Noah looks much the same—and swears just as
colorfully—as he did in high school. Virginia has become a wildly successful poet who made him the subject of her most famous
poem, “The Lost Soul,” a label Noah will never live down. And J.D., the one who got away—because Noah stupidly drove him
away—is in a loving marriage with a successful, attractive man whom Noah despises wholeheartedly.
Is it any surprise that Noah wishes he could ignore his mother’s summons to come visit?
But Virginia has shattering news to deliver, and a request he can’t refuse. Soon, Noah will track down the sister and extended
family he never knew existed, try to keep his kleptomaniac cousin out of jail, feud with a belligerent neighbor, confront J.D.’s
jealous husband—and face J.D. himself, the ache from Noah’s past that never fades. . . . All the while, contending with his
brilliant, unpredictable mother.
At an otherwise forgettable party in Los Angeles, a young Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly controls the room: gorgeous and distant and utterly white, the center of everyone’s attention. Haunted into adulthood by her Korean father’s abandonment of his family, as well as the specter of her beguiling, abusive white mother, the painter finds herself caught in a perfect trap. She wants Hanne, or wants to be her, or to sully her, or destroy her, or consume her, or some confusion of all the above. Since she’s an artist, she will use art to get closer to Hanne, beginning a series of paintings with her new muse as model. As for Hanne, what does she want? Her whiteness seems sometimes as cruel as a new sheet of paper: is there any there there?
When the paintings of Hanne become a hit, resulting in the artist’s first sold-out show, she resolves to bring her new muse with her to Berlin, to continue their work, and her seduction. But, just when the painter is on the verge of her long sought-after breakthrough, a petition started by a Black performance artist begins making the rounds in the art community, calling for the boycott of major museums and art galleries for their imperialist and racist practices.
Torn between her desire to support the petition, to be a success, and to “have” Hanne in her life, the painter begins acting more and more unstable and erratic, unwilling to cut loose any one of her warring ambitions, yet unable to accommodate all. Is it any wonder so many artists self-destruct so spectacularly? Is it perhaps just a bit exciting to think she could too?
El is in a rut. She’s been hiding in the photocopier room at the same dead-end job for longer than she cares to remember, she’s sharing a flat with a girl who leaves passive-aggressive smiley face notes on the fridge about milk consumption and, worst of all, she’s been in unrequited love with her best friend, effortlessly cool lesbian Ray, for years. So when a plan is hatched for El, Ray, and their two other closest friends–newly heartbroken Will and karaoke-and-Twilight-superfan Jamie–to ditch the big city and move out to a ramshackle house on the edge of an English country village, it feels like just the escape she needs.
Despite being the DIY challenge of a lifetime, the newly named Lavender House has all the makings of becoming the queer commune of the friends’ dreams. (Will has been given a pass as the gang’s Token Straight.) But as they start plotting their bright new future and making preparations for a grand housewarming party to thank the surprisingly but wonderfully welcoming community, El is forced to confront her feelings for Ray–the feelings that she’s been desperately trying to keep buried. Is it worth ruining a perfectly good friendship for a chance at love?
This is the third book in the Erin McCabe Legal Thriller series
Erin McCabe’s years as a criminal defense attorney have prepared her for almost anything, except being on the opposite side of the interrogation table. A new client—a successful financial adviser—was found stabbed to death on the beach near his palatial Jersey Shore home. The time of death is estimated to be during Erin’s one and only consultation with him, during which he revealed that he was secretly transgender. As the last person to see him alive, Erin’s now the prime suspect.
If the evidence were simply circumstantial, Erin is sure she and her law partner, Duane Swisher, could prevail. But there are entanglements that can’t be easily explained, and connections to powerful unscrupulous politicians who hold a lot of grudges. While the investigation unfolds, Erin and Duane are called on to represent a mother charged with abducting her child—a hot-button case that has both private and public implications for Erin.
As she battles one prosecutor who wants to see her charged with murder, and another determined to send her to jail for refusing to divulge her client’s location, Erin also faces a devastating family tragedy. With her career and her relationship on the line, and her life being targeted by a desperate nemesis, there has never been more at stake—or fewer places to turn . . .
From flamboyant relatives on Bewitched to closely-guarded secrets on All in the Family, from network-censor fights over Soap to behind-the-scenes activism on the set of The Golden Girls, from Ellen’s culture clash to Modern Family’s primetime power-couple, Hi Honey, I’m Homo! is the story not only of how subversive queer comedy transformed the American sitcom from its inception through today, but how our favorite sitcoms transformed, and continue to transform, America.
As a boy, William Lee Adams spent his days taking care of his quadriplegic brother, worrying about his undiagnosed bipolar Vietnamese mother, and steering clear of his openly racist and homophobic father. Too shy and anxious to even speak until he was six years old, it seemed unlikely William would ever leave small-town Georgia. He passed the time alone in his room, studying maps and reading encyclopedias, dreaming of distant places where he might one day feel free.
In time, William discovered that learning was both a refuge and a ticket out. So even as he struggled to understand and to get others to accept both his sexuality and his biracial identity, William focused on his schoolwork, his extracurriculars, and building community with the students and teachers who embraced him for who he truly was. Though his scholarship to Harvard parachuted him into a whole new world, he still carried a lifetime of secrets and unanswered questions that would haunt him no matter how far he traveled.
Years later, as a journalist in London, William discovered the Eurovision Song Contest—an annual competition known for its extravagant performers and cutthroat politics. Initially just a fan, he started blogging about the contest, ultimately becoming the most sought-after expert on the subject. From Albania, Finland, and Ukraine, to Israel, Sweden, and Russia, William was soon jetting across the Continent to meet divas, drag queens, and aspiring singers, who welcomed him to their beautiful, if dysfunctional, family of choice.
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with – what else – queer poetry recommendations! This page contains a select few titles, but we do, of course, have entire poetry pages, so please avail yourselves!
From cities and cross-country bus rides to swamps and fern forests, Michael Mlekoday’s All Earthly Bodies celebrates the ungentrifiable, ungovernable wildness of life. This is anarchist ecology, nonbinary environmentalism, an earthbound theology against empire in all its forms. These poems ask how our lives and language, our prayers and politics, might evolve if we really listened to the world and its more-than-human songs. “Sometimes I wish I could / peel myself from myself / without discarding the shell,” Mlekoday writes. Through a kind of lyric dreamwork, Mlekoday sounds the depths—of ancestry and identity, race and gender, earth and self—to track the unbecoming and re-membering of the body.
In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity. Weaving together a past made murky by uncertainty and a present which exists in multitudes, Arielle Twist poetically navigates through what it means to be an Indigenous trans woman, discovering the possibilities of a hopeful future and a transcendent, beautiful path to regaining softness.
Metamorphoses springs from Ovid’s epic poem to explore the slipperiness of identity. In poems that shift registers from travelogue to elegy, from nature documentary to a simple record of the realities of daily life, Kennedy focuses on transformation, personal and collective, in an empire in decline, in a world transfigured by ecological upheaval.
Like a fever dream over Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Kennedy has one foot in Ancient Rome and the other in contemporary San Francisco, acknowledging the “transformations of this city [he] loves” into “awful condos of steel and glass” alongside Victorian homes. The poet shores up fragments against this cultural decadence through the cultivation of a wry pagan mysticism, whether he’s offering devotions to Attis and Apollo, banishing Madonna from his pantheon, or placing twink emperor and notorious prankster Elagabalus in the East Bay. The book’s transformations even extend to its central conceit, as Kafka bursts into the proceedings to dispute Ovid’s claim to the laurel.
From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity.
With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America—and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.
Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.
In Trace Evidence, the urgent follow-up to his award-winning debut Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Charif Shanahan continues his piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad. At the collection’s center sits “On the Overnight from Agadir,” a poem that chronicles Shanahan’s survival of a devastating bus accident in Morocco, his mother’s birth country, and ruminates on home, belonging, and the mysteries of fate. With rich lyricism, power, and tenderness, Trace Evidence centers the racial periphery and excavates the vestiges of our violent colonial past in the most intimate aspects of our lives. In a language yoked equally to the physical and metaphysical worlds, the poet articulates the need we all share for real intimacy and connection, and proves, time and again, that the true cost of our separateness is the love that our survival requires.
Non-binary poet Cyrus Parker returns with an all-new collection of poetry and prose dedicated to those struggling to find their own identity in a world that often forces one into the confines of what’s considered “socially acceptable.”
Divided into three parts and illustrated by Parker, masqueradegrapples with topics such as the never-ending search for acceptance, gender identity, relationships, and the struggle to recognize your own face after hiding behind another for so long.
Ocean Vuong’s first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial “big”—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers.
Feed is the fourth book in the Teebs tetralogy. It’s an epistolary recipe for the main character, a poem of nourishment, and a jaunty walk through New York’s High Line park, with the lines, stanzas, paragraphs, dialogue, and registers approximating the park’s cultivated gardens of wildness. Among its questions, Feed asks what’s the difference between being alone and being lonely? Can you ever really be friends with an ex? How do you make perfect mac & cheese? Feed is an ode of reconciliation to the wild inconsistencies of a northeast spring, a frustrating season of back-and-forth, of thaw and blizzard, but with a faith that even amidst the mess, it knows where it’s going.
Prelude delineates the gay female experience through a poetic reconstruction of the girlhood of Catherine of Siena, a Catholic saint who lived in 1300s Italy and disobeyed her parents by refusing marriage to devote her life to God. Through a historical lens, Brynne Rebele-Henry examines the erasure of gay women’s lives and offers a perspective of medieval queer girlhood while considering themes such as violence, desire, and the lesbian body.
A vital breath of life arrives in American poetry with Synthetic Jungle, the latest collection from acclaimed poet Michael Chang. With poems in a register both hilarious and scathing, Synthetic Jungle effortlessly bashes convention while simultaneously rebuilding the language we use to communicate our fears and joys.
Synthetic Jungle is a collection written by a brilliant jester who winks at you as you catch their every reference before sharing a laugh at your own self-satisfaction. Themes of identity, sexuality, and literacy play out in a dizzying rhythm of microtheaters. Readers will find themselves giggling, snorting, and guffawing their way through this work: whether at a repudiation of the literary landscape or a critique of a failing justice system, to laugh along with Chang is to recognize your mistakes and, ultimately, grow from them.
Kate and Tam meet, and both of their worlds tip sideways. At first, Tam figures Kate is your stereotypical cheerleader; Kate sees Tam as another tall jock. And the more they keep running into each other, the more they surprise each other. Beneath Kate’s sleek ponytail and perfect façade, Tam sees a goofy, sensitive, lonely girl. And Tam’s so much more than a volleyball player, Kate realizes: She’s everything Kate wishes she could be. It’s complicated. Except it’s not. When Kate and Tam meet, they fall in like. It’s as simple as that. But not everybody sees it that way. This novel in verse about two girls discovering their feelings for each other is a universal story of finding a way to be comfortable in your own skin.
Halfway through sixth grade, Noah’s best friend and the only other trans boy in his school, Lewis, passed away in a car accident. Lewis was adventurous and curious, always bringing a new paranormal story to share with Noah. Together they daydreamed about cryptids and shared discovering their genders and names. After his death, lonely and yearning for someone who could understand him like Lewis once did, Noah starts writing letters to Mothman, wondering if he would understand how Noah feels and also looking for evidence of Mothman’s existence in the vast woods surrounding his small Poconos town. Noah becomes determined to make his science fair project about Mothman, despite his teachers and parents urging him to make a project about something “real.”
Meanwhile, as Noah tries to find Mothman, Noah also starts to make friends with a group of girls in his grade, Hanna, Molly, and Alice, with whom he’d been friendly, but never close to. Now, they welcome him, and he starts to open up to each of them, especially Hanna, who Noah has a crush on. But as strange things start to happen and Noah becomes sure of Mothman’s existence, his parents and teachers don’t believe him. Noah decides it’s up to him to risk everything, trek into the woods, and find Mothman himself.
Love at first sight isn’t a myth. For seventh graders Olivia and Eden, it’s fate. Olivia is a capital-P Poet, and Eden thinks she wants to be a musician one day, but for now she’s just the new girl. And then Eden shows up to Poetry Club and everything changes.
Eden isn’t out, and she has rules for dating Olivia: don’t call. Don’t tell her friends. And don’t let anyone know they’re together.
But when jealousy creeps in, it’s Olivia’s words that push Eden away. While Eden sets out to find herself, Olivia begins a journey to bring Eden back—using poetry. Both Olivia and Eden will learn just how powerful their words can be to bring them together . . . or tear them apart forever.
Two girls.
One wild and reckless day.
Years of a tumultuous history unspooling
like thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.
They were best friends. Until they became more.
Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.
Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed.
And the girls will learn that hearts, like flames, aren’t so easily tamed.
Sixteen-year-old Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her. But there’s more to her story than the whispers that follow her throughout the hallways at school—whispers that splinter into a million different insults that really mean: a girl who has had sex. But what her classmates don’t know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher, and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesn’t recognize. To the world around her, she’s been cast, like the mythical Medusa, as not the victim but the monster of her own story: the slut who asked for it.
Alicia was abandoned by her best friend, quit the track team, and now spends her days in detention feeling isolated and invisible. When mysterious letters left in her locker hint at another victim, Alicia struggles to keep up the walls she’s built around her trauma. At the same time, her growing attraction to a new girl in school makes her question what those walls are really keeping out.
That’s how Sadie feels, on a perfect summer day, wrapped in her girlfriend’s arms. School is out, and even though she’s been struggling to manage her chronic anxiety, Sadie is hopeful better times are ahead. Or at least, she thought she was safe. When her girlfriend reveals some unexpected news and the two witness a violent incident of police brutality unfold before them, Sadie’s whole world is upended in an instant.
I’m not safe anywhere.
That’s how Sadie feels every day after—vulnerable, uprooted. She retreats inside as the weeks slip by and relies on her phone to stay connected to the outside world. When Sadie’s therapist gives her a diagnosis for her debilitating panic—agoraphobia—she starts on a path of acceptance and healing. Meanwhile, Sadie’s best friend, Evan, updates her on the protests taking place in their city. Sadie wants to be a part of it, to use her voice and affect change. But how do you show up for your community when you can’t even leave your house?
I can build a safe place inside myself.
That’s what Sadie learns over the course of one life-changing summer, with some help from her family, her best friend, an online platform for activists, and a magnetic crush she develops for the new boy next door.
This post contains titles published by HarperCollins. Please note that the HarperCollins Union has been on strike since 11/10/22 to get a fair contract for their workers, and this site very much supports that effort. Visit the HarperCollins Union linktree to learn how you can support their fight for a fair contract: linktr.ee/hcpunion.
This is the sequel to Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms
After his first adventure as the Descendant, Cameron can’t sit through seventh grade classes. Especially when his mother is still trapped in Chidani and his father is still missing. But he encounters a particularly nasty bully in his new school, and it doesn’t take long for Cameron and his trusty friends Zion and Aliyah to realize that the troubles of Chidani won’t stay away for long.
With the Book to guide them, Cameron and his crew end up transported to Chidani sooner than anticipated–and the gods and goddesses they encounter don’t intend to make Cameron’s journey easy. Can he finally outwit and outlast the villainous god set on destroying their worlds?
Ashley Herring Blake‘s DELILAH GREEN DOESN’T CARE, an #ownvoices queer romantic comedy, about a woman who begrudgingly returns to her hometown for her estranged stepsister’s wedding; when she crosses paths with a former mean girl from her childhood, old wounds and old feelings reignite, to Angela Kim at Berkley, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, for publication in spring 2022, by Rebecca Podos at Rees Literary Agency (world).
Brooklyn College MFA and NYU Law School graduate Jane Pek‘s THE VERIFIERS, which examines how today’s technology shapes our choices, introducing an overly imaginative reader of mystery novels who lands her dream job at an “online-dating detective agency,” then finds herself solving a real-life murder with sinister societal implications, while keeping the fact that she dates girls from her matchmaking mother, to Anna Kaufman at Vintage, in an exclusive submission, for publication in 2022, by Julie Barer at The Book Group (NA).
Jen Hinst-White‘s JOBS FOR GIRLS WITH ARTISTIC FLAIR, a LGBTQ coming-of-age story pitched as THE CACTUS meets PIZZA GIRL, about a young woman in 1980s Long Island who chases her dream of becoming a tattooist despite her social anxiety, an unreliable family, and an industry hostile to women artists, to Jeramie Orton at Pamela Dorman Books, in a pre-empt, for publication in summer 2022, by Chad Luibl at Janklow & Nesbit (world).
C.L. Clark‘s THE UNBROKEN, a North Africa-inspired queer epic fantasy following a soldier accused of murder who is saved from execution when a dethroned princess decides to take her on as a spy, while grappling with a crumbling empire and their unexpected bond, to Brit Hvide at Orbit, in an exclusive submission, in a three-book deal, by Mary C. Moore at Kimberley Cameron & Associates (world).
Oregon Literary Arts Fellow and Mills MFA graduate Emme Lund‘s THE BOY WITH A BIRD IN HIS CHEST, pitched as the desperate longing of THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER meets queer coming-of-age about the secrets we carry, the ways we try to stay safe, and growing up having to hide what makes you lovable to the world and to yourself, to Melanie Iglesias Perez at Atria, at auction, for publication in spring 2022, by Cassie Mannes Murray at Howland Literary (world).
Actor Paul Mendez‘s RAINBOW MILK, a coming-of-age story that follows a nineteen-year-old Jamaican-British man, who goes from isolated fast food server in the Black Country to sex worker and burgeoning artist in London as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah’s Witness upbringing and the legacy of the Windrush generation, to Margo Shickmanter at Doubleday, for publication in summer 2021, by Helena Doree at Little Brown UK (NA).
Author of LOVE ON THE HUDSON KD Fisher’s THE SECRET INGREDIENT, in which two very different female chefs in small-town Maine find a way into each other’s hearts and families, to Kerri Buckley at Carina Press Adores, for publication in November 2020, by Claire Draper at The Bent Agency (world).
Children’s/YA
Author of ONLY MOSTLY DEVASTATED Sophie Gonzales and author of THE LOVE INTEREST Cale Dietrich‘s OFF THE RECORD, following two boys in America’s biggest boy band who fall for each other while on their first sold-out European tour, and are forced to keep their relationship a secret by their record label, but slowly realize those in charge have no intention of letting them announce their relationship to the world—ever, to Sylvan Creekmore at Wednesday Books, in an exclusive submission, for publication in fall 2021, by Moe Ferrara at BookEnds (world).
Author of DEPOSING NATHAN Zack Smedley‘s TONIGHT WE RULE THE WORLD, a coming-of-age novel about a boy whose senior year is upended when school officials learn he was sexually assaulted by another student; exploring identity, sexuality, and self-worth and following the implosion among the boy’s school, peers, parents, and girlfriend, to Lauren Knowles at Page Street, in a nice deal, for publication in fall 2021, by Allison Remcheck at Stimola Literary Studio (world).
Gabe Cole Novoa’s THE WICKED BARGAIN, the #OwnVoices YA fantasy follows a trans masculine Latinx teen pirate hiding magical abilities who, after a deal with the devil comes to a violent end, is rescued by the Caribbean’s sole remaining pirate crew, but with the Spanish armada hunting the last of the pirates down, the magic they’ve been keeping secret may be their only redemption—or it could mean certain death, to Jenna Lettice at Random House Children’s, for publication in fall 2022, by Louise Fury at The Bent Agency (world).
Mariama Lockington’s FOREVER IS NOW, a novel-in-verse about an agoraphobic teenager who must find a way to boldly step outside herself for the sake of her relationships and community, to Joy Peskin at Farrar, Straus Children’s, in a two-book deal, by Jane Dystel at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret (world).
Author of WHITE ROSE Kip Wilson’s THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN, a historical novel-in-verse about an orphan who finds family, love, and her voice in a queer nightclub during the last days of the Weimar Republic in Berlin, 1932, to Margaret Raymo at Versify, for publication in spring 2022, by Roseanne Wells at Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency (NA).
Illustrators of the forthcoming WEIRDO Jessica Wibowo and Jacinta Wibowo‘s LUNAR BOY, in which a boy from the moon deals with culture shock, familial struggles, and first crushes when his mother suddenly marries and moves them to Earth, to Carolina Ortiz at Harper Alley, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, for publication in 2023, by Britt Siess at Martin Literary Management (world English).
Betsy Cornwell‘s READER, I MURDERED HIM, a tale of female agency, queer romance, and revenge in which a girl becomes a teenage vigilante who roams Victorian England using her privilege and power to protect other young women from abusive Gothic heroes, to Lynne Polvino at Clarion, in an exclusive submission, for publication in fall 2021, by Sara Crowe at Pippin Properties (NA).
Non-Fiction
Winner of two gold medals and the World Cup Briana Scurry and Wayne Coffey, with a foreword by Robin Roberts‘s MY GREATEST SAVE, a memoir of Scurry’s role as the fierce goalkeeper for the 1999ers, the legendary U.S. Women’s national team, where she broke barriers as the first Black female player, the first to come out openly as gay, and one of the first to advocate for equal pay, until a career-ending concussion sent her into years of despair and she had to make the greatest save of all, to Jamison Stoltz at Abrams Press, by Susan Canavan at Waxman Literary Agency (world).
Lambda Literary nonfiction fellow Nikkya Hargrove‘s MAMA: A BLACK, QUEER WOMAN’S JOURNEY TO MOTHERHOOD, describing how growing up visiting her mother in prison affected her own choices in life and how, when her mother died of heart disease at the age of 42 after a lifelong battle with crack cocaine, she adopted her baby brother, determined to create the kind of family she never had; about motherhood and identity, as told by a Black gay woman married to a Sri Lankan American woman parenting twin girls and raising their adopted son together, to Amy Gash at Algonquin, at auction, for publication in fall 2022, by Stacey Glick at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret (world).
Authors of THE GAY AGENDA and owners of the Ash + Chess stationery store Ashley Molesso and Chessie Needham’s THE QUEER TAROT and THE GAY AGENDA AGENDA, an illustrated guidebook and deck that seeks to serve as an outlet for members of the LGBTQ+ community who want to connect with the tarot in a more personalized way, celebrating their identities, including non-binary, trans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, and more, with all races and cultures, abilities, and body types represented and celebrated; also, an agenda highlighting the most important historical moments, figures, and places in the gay community, to Shannon Connors Fabricant at Running Press, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Meg Thompson at Thompson Literary Agency (world).
Contributor to Ploughshares, The Rumpus, and Longreads Edgar Gomez’s HIGH-RISK HOMOSEXUAL, a debut memoir about coming-of-age in a culture that values machismo, following the author from his uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua to the queer spaces where he discovered the joy of being gay and Latino, including Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor’s office where he was diagnosed a “high-risk homosexual,” to Sarah Lyn Rogers at Soft Skull, for publication in fall 2021, by Danielle Bukowski at Sterling Lord Literistic (world).
