2 years ago
95
Let maine commencement by saying this is not a database of the champion queer books of 2022. It’s a database of 12 of the champion queer books of 2022. This has been an unthinkable twelvemonth for LGBTQ+ lit. Romance, fantasy, modern fiction, speculative fiction, mystery, memoir: I situation you to sanction a genre that hasn’t had astatine slightest a fewer unthinkable queer releases this year. And I don’t accidental that lightly, due to the fact that it hasn’t ever been the case. So making a comparatively abbreviated database of the champion queer books of the twelvemonth conscionable isn’t possible. There are excessively many.
What I’ve done alternatively is prime 12 astonishing queer books crossed a wide assortment of genres. Together, these books correspond the tone of this year’s queer lit. They’re silly and heartbreaking and joyful, comic and superior and challenging, thought-provoking and sexy and analyzable These are books that I personally person loved and that my chap Rioters person loved. I’ve included the large genres successful fabrication and nonfiction, arsenic good arsenic a fewer non-genre categories, similar effort collections, abbreviated communicative collections, and YA.
I lone chose 1 publication for each category, but I’ve included a fewer other recommendations beneath the main rubric due to the fact that I couldn’t resist. Those titles bring the full database up to 50. But — you guessed it — determination are truthful galore much astonishing queer books from this twelvemonth I don’t notation here. The abundance is magnificent. So let’s observe it!
Contemporary/Historical Fiction
The Other Mother by Rachel M. Harper
I person a caller favourite genre of queer lit: books that consciousness similar conversations betwixt the queer past, present, and future. This is 1 of the champion books similar that I’ve ever read. It’s an intergenerational queer household saga astir a radical of precise messy radical — they marque mistakes, the wounded each other, they muddle through, they’re flawed and wounded and secretive and loyal. It moves among POVs and takes places crossed decades. It’s astir parenthood, household secrets, identity, marriage, and truthful overmuch more.
See also: Lote by Shola von Reinhold, Greenland by David Santos Donaldson, Mademoiselle Revolution by Zoe Sivak (100% historical)
Contemporary Fiction
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
In this beauteous blend of fiction, oral history, and theory, Belcourt seems to reinvent the caller adjacent arsenic his protagonist ponders if novels are worthy writing. It’s astir a queer Cree PhD pupil who abandons his dissertation, returns location to bluish Alberta, and tries to constitute a novel. It’s not imaginable to summarize a publication similar this, and it’s hard to adjacent convey conscionable however unsocial and beauteous it is. It’s playful and sharp, a blend of gorgeously written intimate moments and world theorizing. Belcourt’s sentences work similar poems, and his unnamed narrator feels arsenic existent and full and quality arsenic immoderate protagonist I’ve ever encountered connected the page.
See also: All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela, Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour
Our Queerest Shelves Newsletter
Sign up for bookish LGBTQ+ quality and recommendations!
Thank you for signing up! Keep an oculus connected your inbox.
By signing up you hold to our terms of use
Romance
You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Emezi’s archetypal foray into romance is simply a bighearted communicative astir grief, art, healing, and queer friendship. Feyi is conscionable starting to day again, 5 years aft losing her hubby successful a car accident, and she’s not definite she’s ready. But it turns retired she is acceptable — erstwhile she meets the close person, a antheral moving done his ain grief, who understands however hard it tin beryllium to unfastened up again aft loss. This publication is sexy, funny, heartfelt, and overflowing with mouthwatering descriptions of meals.
See also: The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish, D’Vaughn & Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins, Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall
Fantasy
Spear by Nicola Griffith
If you deliberation you didn’t request a queer retelling of Arthurian legend successful your life, deliberation again. This quiescent reimagining of the communicative of Percival the Knight is astir Peretur, a fiery young pistillate raised by her parent successful a cave successful Wales. Longing for thing beyond the beingness she knows, she sets retired to find glory. She ends up uncovering a batch much than that, including the location she’s ever longed for. This novella is afloat of brushed magic, queer family, sapphic love, and fierce women wielding swords.
See also: Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman, Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson, The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
Sci-Fi
The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang
Neon Yang’s archetypal sci-fi caller is an epic queer abstraction opera afloat of warring empires and action-backed battles. Misery, who person uncommon abilities often associated with sainthood, has ever dreamed of leaving their tiny backwater mining planet. They conscionable ne'er imagined that their accidental would travel acknowledgment to the dependable of an angel beckoning them away, oregon that they’d extremity up successful the halfway of a galactic struggle overmuch bigger than them.
See also: My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi (sci-fi/speculative), The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe, Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings, August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White
Short Stories
Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang
These stories, mostly astir queer Asian American women, are eerie and beautiful, dazzling and strange. They are astir prophetic aunts and bare widows, demanding ghosts and girls who bring astir their ain transformations. Chang’s characters unrecorded successful the in-between spaces: betwixt genders, cultures, and continents, betwixt quality and creature, betwixt surviving and haunting. The penning is electrical and vivid, and immoderate of the stories work similar abbreviated prose poems — each representation and taxable and character.
See also: Buffalo is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel, Rainbow Rainbow by Lydia Conklin, Manywhere by Morgan Thomas
Young Adult
The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes
This is the queer sibling communicative of my dreams. It’s astir Yami, a Mexican American teen conscionable to trying to get done precocious school, and it has everything I could perchance privation successful a YA novel: brilliant, analyzable characterization; entertaining teen drama; a sapphic emotion story; messy household dynamics; and a thoughtful, nuanced exploration of immigration, intelligence health, and suicidal ideation. It doesn’t shy distant from the hard stuff, but it’s besides lukewarm and afloat of joy. Reyes strikes the cleanable balance.
See also: The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas, This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke, Self-Made Boys by Anna-Marie McLemore, Kings of B’More by R. Eric Thomas
Mystery/Thriller
Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen
When was the past clip you work a execution enigma astir a queer household surviving successful an aged mansion successful the Bay Area successful the 1950s? Probably never. Let’s hole that. Andy is simply a closeted cheery bull who’s fired from the San Francisco constabulary unit aft he’s caught successful a raid astatine a cheery bar. He’s past hired by the matriarch of a affluent queer household (they ain a soap empire!) who wants him to analyse the execution of her wife. Everyone is queer! Everyone! It’s an atmospheric, character-driven enigma with a satisfying conclusion, but it’s besides a moving communicative astir the ongoing unit of being forced to fell yourself, and the (messy) healing that comes with uncovering queer community.
See also: Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen (campy horror), The Verifiers by Jane Pek
Memoir
Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia
I don’t often work a memoir successful a azygous sitting, but I work this successful 1 agelong breath, and that’s the champion happening I tin accidental astir a book. It’s a lukewarm and insightful publication astir increasing up queer and Indian successful Appalachia, and astir the messy, shifting intersections of home, geography, culture, gender, and past that person shaped Avashia’s life. She’s an astute thinker and a fantastic storyteller. This memoir is afloat of vivid scenes of household and childhood, and plentifulness of knotty, challenging ideas astir the roles that spot plays successful our lives.
See also: Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz, Messy Roots by Laura Gao, Brace for Impact by Gabe Montesanti, All Down Darkness Wide by Séan Hewitt, Ma and Me by Putsata Reang
General Nonfiction
Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam
In this superb publication of trans history, trans historiographer Kit Heyam shares stories of radical from cultures each implicit the satellite who person lived extracurricular of rigid sex binaries since agelong earlier the operation “gender binary” existed. Through these diverse, singular stories, Heyam shows implicit and implicit again that sex has ever been fluid and complicated, that societies person defined it successful dozens of ways passim centuries, and that trans and nonbinary radical person ever existed, successful a 1000 antithetic ways. This is simply a important past that couldn’t beryllium much applicable today.
See also: People Change by Vivek Shraya, The Women’s House of Detention by Hugh Ryan, In Sensorium by Tanaïs
Essays
Voice of the Fish by Lars Horn
This breathtaking postulation of interlocking essays explores sex and transition, unwellness and disability, art, water, memory, and the enactment of speechmaking and writing. Horn writes beautifully astir truthful galore things: swimming, the creation of tattooing, traveling, masculinity, childhood. But their penning is ever grounded successful the carnal world of the body: what it’s similar to unrecorded successful a trans body, a gendered body, a assemblage that is disposable to others, a assemblage that is not disposable to others. They play with form, interspersing longer lyric essays with abbreviated lists that utilize quotes, imagery, poetry, and recollections. This is queer penning astatine its champion — a beauteous illustration of conscionable however inventive and world-opening essays tin be.
See also: High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez, Faltas by Cecilia Gentili, It Came from the Closet edited by Joe Vallese
Poetry
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen
Chen Chen’s poesy is playful and silly and joyful successful a mode that feels distinctly queer. He messes with form, helium interrupts himself, helium makes his ain rules, helium puts each his exuberance onto the page. His poems are not frivolous, and the ones successful this postulation woody with plentifulness of real-world heaviness: racism, the pandemic, grief. But Chen Chen takes silliness seriously, and helium takes joyousness seriously, and that’s what makes his poems truthful unique. They’re queerly alive. They’re soft, and they sometimes cut.
See also: All the Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran, Alive astatine the End of the World by Saeed Jones, Beast astatine Every Threshold by Natalie Wee
Looking for much queer books from 2022? Of people you are! We’ve got you covered with queer books from the 2nd fractional of the year, queer books from the archetypal fractional of the year, queer retellings, queer SFF, and queer comics and graphic novels. 2022 has been a banner twelvemonth for queer lit.
English (US) ·