40 LGBTQ+ Books To Read Now & Always

Happy Pride Month, everyone! Every June, the American LGBTQ+ community comes together to memorialize the Stonewall Riots, which marked their 50th anniversary in 2019.

In his Metamorphoses, written around the turn of the first millennium, Ovid included the tale of Iphis: an AFAB person, raised in secret as a son, whom the goddess Isis changes into a man so that he may live happily ever after with his bride, Ianthe.

Ace people — and aromantic people, who do not experience romantic attraction — are often treated as if they have some form of sexual dysfunction, and they may struggle to find their experiences represented in pop culture and literature.

David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy follows a sophomore attending an LBGTQ+ friendly high school.

André Aciman’s bestseller won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, and the movie adaptation of the same name took home the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Seven years ago, Jim and his friend, Bob, had sex during a camping trip, just before Bob graduated from high school and left their hometown.

Lesbian pulp author Marijane Meaker published her 1994 YA novel, Deliver Us from Evie, under the same pseudonym she used to write Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack.

A mysterious and catastrophic event has separated the midwestern city of Bellona from the rest of the United States.

Published in 2017, NEA Fellow Danez Smith’s second poetry collection takes up issues of Blackness, queerness, and institutional violence.

If Lynch’s victim was truly a deserter, then the killing would be justified, but when the pair’s affair comes to light, nothing will ever be the same for anyone involved.

Based loosely on the events of the Book of Ruth, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café is a must-read tale of love, loss, triumph, and revenge.

In her 2006 graphic memoir, Dykes to Watch Out For author Alison Bechdel re-examines her relationship with her father, Bruce: a closeted gay man who was struck and killed in a motor vehicle accident in 1980.

Gideon the Ninth follows lifelong enemies Harrow and Gideon, the youngest members of the empire’s Ninth House, as they partake in a mysterious competition to decide which of the competing necromancers — Harrow and representatives from the Second through Eighth Houses — will become an undying member of the emperor’s personal guard.

From the author of The Queen of the Night comes this autobiographical essay collection about Alexander Chee’s life so far.

Saeed Jones’ memoir of growing up Black and gay in the American South won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

Her Body and Other Parties author Carmen Maria Machado reanalyzes her abusive relationship with another woman in this memoir, which won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction.

Her cute co-worker at the local library is all she can think about, but there’s no way he’ll want to date an ace girl…

The titular Maurice is a stockbroker who had a deeply intimate love affair with another man, Clive, during their time studying at Cambridge.

Framed as a letter from the narrator to his subliterate mother, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous centers on Little Dog: a gay Vietnamese American man who grew up in Connecticut with his traumatized mother and grandmother.

Tracing the long life of its eponymous hero, from 1588 to 1928, Orlando tells the story of one AMAB person’s sudden transition into womanhood as an adult.

In this 1943 roman à clef, Jean Genet weaves together tales from the life of Divine — a canonized Parisian drag queen.

Still, Over the Top isn’t afraid to tackle the dark realities of the modern-day queer experience, and doesn’t shy away from heartbreaking moments in Van Ness’ life.

Jam is forced to question everything she’s been taught when a strange creature, known only as Pet, is drawn out of a painting by Jam’s own blood.

Sabran’s entire kingdom believes that all dragons are just as evil as the Nameless One, even the water-loving ones ridden by people like Tané, who hails from the East.

Brandon Taylor’s Booker Prize-shortlisted debut novel, Real Life, follows a queer, Black biochemistry major as he tries to escape the ghosts of his Alabama past in the hallowed halls of higher education.

From the former editor of People.com comes this eye-opening memoir about growing up poor, mixed-race, and trans.

Jennifer Finney Boylan was already a critically acclaimed writer when she transitioned, nearly 15 years into her publishing career.

With bathroom bills and anti-trans sports legislation still making headlines across the United States, it’s important that everyone in the LGBTQ+ community, and their allies, understand how far we’ve come…

Her childhood in Northern Ontario was rife with abuse, and she narrowly avoided being separated from her family by Canadian welfare authorities — a stroke of luck that allowed her to remain connected with her Ojibwa-Cree heritage.

Nigerian American author Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees attracted major attention upon its publication in 2015, eventually winning the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian General Fiction, among other honors.

She stows away on the wagon carrying a group of traveling librarians from town to town, believing that they — as disseminators of approved literature — are above reproach.

In her native Pakistan, Samra Habib learned to keep her identity as a member of a minority Muslim sect a secret.

In their first full-length poetry collection, award-winning writer torrin a.

Lena Dunham’s sibling, Cyrus Grace Dunham, penned this 2019 memoir of self-discovery.

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