These 42 LGBTQ Books Will Change the Literary Landscape This Spring

Recently I was asked how I've personally been maintaining and/or nourishing a sense of queer community during the ongoing COVID pandemic. My very simplified answer: books. A lifelong introvert, I've often found not only solace but a kind of social closeness within the pages of other people's stories; this sense of finding genuine connection in books has been especially true of my relationship with LGBTQ books, which had, for many years, been my only contact with other queer people. All this is even truer now since we're all stuck at home. For me, with books, other people don't feel so far away.

Last November, esteemed literary magazine McSweeney's released an entire issue filled exclusively with queer stories. In his curatorial introduction to the issue, Whiting Award-winning writer Patrick Cottrell referred to the trove of LGBTQ-themed fiction within as "capacious and contradictory."

It's true: The state of LGBTQ books in 2021 is marvelous and vast, leaving room for all kinds of stories, by and about people from all walks of queer life. Our narratives—our selves—are various.

The 42 books on this list represent that capaciousness, those contradictions. There's a sweeping dramedy about two trans people raising a baby, a caustic tragicomedy about a stay-at-home mom raising her oddball son, a feminist western, a slapstick self-help collection, a linked collection of short fiction set in the Midwest, a tale of young love set in 1950s Chinatown, a novel about enslaved Black men in love, a romance about Black royals in love. There's poetry, history, true crime, and time travel. Come Pride Month, we might all still be parading in place, but we'll still have each other's stories to keep us company.