The Most Anticipated LGBT Books of 2018

  

 

January

 

1/2   Neel Mukherjee, A State of Freedom [and Kindle] After his Booker nomination for The Lives of Others, Mukherjee returns with a novel about five very different characters searching for a better future.

 

1/9   Ali Smith, Winter. Following her fourth Booker nomination, Smith continues her Seasonal cycle with this novel about Arthur, his mother, his aunt, and a woman hired to play his girlfriend, spending Christmas together in a cavernous country house.

 

1/23   Carl Phillips, Wild Is the Wind: Poems

 

1/24  Jack Halberstam, Trans: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability

 

1/25  Christine Burns, Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows

 

 

 

   

 

February

 

>> 2/1  Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, 2018 National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction

 

2/2   Jeffrey Lieber, Flintstone Modernism: or The Crisis in Postwar American Culture. Decoding architecture, film, philosophy, and politics in this new excavation of Postwar America.

 

2/6   Joseph Cassara, The House of Impossible Beauties [and Kindle] Debut novel of 80s Harlem told through multiple voices in and around the House of Xtravaganza.

 

2/13  Anne Raeff, Winter Kept Us Warm [and Kindle] The award-winning short story writer and essayist delivers a first novel spanning six decades and three continents in the lives of a woman and two men who meet in Postwar Berlin.

 

2/13  Amy Bloom, White Houses [and Kindle]. Novel about the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, from the renowned short story writer and National Book Award finalist.

 

2/15  Audre Lorde and Pat Parker, Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker: 1974-1989. The poets' correspondence and private thoughts over a fifteen-year span.

 

2/20  Patrick Nathan, Some Hell. Graywolf publishes this debut about a gay teen in the terrible aftermath of his father's suicide.

 

2/20  Jake Shears, Boys Keep Swinging: A Memoir. A Scissor Sister celebrates himself.

 

2/20 Tina Allen, Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception, and Double Lives. A lesbian, the youngest of thirteen children, discovers her strict, devout father is also gay.

 

2/20  Cara Hoffman, Running. Second novel about unhappy expats and queers traversing Greece, NYC, and Washington State.

 

2/20  Genevieve Hudson, A Little in Love with Everyone: Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Queer Coming-of-Age Narratives

 

2/27  Rahul Mehta, No Other World paperback reprint of first novel about a gay Indian-American from the author of the much-loved story collection Quarantine.

 

2/27  David Hargreaves, Under the Table. Dying in his late fifties, a man rereads his diaries of youthful excesses and romantic deceptions. 

 

 

     
 

March

 

3/1  Samuel Delany, The Atheist in the Attic. Essays from a giant.

 

3/2  Martin Duberman, The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976–1988. Midlife memoir.

 

3/6  Uzodinma Iweala, Speak No Evil [and Kindle]. After Beasts of No Nation comes Iweala's short second novel, about a Harvard-bound track star at DC private school who is rejected by his homophobic Nigerian parents.

 

3/6   Wayne Koestenbaum, Camp Marmalade

 

3/6  C. Dale Young, The Affliction. A Guggenheim, NEA, and Rockefeller fellow makes his fiction debut with this novel-in-stories about largely overlooked characters across America and the Caribbean. 

 

3/6  Andrew Evans, The Black Penguin. Paperback reprint of last year's memoir of a gay, National Geographic writer and tv host who travels from his home in Washington DC to Antarctica by bus.

 

3/8  Philip Hensher, The Friendly Ones. Ninth novel from the award-winning Hensher, about two Sheffield families spanning several decades. 

 

3/10  Stanley Stellar, Into the Light: Photographs of the NYC Gay Pride Day from the 70s till today.

 

3/13  Alan Hollinghurst, The Sparsholt Affair [and Kindle]. A great and beautiful novel, unjustly overlooked by prize juries, about art-struck gays from WWII to the 21st century. 

 

3/13  Rigoberto Gonzalez, What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood

 

3/20  Chelsey Johnson, Stray City. A Portland lesbian makes one little weenie mistake -- and shocks her queer friends by deciding to have the baby. Ten years later the child is asking a lot of questions.

 

    

 

April

 

4/3   Christopher Soto, editor, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

 

4/3  Amber Dawn, Sodom Road Exit. Second novel from the Lammy and Vancouver Book Award winner.

 

4/3   Laura Lillibridge, Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home. Memoir.

 

4/3  James Wharton, Something for the Weekend: Life in the Chemsex Underworld. Possibly this old feint again: Lack self-restraint? Lack self-esteem? Cheat on your husband, binge heavily on sex and drugs? Blame gay culture!

 

4/3  Olumide Popoola, When We Speak of Nothing. Debut novel on what it's like to be young, black, and queer in London.

 

4/6  David Wojnarowicz, The Weight of the Earth: The David Wojnarowicz Audio Journals

 

4/10  Michelle Dean, Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm.

 

4/10   Sarah Krasnostein, The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster. Memoir.

 

4/10  Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Cenzontle. Poems. 

 

4/17  Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays

 

4/20  Frederic Martel, Global Gay: How Gay Culture Is Changing the World

 

4/24  Nicola Adams, Believe: Boxing, Olympics and My Life Outside of the Ring. She's won two gold medals for boxing (London & Rio) and ranked #1 on the Independent's list of the UK's 101 most influential queers.

 

4/28  Michael Arditti, Of Men and Angels. Five historical epochs, from Babylon to the Renaissance to Hollywood, reflecting different aspects of the Sodom story.

 

 

    
 

May

 

>> 5/1  Lance Richardson, House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row

 

5/7  Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel, The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde

 

>> 5/8  Justin Phillip Reed, Indecency, 2018 National Book Award Winner for Poetry

 

5/8   Stephen McCauley, My Ex-Life [and Kindle] [and Audio]. In his seventh novel, the American master of the comedy of manners explores the funny and painful overlap of bad choices and chosen family. I loved it. Because love is not enough, and media demands controversy, I'll say some gay separatists will be angry. Buy now and decide for yourself.

 

5/8  Tommy Pico, Junk. A book-length gay break-up poem.

 

5/8  Peter Ackroyd, Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. First US publication.

 

5/8  James Lear, In the Ring. Erotica from Rupert Smith's excellently randy alter ego.

 

5/8   Blanche McCrary Boyd, Tomb of the Unknown Racist. After a 20-year wait, Boyd completes her trilogy about Ellen Burns.

 

5/8   Michelle Tea, Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms. Must reading.

 

5/15   Lucy Bledsoe, The Evolution of Love. The remarkably gifted and wide-ranging novelist imagines the new bonds forged, of sisters, of community, in the wake of an epic earthquake that completely isolates San Francisco.

 

5/15  Nicola Griffith, So Lucky. Twenty-five years after her diagnosis, Griffith writes a novel about a woman living with MS.

 

5/22 Lilliian Faderman, Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death

 

5/22  North Morgan, Into? [and Kindle]. Hookup nihilism. 

 

5/25  Ramzi Fawaz & Shanté Paradigm Smalls, editors, Queers Read This!: LGBTQ Literature Now

 

5/29  Darnell Moore, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America. Nation Books publishes this memoir/social commentary from a gay organizer of the BLM movement.

 

 

    
 

June

 

6/1  Prejudice & Pride: Celebrating LGBTQ Heritage, A National Trust Guide

 

6/1 Jim Elledge, The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century

 

6/5  A. M. Homes, Days of Awe: Stories

 

6/5  Silas House, Southernmost

 

6/5  Robert Fieseler, Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

 

6/5  Ann Travers, The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) are Creating a Gender Revolution

 

6/6  Charlie Fox, This Young Monster

 

6/6  Daniel Isengart, The Art of Gay Cooking: A Culinary Memoir

 

6/7  Michael Lowenthal, The Paternity Test paperback reissue of the 2012 novel.

 

6/12  Martin Duberman, Has the Gay Movement Failed?

 

6/19  Edouard Louis, History of Violence. Following The End of Eddy.

 

6/19 Camille Perri, When Katie Met Cassidy. Novel.

 

6/26  Jordy Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox

 

6/26  Edmund White, The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading. Cannot wait for this memoir/ gay culture/ literary criticism hybrid.

 

    

July

 

7/3  Graham Caveney, The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness: A Memoir

 

7/3  Ines Pedrosa, In Your Hands

 

>> 7/10  Neel Patel,  If You See Me, Don't Say Hi: Stories

 

7/10  Casey Legler, Godspeed: A Memoir

 

7/17  Stephen Hong Sohn, Inscrutable Belongings: Queer Asian North American Fiction

 

7/24  Michael Arceneaux, I Can't Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyoncé

 

7/26  Sjon, CoDex 1962: A Novel

 

 

     

 

August & After

 

8/14   Adrienne Rich, Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry

 

8/14  Dale Peck, Night Soil

 

8/28   Paul Flynn, Good As You: From Prejudice to Pride – 30 Years of Gay Britain

 

>> 9/11  Sarah Schulman, Maggie Terry

 

9/18  Jill Soloway, She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy  [and Kindle] 

 

10/2  Roxanne Gay selects The Best American Short Stories 2018

 

10/1  Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Sketchtasy. After a decade, Mattilda returns to fiction with novel about Alexa, a 21-year-old, give-a-fuck queen doing it her way in Boston in 1994.

 

TBA  Genevieve Hudson, Pretend We Live Here (Future Tense)

 

TBA  Jack Kaulfus, Tomorrow or Forever (Transgress Press)

Comments

[David]

Thank you! I'm not sure if you are planning on posting regularly, but just to have your recommendations is more than welcome! Hope all is well, and you are missed.

[Andrea]

Hi! I work with Lara Lillibridge, thank you so much for including Girlish! I'd be happy to provide a cover image file if you could share your contact information?