In celebration of Pride-Month I wanted to share a quick post in which I talk about some of my favourite LGBTQIA+ reads that I wished more people would read. All authors featured on this list are part of the LGBTQIA+ community themselves and many of them write based of their own experiences. Although authors like Patrick Ness, Benjamin Alire-Saenz, Adam Silvera and Maggie Stiefvater (mostly within the YA-genre), that deserve a place on this list as well, I decided to focus on lesser known authors that are often overlooked. Although some of them are only at the start of their writing career, some of them have a large backlist that I highly recommend you give a shot. To help you get started, I mention my favourite work by each of them as a great point for you to start. Without further ado, let’s get into the books.
1. Nina LaCour Favourite Work: We Are Okay Writes: quiet but powerful, hard-hitting contemporaries featuring themes of family, grief and F-F relationships. I adore LaCour’s writing and the way she weaves together so many important themes in such a natural way. Her books may be short, but pack a mighty emotional punch.
2. Kirsty Logan Favourite Work: The Gloaming Writes: atmospheric fantasy that boarders on magical realism, usually containing F-F relationships, and always a interlaced with coastal or oceanic vibes.
3. Jen Campbel Favourite Work: Writes: magical realism with themes of body, disability and gender. Jen is a Youtuber and reviewer as well as an author, and is one of my favourite voices in discussion of disability and chronic illness representation, as well as topic of gender and sexuality.
4. Alice Oseman Favourite Work: Loveless Writes: Young Adult Contemporary featuring characters from all over the LQBTQIA-spectrum, but most notably writes own-voice asexuality narratives. Alice Oseman is one of the more well known authors on this list, but the first to introduce me to asexuality rep in novels; a genre that is underrepresented even in the community to this day.
5. Darcie Little Badger Favourite Work: Elatsoe Writes: indigenous fantasy featuring an asexual protagonist. As of this day, Little Badger only has one novel published, but her sophomore work is set to be released in August of this year, and features similar themes as far as I know.
6. Rivers Solomon Favourite Work: The Deep Writes: fantasy and magical realism with themes of (black) racial discrimination, often featuring non-binary characters protagonists or even full casts.
7. Akwaeke Emezi Favourite Work: Pet Writes: fantasy (both adult and middle-grade/YA) starring transgender main characters. Although her stories are utterly weird in their premise, they manage to write in a way that completely captivated me and had me sold on the world they created right away.
8. Ocean Vuong Favourite Work: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Writes: literary fiction and poetry based of his own experiences as a gay man from a traditional Vietnamese family.
9. T.J. Klune Favourite Work: The House in the Cerulean Sea Writes: M-M romance. Admittedly I have only read his fantasy-debut, but from what I’ve heard, his backlist is absolutely worth a read as well.
10. Anna-Marie McLemore Favourite Work: Wild Beauty Writes: magical realism with characters from all over the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. McLemore is non-binary, Latinex and pansexual and writes from their experiences with that.
