Queer reads

As part of our Auckland Pride Festival 2021 celebrations, librarian Alison chatted to Lil and Tanya from the Rainbow community about their recent and all-time favourite queer reads. 

You can listen to the conversation on the Auckland Libraries podcast.


Reading enriches our lives and allows us to see ourselves and others at the intersections and margins of our experiences. Queer reads bring our lives in from the margins and show us that we belong, we matter, and we can thrive.

Here are some of Lil and Tanya’s faves:

Books to rip your insides out

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Available as a free download from the author's website.

Beautiful writing and an important record of queer history from the pre-Stonewall era. There was no safety for young queer folk in their blue-collar town, even in the drag bars.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Also available as OverDrive eBook and eAudiobook.

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. A rags to riches (and everything in between) tale. 

Hood by Emma Donoghue
Also available as Ulverscroft eAudiobook.

Pen and Cara are teenagers who fall in love at a Dublin convent school in the 1970s. Years later, tragedy strikes. How do you grieve when you’re still in the closet?

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata.

Honest, heartfelt, open and vulnerable manga about growing up in our complicated modern times.

Damn that's some beautiful writing

Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

The chronicles of a consuming affair between the narrator, whose name and gender aren’t revealed, and their beloved – a complex and confused married woman.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar.

Like Killing Eve, but with time-travelling pen pals. Gorgeous and romantic lesbian sci-fi.

How to Grow Up: A Memoir by Michelle Tea.

The story of a working-class, queer, radical writer, performer and mother.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

Growing up in New York in the 1950s when being Black, poor, gay and female was never going to be easy.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Also available as OverDrive eBook and eAudiobook.

A firsthand account of the complexities and joys of queer family-making. Fresh, fierce and timely.

Sci-Fi and fantasy

The Murderbot Diaries (series) by Martha Wells
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, a murderbot on a planetary mission just wants to be left alone so they can figure out who they are.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

The classic road-trip story, but this time it’s in space.

Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson.

Baru is a fiercely intelligent and idealistic young woman. When the Empire attempts to execute one of her two fathers for the crime of homosexuality, she decides to rise up through its hierarchy and destroy it from within.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

Queen Sabran the ninth must conceive a daughter in order to protect her realm from destruction. Problem is, she’s fiercely in love with her lady-in-waiting.

Sex Ed

Girl Sex 101 by Allison Moon. 

Suitable for an adult audience. Fun, informative and open to gender-fluid people. Lots of info and stories.

It’s Not the Stork by Robie H. Harris
Also available as OverDrive eBook

Suitable for primary aged kids. Great teaching about bodies and reproduction and inclusive of the different ways families are formed.

Books we were supposed to like but didn’t

Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

There is a voice of longing inside every woman. Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. There. She. Is.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (writing as Claire Morgan)
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

We wanted to love this because it was one of the first queer stories to have a happy ending. But the power imbalance got in the way.

Don’t forget

Not That I'd Kiss a Girl: A Kiwi Girl's Tale of Coming Out and Coming of Age by Lil O'Brien
Also available as OverDrive eBook.

An insightful and honest look at how the hell you figure out you're gay, or bi, or whatever, and an essential read for anyone who has had to fight for who they are and what they believe in.

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