Feature image by George Marks via Getty Images
Hi everyone! It’s Yashwina, back with my metal detector and everything I’ve dug up on the literary internet over the last couple weeks. We’ve survived Mercury Retrograde (well, mostly) and it’s been a doozy. Maybe I’ve gone over the same page eleventy bazillion times, my relationship to language may be a little threadbare, but on the bright side — there has been so much good shit to read!
Alrighty, folks, let’s make like a boulder and roll. On this week’s Rainbow Reading, we’ve got:
Shelf Care: Reviews, Essays, and other Things of Note
- This debut essay by writer Francis Van Ganson about their communication with their cat has been on my mind since I read an early version in a zine last year; this expanded version took my breath away!
- From cyborg baseball to Ali Smith, 5 books for Aquarius readers this Aqua season!
- I loved this interview with Gretchen Felker-Martin in Heat Death about her forthcoming book Manhunt — and also this tweet bangs. I’m really fascinated with the way Gretchen moves the needle on conversations about queerness, sexuality, and making art!
- Emme Lund’s debut novel The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is out next Tuesday, and Emme is going to be on tour! Catch her in conversation at virtual events with fellow badass debut author Davey Davis, beloved queer critic Sarah Neilson (2/17), Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer (2/18), and lesbian Willie Nelson, Kristen Arnett (2/22)!
- Also out next Tuesday is Ariel Delgado Dixon’s Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You, a badass queer thriller that Autostraddle named one of its Most Anticipated Books of the year! When I spoke to the author, Ariel described it as “narrated by a wayward lesbo who just can’t help herself… highlights include: a May/December queer romance, psychopaths on the loose, and a school for bad girls….” which gets this week’s Yash Award for Best and Most Compelling Elevator Pitch!
- I just picked up this book-length essay Borealis and Aisha Sabatini Sloan is blowing my mind in this first installment in a series about “the ways we activate space through language.” Coffee House Press, folks!
- Kris Wilka Just Wants To Play Football — P. E. Moskowitz’s profile of a South Dakota teen is one of the most compelling pieces of sports writing I’ve read recently and I loved it. “Seeing Kris, as confident as any other teen boy, with a little swagger, a smirk that tells the world, “I know who I am, and you can’t do anything to change that,” shook me. It made me furious, for my childhood, for everyone else forced into solitude and depression and suicidality by transphobia.”
- Cuties LA and Switterbeat in L.A. are bringing back their Queer Poetry Night series every second Sunday, starting this weekend — and it’s streaming live on zoom for those of us afar!
- “People often don’t know what to do when they realize I’m butch.” This essay on butchness from Christina Cooke does such beautiful things with perspective, alienation (that use of the second person!), and romantic hope.
- Over at Catapult, A. E. Osworth (former Geekery editor here at Autostraddle!) has a new installment in their series about children’s horror media through the lens of queer adulthood — and this piece about the story about the girl with the green ribbon
- A whole collection of QUEER SPECULATIVE SHORT FICTION ABOUT PLANTS?? Sign me UP
- So! many! things! from! The Rumpus! Read “We Are More: Sustenance” by Holly Mason Badra, “Play For Camera” by William Horn, “Wash” by Karine Hack, “You Keep Everything Outside” by Rachel Cochran, “On Ghosting” by Aidan Forster, and “Turning The Lights On” by Tyler Anne Whichard
“When one is trying to write about sex, if you’re doing it right, something happens in the prose that is unpredictable and kind of wild.
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Autocorrect: Books content from the last couple weeks at Autostraddle!
- Drew’s interview with Grace Lavery
- Analyssa reviewed Getting Clean with Stevie Green
- Kayla’s short fiction playlists continue to be wall-to-wall bangers, no skips — the most recent installment highlights Five Queer Stories That Find Humor in Sad Places
- Autostraddle Community Editor Vanessa has an essay in this exciting collection alongside Melissa Febos, Kristen Arnett, and a bazillion other fascinating people — it’s so cool to see this reworking of the original Sex and the Single Girl anthology for its 60th anniversary!
- and Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla published a gorgeous new short story over at The Rumpus!
That’s all she wrote, folks! If you’re a queer writer, particularly an early-career queer writer: I’d love to hear about the cool things you’re up to so that I can share links to your published essays, book reviews, short stories, poems, and longform features on LGBTQ+ topics! Please email me links for consideration at yashwina@autostraddle.com with the subject line “Rainbow Reading Submission” — I’m an avid browser-tab-collector, and I especially want to hear from you if you’ve just landed your first publication or first major byline.
