LGBTQ+ Books Like Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey to Look For in 2020
- 1/15
LGBTQ+ Books Like Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey to Look For in 2020
From Carmen Maria Machado’s haunting In the Dream House to the uplifting and sugary-sweet rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue, 2019 was a fabulously queer year for the book world. So far, it looks like 2020 is off to a similarly strong start: This year will see a slew of new memoirs from the likes of Daniel M. Lavery and Cameron Esposito, debut novels from a disparate variety of millennial voices, and queer subversions of genres long considered staid (four words: neo-Western about resistance librarians). If you’re jonesing to add a little color to your 2020 reading, look no further than the 14 titles listed below.
- 2/15
1) Real Life: A Novel by Brandon Taylor
amazon.com
$18.00
Already one of the most anticipated releases of the year, Brandon Taylor’s debut novel heralds a striking new voice with a vital perspective on what it is to be Black and queer in the Midwest. When Real Life’s PhD-candidate protagonist Wallace has an unexpected encounter with a classmate over the course of a fraught weekend, the reverberations threaten to unravel the fabric of their small university town.
- 3/15
2) All My Mother's Lovers: A Novel by Ilana Masad
amazon.com
$14.00
People say all women turn into their mothers sooner or later. But what does that mean when it turns out your mother isn’t who you thought she was? That’s the question All My Mother’s Lovers’ protagonist, 27-year-old Maggie Krause, must grapple with after her mother, Iris—who struggled to accept Maggie’s queerness—suddenly passes away. When Maggie returns to her family home, she discovers Iris has left behind five letters to five lovers Maggie’s never heard of. Maggie takes it upon herself to hand-deliver the letters, hoping that, along the way, she’ll also learn who her mother really was.
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- 4/15
3) My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir by Jenn Shapland
amazon.com
$16.00
After uncovering archival love letters between Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie, Jenn Shapland decides to dedicate herself to excavating the rest of McCullers’s life and legacy. The result is two books in one: an examination of a famous author whose narrative has been posthumously taken away from her, but also a vital memoir of Shapland’s own experience as a queer woman looking for stories about people like her.
- 5/15
4) Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery (as Daniel Mallory Ortberg)
Atria Books
amazon.com
$17.00
Best known for his work founding, running, and writing for the much-missed website The Toast, Daniel M. Lavery has shown himself to have a knack for shrewd literary analysis. He brings that skill to bear in his new memoir, interweaving his own story of gender transition with his uniquely sharp brand of cultural criticism.
- 6/15
5) The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures by Noelle Stevenson
amazon.com
$15.00
In her new graphic memoir, the award-winning author-illustrator of Nimona and creator of Netflix’s She-Ra turns her artistic lens inward, charting the last decade of her young-adult life in a series of personal-comic vignettes. The Fire Never Goes Out sees Stevenson chronicling her experiences wrestling with faith, ambition, and love with a kind of revelatory intimacy.
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- 7/15
6) Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
Tor.com
amazon.com
$15.00
The pulp Western gets a futuristic queer makeover in Sarah Gailey’s new tale of horse-riding librarian spies fighting back against a frighteningly realistic fascist American regime. If you’re looking for bandits, gunfights, and apocalyptic adventure, Upright has you covered.
- 8/15
7) Later: My Life at the Edge of the World by Paul Lisicky
Graywolf Press
amazon.com
$11.00
Part Lonely Planet guide, part ghost story, Paul Lisicky’s latest memoir may well cement his status as queer king of the genre. Encompassing the author’s time in Provincetown in the early 1990s, Later charts Lisicky’s journey of coming out and coming of age amid the backdrop of a gay idyll still reeling from the AIDS crisis.
- 9/15
8) Save Yourself by Cameron Esposito
Grand Central Publishing
amazon.com
$23.09
Looking for a more aggressively raucous personal account of reconciling faith with sexuality? Acclaimed comic Cameron Esposito is your source. Save Yourself charts the good, the bad, and the messy of Esposito’s personal journey, from joining the circus to having period sex in Rome.
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- 10/15
9) dayliGht: Poems by Roya Marsh
amazon.com
$15.00
A performer, educator, and activist, Roya Marsh has spent years racking up poetic accolades—so the Urban Word NYC Poet in residence’s debut collection has been a long time coming. In dayliGht, Marsh’s poems explore what it means to embody Blackness, butchness, and womanhood in a hostile America.
- 11/15
10) Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
Flatiron Books
amazon.com
$19.00
Melissa Bashardoust’s captivating queer fairy tale follows the story of a princess with a curse: She is poisonous to the touch. Soraya has spent her life hidden away in the shadows, but as the day of her brother’s wedding approaches, she must reckon with who—and what—she is becoming: Is she a girl, a monster, or both?
- 12/15
11) Exciting Times: A Novel by Naoise Dolan
amazon.com
$28.00
Echoes of Sally Rooney abound in Naoise Dolan’s debut novel about a young Irish expat. Newly arrived in Hong Kong to teach English to rich kids, Ava quickly gets involved with Julian, a rich banker who loves to spend money on Ava but doesn’t quite love Ava herself—and with Edith, a Hong Kong–born lawyer whom Ava can’t decide whether she wants to be with or be.
Out June 2
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- 13/15
12) You Exist Too Much: A Novel by Zaina Arafat
amazon.com
$20.00
Flashing between the protagonist’s childhood in the Middle East and her years as a 20-something DJ in Brooklyn, You Exist Too Much tells the story of a bisexual Palestinian-American girl whose romantic obsessions and self-destructive impulses lead her to an unconventional treatment center called The Ledge, where she must reckon with the traumas that she has inherited from the places and people who raised her.
Out June 9
- 14/15
13) Broken People: A Novel by Sam Lansky
amazon.com
$28.00
If you were introduced to a shaman who offered to fix all your emotional wounds by performing “open-soul surgery” on you, would you do it? That’s the premise of Lansky’s debut novel about addiction, the NYC-L.A. binary, and coming to grips with who we are rather than who we want ourselves to be. If you’re looking for a searing read about truth and identity that is at turns both sweet and cynical, this is the one for you.
Out June 9
- 15/15
14) Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes by Gabrielle Korn
Atria Books
amazon.com
$16.99
Upon being appointed the youngest-ever editor in chief of NYLON in 2017, it’s safe to say that Gabrielle Korn wasn’t just a rising star in the fashion industry, she had fully risen. Behind the scenes, though, her life wasn’t as glamorous as it seemed: From battling anorexia to looking for love in New York City’s lesbian scene, Korn was struggling to reconcile her enduring inner struggles with the increasingly public demands of her new role. In this biting, clever, personal narrative, Korn takes us through the exploitative-as-ever underbelly of the newly “woke” world of women’s media.
Out June 9
Add these essential reads to your bookshelf.
