If 2019 gave us Hot Girl Summer and 2021 was Hot Vax Summer, why can’t 2022 be Hot Book Summer? You don’t even need beach access to participate in this seasonal trend. You can enjoy your summer reading from a park, coffee shop, library, or campground. Find a friend with a porch swing or stick to your faithful sofa. But wherever you prefer to flip pages, you’ll want something queer to read over the coming months.
Fortunately, there are so many great LGBTQ+ books coming out soon, enough to keep you entertained (and enlightened) all summer long. You van visit the streets of Baltimore in R. Eric Thomas’s Y A debut The Kings of B’More or head off to the mountain town of San Felipe, Mexico in Brenda Lozano’s beguiling Witches. This next stretch of 2022 is packed with queer literature for every place, taste, and mood; read on to discover 10 titles to add to your Hot (Queer) Book Summer reading list.
R. Eric Thomas is a longtime writer, playwright, and the author of 2020’s memoir-in-essays Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, among other projects. May brings the arrival of his debut YA novel Kings of B’More. The book follows Harrison and his best friend Linus, both queer Black teenagers living in Baltimore, as they spend their last summer together before the latter moves away. Together, they navigate the grief and excitement of growing up, the humor and tenderness of their friendship, and the city they love.
This debut short story collection from fiction writer and cartoonist Lydia Conklin is simultaneously joyful and dark, following characters who are all at the precipice of some kind of transformation. A closeted nonbinary person in their 50s takes their trans nephew to a queer YouTube convention; a lesbian couple who are not quite on the same page with each other seek out a sperm donor; another nonbinary character navigates dating and human connection at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic right before undergoing top surgery. Rainbows appear throughout, just one symbol of the shafts of light and humor that cut through these stories. Rainbow Rainbow is queer in every way, and while it contains difficult content, it is immersive and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.
This book came out last year and is getting its paperback release on June 14. The Very Nice Box was co-written by friends and neighbors Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett, which is itself a feat of collaboration. It is also a remarkable office culture satire, a poignant portrayal of friendship and grief, and a bit of a thriller, too. The novel follows Ava, a storage container designer at a Swedish modular furniture company (think: IKEA) whose partner passed away a few years prior. When the company makes a new hire named Mat, his upbeat corporate energy proves to be both unbearable and unbearably attractive. The Very Nice Box is at once a takedown of patriarchal capitalist structures and a deeply human story.
This dystopian novel follows Lee, a young Brooklynite who spends their days working for a corporation and generally feeling unfulfilled. At a warehouse party, they meet a mysterious character named X, who quickly disappears. When the U.S. government begins deporting “undesirable” citizens, Lee worries X is among them. X is an engrossing read that asks big questions about autonomy and freedom in every sense of those words.
Juniper Fitzgerald is an activist, academic, a former sex worker, and a mother, and in this hybrid memoir she writes about all of those identities. The writing combines X-Files fandom (Fitzgerald wrote a series of letters to Gillian Anderson as a child) with an exploration of impactful moments in her life. Throughout, Fitzgerald details the ways in which capitalism marginalizes bodies and forces harmful narratives onto us. Enjoy Me Among My Ruins is experimental in the best way, connecting dots and drawing parallels that make for a stunning read.
K-Ming Chang made waves with her debut novel, Bestiary, in 2020, which earned her a spot on the National Book Foundation “5 under 35” list (among other accolades). Now she’s back with another batch of poetic, airy prose in a new short story collection, Gods of Want, which follows the lives of several Asian American women. Chang is incredibly skilled at writing about the body while weaving in myth, mystery, and earthly realities. These tales about the myriad relationships between women are no exception, and reading them is a whole body experience.
In this dazzling debut, Sarah Thankam Mathews gifts us the character of Sneha, an Indian immigrant fresh out of college in Milwaukee, trying to make her way through young adulthood during the Great Recession. There is so much here to chew on: economic and food insecurity, tenants’ rights, coming into one’s own, queer romance, immigration, and the vitality of friendship. All This Could Be Different is an epic and beautiful first novel from a writer to watch.
Brenda Lozano is a Mexican writer with several works under her belt, including her 2014 novel Cuaderno ideal, which was translated into English under the title Loop in 2019, winning the PEN Award upon translation. This new novel opens with the murder of a character named Paloma. Paloma was also a traditional healer named Gaspar, and before her death she taught her cousin Feliciana all of her knowledge. When a reporter named Zoe is sent to report on Paloma’s death, she meets Feliciana, and their lives become entwined. Witches is a terrific read from a writer who explores the power of the feminine in a world set on narrowly defining and belittling it.
In this stunning work of memoir and reportage, Casey Parks, a longtime journalist who currently covers gender and family issues for the Washington Post, writes about her Southern upbringing, detailing how coming out as a lesbian in 2002 contributed to a fraught relationship with her mother, her home, and her faith. But the story gets even more endlessly interesting when Parks’ grandmother tells her about her childhood neighbor, described by the older relative as a “woman who lived as a man” named Roy Hudgins. As Parks tenaciously tries to learn all she can about Roy, she learns just as much about herself. Delving deep into ideas of sexuality, identity, otherness, and love, Diary of a Misfit is a must-read.
James Hannaham, a prolific writer and artist from New York, has written the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel Delicious Foods (2015) and the Lambda Literary Award winner God Says No (2009), among many other works of fiction, nonfiction, photography, and performance. With this new novel, Hannaham brings the reader along on an epic Fourth of July weekend shortly after Carlotta, a trans Afro-Latinx woman, is released on parole after spending decades in a men’s prison for her involvement in a robbery gone wrong. Over the course of the holiday, she navigates a different New York City than she remembers, exploring complex relationships with family and friends while dealing with the relentless injustice of the prison system. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta expertly balances the seriousness of the criminal legal system with the irreverence, absurdity, humor, and healing connections of Carlotta’s world.
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