“You told me about the dream in which you were the last bird in the world, born an elegy to flight, how you woke grieving the animal you could have been with the ferocity of the sky’s gaping mouth, enjoyed the moment you had no one left to disappoint before remembering why.” An unflinching shapeshifter,…
Category: Lambda
The Descent of Monsters by Neon Yang
“My greatest fear is not that I will find some sort of half-animal creature, wild-eyed and untamed. It is that I will find a genuine monster: someone perfectly human but with a heart of stone, turned cruel from enduring years of cruelty. What if they are not a tool enslaved by the Protectorate but a…
Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam
“Where do non-binary people fit into our existing categories of sexuality? Is gender really the most helpful way to [categorize] the people we’re attracted to, or is it time for a new model: one that reflects the fact that knowing someone’s gender doesn’t always tell you much at all about who they are?” Today’s narratives…
The Deep by Rivers Solomon
“Forgetting was not the same as healing.” Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Her. She…
If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar
“From the moment our babies are born are we meant to lower them into the ground? To dress them in white? They send flowers before guns, thorns plucked from stem.” In her debut poetry collection, Asghar captures what it is like to be a Pakistani Muslim woman in America. She deftly weaves together her personal…
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
“To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.” Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two of them meet at a swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common….
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
“My parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews wearing pretty florals and a soft smile. They got combat boots and a mouth silent until it’s sharp as an island machete.” Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since she started to fill out and into…
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
“They don’t know you, Darioush.” Sohrab grabbed my shoulder. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”“I wish you could see yourself too.” I swallowed. “You’re the only person who never wanted me to change.” Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian…
Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers by Jake Skeets
“He bodies into mehalf cosmos, half coyote.” Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, the winner of the 2018 National Poetry Series, is a debut collection of poems by a dazzling geologist of queer eros. Skeet’s collection is an unflinching portrait of the west, but it is also a fierce reclamation of a living…
Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
Set in Washington, D.C., Speak no Evil follows two privileged teenagers from different familial backgrounds. A shared secret between the two sets off a series of events that has a violent and senseless ending. Niru, a track star at a prestigious private high school is bound for Harvard in the fall and has a perfect…
The Great Book Wyrm 