Beast at Every Threshold by Natalie Wee

“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,…

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…

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…