Queer reading ideas to go with your giant scarf this fall

Those summer nights at Hanlan's may be dwindling, but that means you can finally get to the book you've been lugging across the ferry to (ostensibly) crack open on the beach !

Here are five queer reads to dig into this fall — after you've shaken the residual sand from their pages, of course.

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This month, Gay Writes is reading Catherine Lacey’s prodigious Biography of X !

Famed for her novels, art installations, and collaborations / feuds with the likes of David Bowie, Tom Waits, and Susan Sontag, the artist known as X was one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic and divisive cultural figures until her sudden death in 1996. Her past is unknown, having never spoken of it publicly, and coupled with the adoption of a pseudonym in 1982, X’s true identity remains a mystery — until today.

CM Lucca, the artist’s widow, has resolved to set the record straight after the publication of an inaccurate biography. Against what she knows would be her late wife’s wishes, CM traces X’s story through an American history of authoritarian theocracy, seeking to better understand the woman she deified. Drawing on X’s archives and interviews — complete with childhood photos, produced artworks, footnotes and bibliography — the resulting biography unravels her unexplained past and explores her complex relationship with contemporary America.

And it is, like X herself, entirely a work of fiction.

Catherine has crafted a profoundly original epic, blending fiction with reality to explore the depths of love, art, and imagination. And through X’s tantalizing mystery, she shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.

Lydia Tár, eat your heart out.

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In the anthology, It Came From the Closet, editor Joe Vallese brings together twenty five queer and trans writers to explore the complex reciprocity between queerness and the horror genre. The collection highlights how horror films, despite often being misogynist and homophobic, have also offered queer viewers avenues for subversive readings and self-reflection. Through iconic films like Halloween and Hereditary, contributors highlight the genre's parallels to their own experiences with queerness, marginalization, and identity.

They write about being trans men and women, of coming out of the closet, of the AIDS crisis and conservative families — and by seeing themselves in the genre's monsters and outcasts, these writers (including Carmen Maria mf Machado!!!!) create a powerful dialogue about horror’s potential to simultaneously oppress and empower queer audiences.

A huge slay. Literally.

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Camila Sosa Villada's Bad Girls (translated by Kit Maude) is a gritty and fantastical work of autofiction that follows the coming-of-age journey of Camila, a 'travesti' sex worker in Argentina. Born in a poverty-stricken town and assigned male at birth, Camila faces violent rejection from her parents when she begins to understand her true identity. At eighteen, she moves to the city for university and becomes a sex worker to survive, finding refuge and solidarity in a tight-knit community of travestis led by the enigmatic Auntie Encarna, a 178 year old eternal who houses their found family. And when the matriarch decides to take in an abandoned infant found in a dumpster, the escalating violence of townsfolk to the travestis begins to rupture the enchantment of their home.

Camila takes readers to a world where magic is real and reality is cruel, weaving personal and collective stories to offer a rare glimpse into the travesti experience. She challenges conventional Western narratives about gender and sexuality, all while celebrating the resilience and beauty of those living on the margins.

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I Will Greet the Sun Again, by Khashayar J. Khabushani, is a poignant coming-of-age novel about a young Iranian-American boy growing up in Los Angeles. It's told in three parts: the first, in 90s LA, where K and his brothers live with their parents. Their father, an oppressive presence slowly crushing the family through neglect and delusional pride, smuggles away his three sons in the dead of night to get away from their mother's influence, taking them to Iran. It's an ancestral home they barely recognize, and one they judge harshly. With the help of some concerned family, they return home a few months later, the trip changing each of them differently. K, whose queerness has begun to manifest itself, now wrestles with the dualities of his identities — the burden of ethnic tradition, his longing to belong in America, and a desire for freedom from the constraints of familial and cultural norms.

Khashayar delicately handles the intersections of sexuality, ethnicity, and the diasporic experience. It's a profound character study of an immigrant family, providing a window into the emotional complexities of growing up between two worlds.

Soft and tender and just gorgeous.

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And finally...

Newly out Julia Fox ("so sorry, boys"), who exploded into fame as Josh Safdie's muse when he wrote Uncut Gems, really delivered on the promise of her first book, of course.

Down the Drain (out in paperback this October), chronicles her tumultuous journey beyond the headlines. Her lore includes, but is certainly not limited to: an impoverished, dysfunctional childhood (like drinking cough syrup when they ran out of candy at home); a helluva lot of drugs (like mistakenly rubbing cigarette ash on her gums while looking for cocaine residue); a long list of boyfriends, each competing to be worse than the last (like the dealer whom she tries to help evade Interpol and continues to stalk her from Rikers); not to mention the throwaway anecdotes that are truly stranger than fiction (like getting slapped in the face by a priest at the Vatican in front of the dead pope) — dating Kanye West is the least interesting thing that Julia Fox has ever done.

The raw honesty of her memoir, outlining her struggles with abuse and addiction so vividly, is a testament to the way she lives her life with integrity to herself. Beyond the chaos — and trust me, there's heaps of it — is a deep vulnerability, one she taps into to confront the contradictions of her public and private selves. It's a genuinely authentic story of her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon.

And it's a masterpiece, if I do say so myself.

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Follow Gay Writes on IG and save your soul. You can read last winter's reco's here and look forward to way more in the future on the blog.