Queer Short Story Collections + More YA Book Talk: June 10, 2024

Bookish Goods

Queer Book Club Print by pagodahome

This handmade print would be beautiful in any space where queer books and a love of talking about queer books are the focus. It is a print you’ll get by mail, rather than a download. Grab one from among many size options starting at $23.

New Releases

As always, you can peep the entire roundup of this week’s releases over here. I’ve pulled out three to talk about across a few genres because, well, we’re still in the thick of many releases and winnowing down what to highlight is tough!

The Color of a Lie by Kim Johnson

In this social justice thriller, Calvin and his family are white-passing. They’ve lived in Chicago forever but a tragedy in the city forces them to move. The family goes to an all-white suburb that offers them everything imaginable. Calvin’s dad pressures everyone to conform to the standards set there, especially because they can pass. The problem is Calvin can’t in good conscious do it. He’s instead elected to make friends across down where he doesn’t have to perform as someone he is not. It doesn’t hurt he can see his crush there, either.

But Calvin is beginning to uncover dark secrets about this suburb. It’s not safe for him nor his family, and now, he feels compelled to push back against his dad’s wishes to keep nice in order to save them—and in order to be who he truly is.

there is a door in the darkness book cover

There Is a Door in the Darkness by Kristin Cashore

The latest read from bestselling fantasy author Cashore is a contemporary novel…with a magical bent and it sounds so dang good.

Wilhelmina is the class of 2020. That means she began with a terrible presidential election in 2016 and ended with the pandemic shutting down schools before she could experience a graduation ceremony in 2020. She experienced a ton of personal losses during this time, too, and as a result of such upheaval, she’s elected to defer going to college. What she’ll do during this time, she’s not sure, but she cannot plow through like nothing has happened.

But magic is beginning to show up everywhere. She’s seeing weird flashes of whimsy, and while they don’t make sense when they appear, Wilhelmina is convinced they’re trying to send her a message. Now, she’s down the rabbit hole—heh—following a trail of elephants, birds, stale donuts, and more.

Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer

Ezra Cloud hates northern Minnesota, where he lives with his family. It’s not pretty, it’s not the rez at Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation, and it’s got the meanest bully he’s ever come face to face with in Matt. Matt is mean to Ezra, as well as Ezra’s best friend Nora.

Then Matt’s house burns down, and it happens the night after Ezra and Matt have a big brawl. Ezra is a prime suspect in the fire, even though he didn’t do it. There is no way he’ll get a word in about it, and his parents decide that the best recourse at this point is to send Ezra elsewhere. So he’s shipped to remote Canada where he’ll live with his grandfather.

Getting that far away won’t stop Matt’s family from trying to find Ezra and lay the blame of the fire on him, but it will help Ezra learn how to stand up for himself, lean into her heritage, and build a powerful relationship with one of his elder family members.

For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.

LGBTQ+ Short Story Collections

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about short stories lately, in part because that’s about my reading attention span anymore and in part because I just updated the (massive) index to YA short stories in anthologies.

Earlier this year while my colleague Danika was on vacation, I wrote several editions of their newsletter, Our Queerest Shelves. One of those posts was about queer YA short story collections. In honor of both highlighting some excellent anthologies and celebrating Pride this month, I’m sharing parts of that post this week.

The titles below are those which exclusively speak to the queer experience in some capacity, rather than anthologies that incorporate queer voices throughout (those are rad and worth picking up, too, of course!). Note that many of these are edited by white authors—publishing continues to be predominantly white—but the authors included in the anthologies are diverse and live at various intersections.

All Out, Out There, and Out Now, all edited by Saundra Mitchell

I am kicking this list off by cheating a tiny bit and including three titles for the price of one entry. Mitchell has gathered dozens of writers to contribute to this trilogy of anthologies that feature queer teens across genres. All Out is historical fiction, while Out There explores fantasy and offers a mix of contemporary and speculative stories. You can read them as standalones and in any order.

Being Ace : An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection edited by Madeline Dyer

Dyer has brought together a wide range of writers who are all writing about the asexuality experience. The stories cross genres, making it the kind of collection that not only fills in a lot of gaps in representation but presents the opportunity for readers to try out the kinds of genres that might otherwise not be their usual fare. You’ll get to explore haunted cemeteries, experience a vengeful water spirit, take a wheelchair race, and more.

Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror Delight edited by Shelly Page and Alex Brown

This one sits atop my to-read because it scratches all of my itches. First, it’s horror. Second, it’s exploring tropes in horror. Third, the characters are all queer and all from the global majority. Each story is about a Halloween night that changed the character’s life forever. Count me in.

Schoolbooks & Sorcery: An Anthology of Inclusive YA Urban Fantasy edited by Michael M. Jones

Born from a successful Kickstarter, this collection offers a range of stories in urban fantasy for YA readers. The urban fantasy in YA is not especially robust, so this addition—with its focus on queer stories—is much welcomed. Some of the contributors to this collection include Seanan McGuire, Cheryl Rainfield, Cecilia Tan, E.C. Myers, and Rajan Khanna.

Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic edited by g. haron davis

What exactly is the trans experience? The answer is that it is as diverse as trans people themselves. This is a short story collection that explores transness through a fantasy lens, allowing trans and nonbinary people to be magical beings and more.

Contributors to this collection are knock-outs and include AR Capetta and Cory McCarthy, g. haron davis, Mason Deaver, Jonathan Lenore Kastin, Emery Lee, Saundra Mitchell, Cam Montgomery, Ash Nouveau, Sonora Reyes, Renee Reynolds, Dove Salvatierra, Ayida Shonibar, Francesca Tacchi, and Nik Traxler.

We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures edited by Rob Costello

Monster means something slightly (or vastly!) different to everyone. This anthology, which features only trans and queer authors, attempts to explore the truth behind the experiences of being confronted by monsters—and being seen as a monster, too. It includes familiar monsters of legends and lore, as well as new ones. The contributor lineup is excellent, too, and includes Kalynn Bayron, David Bowles, H.E. Edgmon, Michael Thomas Ford, Naomi Kanakia, Claire Kann, Sam J. Miller, Alexandra Villasante, and more.

As always, thanks for hanging out. We’ll see you a couple more times this week!

Until then, happy reading!

–Kelly Jensen