Collection: Shop Queer

Minneapolis, 2021. Curtis is newly out, single, and ready to take his life in a different direction. Anton is an enigmatic young man who recognizes Curtis from their pre-pandemic lives. One casual drink leads to a charged relationship layered with unspeakable needs.

A graphic novella about connection and failure, grief and responsibility, and the effect of world-changing events on the soul of the individual.

Originally published as part of the 2022 ShortBox Comics Fair.

That fateful encounter at the planetarium changed Subaru Miyazawa's life forever. After all, that's where he met his true love, Tougo Amase, photographer extraordinaire! And now that they're officially together, every day is a kind of happily-ever-after! That is, until the day Tougo admits that he's planning to move away...so where does that leave Subaru?

An evocative and heartfelt graphic memoir about the challenges of living with a progressive disability.

When Maria Sweeney was young, she kept count of her broken bones. As she grew older, she stopped. Living with Bruck syndrome, a rare progressive condition that gives her very brittle bones and joint abnormalities, meant that those numbers climbed and climbed.

Today, she struggles every day, living in an often-inaccessible world. As an ambulatory wheelchair user, ordinary actions like entering a building, sitting at a café, or holding a cup of tea can be drastically different for her than for others.

With lush illustrations, Maria tells the story of her lifelong struggle to obtain care in an increasingly complicated and disinterested US healthcare system. But for every step that presents a struggle, there's also beauty, friendship, art, and growth. She documents the relief she's found in alternative therapies, particularly medical marijuana; in loving community and chosen family; and in nature and her creative practice. A powerfully understated critique of our modern world, Brittle Joints offers a generous, expansive look at how to live and love amidst the challenges of survival.

This comprehensive yet accessible resource provides readers with everything they need to know about intersex - people who are born with any range of sex characteristics that might not fit typical binary notions about male and female bodies.

Covering a wide variety of topics in an easy-to-read way, the book explores what intersex is, what it is not, a detailed overview of its 40 or so different variations, historical and social aspects of intersex and medical intervention, along with practical, proven advice on how professionals can help and support intersex people.

Written by an intersex man with over 65 years of first-hand experience, this book is an ideal introduction for any medical, health and social care professional or student, as well as family members and friends, seeking to improve their practice and knowledge.

Ginger Hendrix's finely crafted memoir, Church Girl is a Gay, recounts her life in unflinching detail. In a state centered in the Bible Belt, in the center of a proudly Christian city, Hendrix tells her story with white-hot honesty as she writes, ". . . off every road I'd ever traveled was littered with the footprints of youth group leaders leading games out of my garage. And it wasn't until my heart broke so badly that I couldn't stand up under the pain that my feet went looking for the soft, sandy ground of places where people weren't sure of most anything. I was married with three kids, a leader in an evangelical non-profit. I was 48, and I knew my insides felt built to love a woman. But I still didn't know I was gay--because I'd never asked the question. There was no question available to ask."

There's a new baby in our family!

In this board book told in sweet rhyming couplets, we are invited to celebrate a new baby, and their gender-neutral pronouns, from the point of view of their excited siblings. The baby is snuggly and sweet in their bright pajamas, they love to snooze and sway...and when asked if they're a boy or a girl, we're told, "We aren't sure of their gender yet--and they bring us so much joy." Accompanied by delightful photos of babies and siblings of diverse ethnicities, it's clear that no matter which gender pronouns baby eventually chooses, they are loved just for who they are, and always will be.

From the critically acclaimed creator of Wandering Son and Sweet Blue Flowers, a heart-tugging manga about two busy women who think they've figured out the whole adulting thing...until they fall in love with each other.

Is it worth making everyone else miserable just so we can be happy? Even as they wrestle with this question, Ayano and Akari decide to move in together. Their new life together sustains Ayano after salacious rumors chased her out of her last teaching job. Meanwhile, Wataru is left hurting in the wake of the divorce and Eri struggles with an adulterous love of her own.

More Than Representation: The Cheat Codes to Own Your Seat at the Table puts Raven Jemison's unique story of struggle and success as a queer, black woman and prominent executive in the male-dominated sports industry into the hands of those who need to hear it.

Through a series of short stories, Raven unveils her personal narrative with graceful resolve, revealing the truth about the obstacles she has encountered on her journey as a business leader - a journey that is still unfolding.

More Than Representation sheds light on what marginalized communities need to know to earn - and keep - a seat at the table. It addresses the complex power structures that exist as barriers to increased minority representation in business and provides tactical advice on how marginalized leaders can leverage their platforms to open doors and create opportunities for those who follow.

From community activist and poet Katerina Jeng, a lyric exploration of the author's journey back to her voice, her power, and the truest version of herself.

Gospel of a Whole Sun is a moving collection of poetry chronicling one woman's journey of self-discovery over the course of three pivotal years. It documents the aftermath of a traumatic breakup, navigating anti-Asian violence during a global pandemic, coming out, and, ultimately, falling in love with life again.

A joyous and inspired debut from a gifted creator and healer, Gospel of a Whole Sun is a poignant look at the relationship of art-making to personal liberation.

The body that Robyn Henderson-Espinoza inhabits is a nonbinary body, a trans body, a body in two races--and a body continually in discovery. Theirs is also a body on sojourn invested in experience, body understanding, and engagement in and for human thriving. Henderson-Espinoza relates coming into a new body story, beginning with the deep emotional work of connecting the abstract intelligence of their mind with their body's intelligence, to explore the relationship between living and becoming, doing and listening.

Combining that deep listening and living with their work in activism, Body Becoming offers us a way of understanding the body beyond constructions--political or medical-industrial-complex defined--toward cultivating the body as important in our endeavors to build a more inclusive vision for democracy. Mixing memoir and faith, somatics theory and body practice, Henderson-Espinoza steers us through territory both familiar and difficult--as we discover embodiment as the primary place of deep wisdom, where culture shifts originate and materialize--and a better world becomes, as we too become.

A galvanizing look at life on the margins of society by a crowning figure of Latin America's queer counterculture who celebrated "melodrama, kitsch, extravagance, and vulgarity of all kinds" (Garth Greenwell) in playful, performative, linguistically inventive essays, now available in English for the first time

A Penguin Classic

"I speak from my difference," wrote Pedro Lemebel, an openly queer writer and artist living through Chile's AIDS epidemic and the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. In brilliantly innovative essays--known as crónicas--that combine memoir, reportage, fiction, history, and poetry, he brought visibility and dignity to sexual minorities, the poor, and the powerless. Touching on everything from Che Guevara to Elizabeth Taylor, from the aftermath of authoritarian rule to the daily lives of Chile's locas--a slur for trans women and effeminate gay men that he boldly reclaims--his writing infuses political urgency with playfulness, realism with absurdism, and resistance with camp, and his AIDS crónicas immortalize a generation of Chileans doubly "disappeared" by casting each loca, as she falls sick, in the starring role of her own private tragedy. This volume brings together the best of his work, introducing readers of English to the subversive genius of a literary activist and queer icon whose acrobatic explorations of the Santiago demimonde reverberate around the world.

A girl thought to be a boy steals her sister's skirt, while a boy thought to be a girl refuses to wear a cornflower blue dress. One boy's love of a soldier leads to the death of a stranger. The present takes a bittersweet journey into the past when a man revisits the summer school where he had "an accidental romance." And a forgotten mother writes a poignant letter to the teenage daughter she hasn't seen for fourteen years.

Poised between the past and the future are the stories of now. In nontraditional narratives, short stories, and brief graphics, tales of anticipation and regret, eagerness and confusion present distinctively modern views of love, sexuality, and gender identification. Together, they reflect the vibrant possibilities available for young people learning to love others--and themselves--in today's multifaceted and quickly changing world.

No one gives you a manual on how to be a Deaf gay man.

Raymond Luczak shares stories from his days growing up as a Deaf gay man in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and learning signs in secret, trying to follow music on the radio in order to be cool like his hearing classmates, and feeling clueless whenever gay cultural icons like the Village People, Queen, and Bette Midler were promoted in his small hometown. After he graduated from high school and enrolled at Gallaudet University, he discovered gay literature and came out soon after. Luczak eventually got involved with Deaf theater collaborators, educators, and sign language interpreters, from which his worldview is substantially reshaped on issues of identity, literacy, technology, and family.

Assembly Required offers a rare in-depth glimpse into what it means to be a Deaf gay man living between the Deaf and hearing worlds. This edition incorporates Luczak's new observations from the last ten years since it appeared in 2009.

"One of the great virtues of Assembly Required is its accessibility. Not only is it written in clear prose divided into comfortable segments, but there is little academic jargon to provide a stumbling block to the reader who might be venturing into Deaf or gay literature for the first time ... There may be no better introduction to the Deaf gay life." --Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of over 20 books, including Flannelwood, The Kinda Fella I Am, and A Babble of Objects. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"Funny and informative, Jade effortlessly hits the sweet spot between silly and sincere to deliver a delightful treat despite its heavy topic. Grab a snack, a drink and definitely grab Food School!" - Hana Chatani, author of Give Her Back To Me

A twenty-something college dropout enrols in a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery. As they change their relationship with food, their relationships with people change, too.

Olive's post-secondary education isn't what they'd planned. Instead of college, they spend five days a week, eight hours a day at what Olive calls "Food School" a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery where they learn, talk, and cry about eating disorders as part of a survivor support group.

Intensely committed to recovery, Olive confronts the secretive, self-destructive, and sometimes tragically comedic nature of their illness, while struggling with the complexities of modern mental health care. With support and perspective from their roommate, a fellow patient, and their partner, Olive learns to open up about their abusive relationship with food and exercise--and finds ways to cope with the reality of living in a society that actively encourages disordered eating.

In this fictional slice of life comic, Jade Armstrong (Scout Is Not a Band Kid) explores the ways our relationships with food impact our connections with the people we love.