D’Vaughn and Kris have six weeks to plan their dream wedding.

Their whole relationship is fake.

Instant I Do could be Kris Zavala’s big break. She’s right on the cusp of really making it as an influencer, so a stint on reality TV is the perfect chance to elevate her brand. And $100,000 wouldn’t hurt, either.

D’Vaughn Miller is just trying to break out of her shell. She’s sort of neglected to come out to her mom for years, so a big splashy fake wedding is just the excuse she needs.

All they have to do is convince their friends and family they’re getting married in six weeks. If anyone guesses they’re not for real, they’re out. Selling their chemistry on camera is surprisingly easy, and it’s still there when no one else is watching, which is an unexpected bonus. Winning this competition is going to be a piece of wedding cake.

But each week of the competition brings new challenges, and soon the prize money’s not the only thing at stake. A reality show isn’t the best place to create a solid foundation, and their fake wedding might just derail their relationship before it even starts.

Carina Adores is home to highly romantic contemporary love stories where LGBTQ+ characters find their happily-ever-afters. Discover a new Carina Adores book every month!

In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.

Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston’s myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra.

Bryan Washington’s brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.

The NYT-lauded author of D’VAUGHN AND KRIS PLAN A WEDDING is back with another witty and heartfelt novel celebrating unapologetic Black joy in all its forms. This body-positive, friends-to-lovers, lesbian romance tackles weighty topics while never losing that Chencia C. Higgins spark.

 Music producer and DJ Cyn Tha Starr likes her women femme, fun, and smart enough to know when it's over. Her ever-rotating roster has never been a problem until her latest girl clashes with Jucee, Cyn’s best friend and the most popular dancer at strip club Sanity.

It makes Cyn see Jucee in a different light. One with far fewer boundaries and a lot more kissing.

Juleesa Jones makes great money dancing the early shift at Sanity and spends most evenings with her son, her Sanity family or at Cyn's house. Relationships are not high on the priority list--until she's forced to admit that maybe friendship isn't the only thing she wants from her bestie.

But Cyn Tha Starr has a type, and despite how things look on the surface, Jucee doesn’t quite fit the bill. While the facts don't matter that much when it comes to feelings, one thing the two can agree on is that their history trumps everything. How difficult could it be to preserve a friendship when emotions—and hormones—are raging out of control?

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson’s a black day care teacher, and they’ve been together for a few years—good years—but now they’re not sure why they’re still a couple. There’s the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike’s immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they’ve ever known. And just maybe they’ll all be okay in the end. Memorial is a funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you’re supposed to be, and the limits of love.

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.

Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?

When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.

The beloved author of Don’t Cry for Me and Perfect Peace returns with a poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance, for fans of The Great Believers and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy.

At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.

Poignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac's Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me and a high-water mark in the career of an award-winning author.

Celebrate the release of Pretty: Memoir with author, KB Brookins!

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, May 29 @ 7:30 PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP with book to support the author and our programming. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.

Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.  

“I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body,” Brookins writes. “Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I’m perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can’t change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says ‘female,’ and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean—to be a girl-turned-man when you’re something else entirely?” 

Informed by KB Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency—whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as “other”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KB BROOKINS is a Black, queer, and trans writer and cultural worker from Texas. They are the author of Freedom House and How to Identify Yourself with a Wound. Brookins has poems, essays, and installation art published in Academy of American Poets, Teen Vogue, Poetry Magazine, Prizer Arts & Letters, Okayplayer, Poetry Society of America, Autostraddle, and other venues. They have earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, Equality Texas, and others.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. He is the founder of “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their on their own terms, in their own communities. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.

51 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W. J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America

W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.

In the powerful follow up to her critically acclaimed debut collection, poet and activist Fariha Róisín is writing, praying, clawing, and scratching her way out of the grips of generational trauma on the search for the freedom her mother never received and the kindness she couldn’t give.

This collection of poetry asks a kaleidoscope of questions: Who is my family? My father? How do I love a mother no longer here? Can I see myself? What does it mean to be Bangladeshi? What is a border? Innately hopeful and resolutely strong, Fariha's voice turns to the optimism and beauty inherent in rebuilding the self, and in turn, the world that the self moves through. Ubiquitous to the human experience, Survival Takes a Wild Imagination is an illuminating breath of fresh air from a powerful poetic voice.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of All Boys Aren’t Blue comes an empowering set of essays about Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance.

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer – and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.

Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.

Our meeting will be on Thursday, June 22, 2023, at 7:00 PM CST at KINDRED STORIES. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).  If you haven't read the book at all, that's ok too.

Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

About the Book

It isn’t always lonely at the top.

Noah Blue’s finally got her foot in the door. After clawing her way to the top of the charts with her webcomic, she’s garnered enough attention to earn a full-time position at a comic company re-launching their cult classic comic: Queen Leisah.

Queen Leisah is predicted to be an instant bestseller with movie deals already in the making. Things are falling into place. There’s nowhere to go but up…as soon as she gets one person out of her way.

Sage Montgomery has always been the best artist in every building she’s stepped foot in. Raw talent’s gotten her webcomic to the top of the charts every month for the past eight years. She’s been the best for as long as she can remember. Sure, her career has plateaued but that can be fixed with a big, mainstream comic.

She was promised full creative control over Leisah. Instead, she got a shared credit with the one artist who’s been breathing down her neck since college. The one artist who has a fighting chance of being better than her. Sage and Noah have to work as a team — or, at least appear to work as a team. They thought the hardest part of the relaunch would be drawing together. But that’s easy in comparison to resisting their feelings for each other.

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.

Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti poetica” and “ars america” to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem―part map, part annotation, part visual argument―offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love―those given and made―are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

Winner of the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. One of Buzzfeed's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2021, NBC's 10 Most Notable LGBTQ Books of 2021, and Pink News' Best LGBTQ Books of 2021.

"This hurricane of delirious, lonely, lewd tales is a taxonomy and grand unified theory of the boyfriend, in every tense." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

"I loved this book--raunchy, irreverent, deliberate, sexy, angry, and tender, in its own way." --Roxane Gay

An irrerverent, sensitive, and inimitable look at gay dysfunction through the eyes of a cult hero

Transgressive, foulmouthed, and brutally funny, Brontez Purnell's 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting the urge to self-sabotage. As they tiptoe through minefields of romantic, substance-fueled misadventure--from dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama--Purnell's characters strive for belonging in a world that dismisses them for being Black, broke, and queer. In spite of it--or perhaps because of it--they shine.

Armed with a deadpan wit, Purnell finds humor in even the darkest of nadirs with the peerless zeal, insight, and horniness of a gay punk messiah. Together, the slice-of-life tales that writhe within 100 Boyfriends are an inimitable tour of an unexposed queer underbelly. Holding them together is the vision of an iconoclastic storyteller, as fearless as he is human.

From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an "empire of critique" from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia.

With this book, Sa'ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis. He explores critical junctures in the history of Palestinian LGBTQ activism, revealing the queer Palestinian spirit of agency, defiance, and creativity, in the face of daunting pressures and forces working to constrict it. Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia.

A queer Black feminist debunks the myth of rainbow solidarity, repositioning Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ people at the forefront of queer pasts, presents, and futures

Your favorite Black queer studies professor Kaila Adia Story says the rainbow ain’t never been enough in this introduction to the current state of queer intersectionality, or lack thereof. Story argues that to be queer is to be political, and the carefully glittered façade of solidarity in the pride movement veils dangerous neoliberal ideals of apolitical queer embodiment. The rainbow as a symbol of communal solidarity is a hollow offering when cis white LGBTQ people are allowed to opt out of divesting from white supremacy, misogyny, and transphobia.

The Rainbow Ain’t Never Been Enuf fills a necessary gap in our understanding of how racism, transphobia, and antiblackness operate in liberal spaces. Black feminist and queer theorist Kaila Adia Story blends analysis, pop culture, and her lived experiences to explore the silencing practices of mainstream queer culture. She touches on cornerstone issues of the movement like

* the whitewashing of queer history and commodification of pride celebrations
* the appropriation of the Black and Latinx ball scene and culture
* the racialized and gendered violence inflicted upon Black trans women
* the exclusion of the lives and work of activists like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and CeCe McDonald from queer history
* the lack of remembrance and respect for the lives of the Black and Lantinx queer and trans people who have always been on the frontlines of queer liberation

Expanding beyond the classroom, Story utilizes her expertise as a scholar of queer theory to offer readers a comprehensive understanding of how racism operates in these spaces and what we can do to create a more equitable future.

Portrayals of James Baldwin and others in his circle highlight the iconic writer’s activism

The American writer and activist James Baldwin (1924–87) considered himself a “witness” as he challenged perspectives on America and its history through his work. He was often recognized for speaking out against injustice when other like-minded artists, collaborators and organizers were overshadowed or silenced. By bringing together artworks that feature James Baldwin alongside portraits of other key figures who had an impact on his life, This Morning, This Evening, So Soon situates Baldwin among a pantheon of culture bearers who were instrumental in shaping his life and legacy, particularly in relationship to his advocacy for gay rights. The book accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, curated by the National Portrait Gallery's Director of Curatorial Affairs, Rhea L. Combs, in consultation with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hilton Als. Well-known portraits by Beauford Delaney and Bernard Gotfryd are shown alongside paintings, photographs and films representing key figures in Baldwin’s circle. By viewing Baldwin in this context of community, readers will come to understand how Baldwin’s sexuality and faith, artistic curiosities and notions of masculinity―coupled with his involvement in the civil rights movement―helped shape his writing and long-lasting legacy.
The book relies on portraiture to explore the interwoven lives of Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry (writer and activist), Barbara Jordan (lawyer, educator and politician), Bayard Rustin (leader in social movements), Lyle Ashton Harris (artist), Essex Hemphill (poet and activist), Marlon Riggs (filmmaker, poet and activist) and Nina Simone (singer-songwriter, pianist and activist), among others.
Artists include: Richard Avedon, Glenn Ligon, Donald Moffett, Beauford Delaney, Bernard Gotfryd, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Jack Whitten.

*ships/ready for pick-up in 7-10 business days*

Winner of the 2021 In The Margins Award

"When reading this book, all I feel is kindness."-- Sam Smith, Grammy and Oscar award-winning singer and songwriter

"Thank God we have Alok. And I'm learning a thing or two myself."--Billy Porter, Emmy award-winning actor, singer, and Broadway theater performer

"Beyond the Gender Binary will give readers everywhere the feeling that anything is possible within themselves"--Princess Nokia, musician and co-founder of the Smart Girl Club

"A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change."-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"An affirming, thoughtful read for all ages." -- School Library Journal, starred review

In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

“Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Yes, I gave this book a six-star rating out of a possible five. Where to even begin with how much I loved this book.” Goodreads Reviewer, Transgender Bookworm

Die-hard traditional Texas is the backdrop where success and nonconformity cannot coexist for Bryan Hicks, an African-American divorced father of two kids, Lindsey, the athletic golden child, and Lance, the unorthodox queer thespian.

Bryan's mother loves bragging to her high-society girlfriends about Bryan's accomplishments and promotion to VP at a large multinational oil/gas company. Bryan vigorously steers clear of conversations with his mother about who he is dating because Bryan has been secretly dating Nadia, a transgender woman.

Cakewalk is contemporary fiction based on Douglas Bell's past experiences. Bell speaks from an African-American heteronormative (privileged) cisgender voice to candidly expose the trauma of transphobia and homophobia. Bell wants to humanize the struggle of trans women to live on their terms. Bell asks us to believe in ourselves, trust in ourselves, and don’t let society define who you are. There is enough courage within you to be the person you want to be.

Editorial Reviews
Goodreads Reviewer, Erikka
I must say this book absolutely had me by the first chapter. Each character represented someone i have have met or known and truly had me hooked. The fact that as I dove deeper into each page it was as if I was watching a movie of so many lives play out right before me. This up and coming author has truly snatched my attention and made me reflect on the perspectives of others as well as the symbolism throughout this read. If you want to laugh, cry, feel anger, empathy, and reflection on how and who you are as well as get a little hot and heavy this is definitely the right book for you. Step into a world you may have never known existed and watch the similarities of what all humans long for no matter the pronoun.

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

From the bestselling author of The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School comes a story in the vein of John Tucker Must Die but tackling serious topics. It’s a revenge story told with nuance, heart, and the possibility of healing. 

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers, despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no. 

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done. 

With his funny, big-hearted adult rom com debut, bestselling, award-winning YA author Julian Winters shows sometimes fake dating your ex can turn into a second chance.

When Denzel “Denz” Carter’s workaholic father and CEO of 24 Carter Gold unexpectedly announces his retirement, the competition is on for who will become his successor. To convince his family members that he’s capable of commitment, Denz impulsively lies about being in a serious relationship.

Now Denz needs to find a fake boyfriend to seal the deal on the CEO position. Denz is forced to turn to the last person he wants to be in a pretend (or any) relationship with: Braylon, the man who broke his heart.

Braylon’s sudden reappearance in Denz’s life turns everything upside down. But, apparently, he needs Denz’s connections to the mayor to win his own promotion. So, they strike a deal. It’s all business until the funny texts and the confusing kisses leave Denz struggling to separate this temporary arrangement from the affairs of his heart.

I Think They Love You is a celebration of love, queer communities, big families―in all their beautiful complications― healing, and, most importantly, falling in love with the person you’re becoming.

Named a Best Book by: The Globe and Mail, Indigo, Out Magazine, Audible, CBC, Apple, Quill & Quire, Kirkus Reviews, Brooklyn Public Library, Writers’ Trust of Canada, Autostraddle, Bitch, and BookRiot.

Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Transgender Nonfiction
Nominated for the 2019 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award
Winner of the 2018  Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design – Prose Non-Fiction

"Cultural rocket fuel." --Vanity Fair

"Emotional and painful but also layered with humour, I'm Afraid of Men will widen your lens on gender and challenge you to do better. This challenge is a necessary one--one we must all take up. It is a gift to dive into Vivek's heart and mind." --Rupi Kaur, bestselling author of The Sun and Her Flowers and Milk and Honey

A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl--and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.

Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.

Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.

*ships in 7 - 10 days*

Love, Simon meets Bend It Like Beckham in this feel-good contemporary romance about a trans athlete who must decide between fighting for his right to play and staying stealth.

“A sharply observant and vividly drawn debut. I loved every minute I spent in this story, and I’ve never rooted harder for a jock in my life.” – New York Times bestselling author Becky Albertalli

Fifteen-year-old Spencer Harris is a proud nerd, an awesome big brother, and a David Beckham in training. He's also transgender. After transitioning at his old school leads to a year of isolation and bullying, Spencer gets a fresh start at Oakley, the most liberal private school in Ohio.

At Oakley, Spencer seems to have it all: more accepting classmates, a decent shot at a starting position on the boys' soccer team, great new friends, and maybe even something more than friendship with one of his teammates. The problem is, no one at Oakley knows Spencer is trans—he's passing.

But when a discriminatory law forces Spencer's coach to bench him, Spencer has to make a choice: cheer his team on from the sidelines or publicly fight for his right to play, even though it would mean coming out to everyone—including the guy he's falling for.

Four years ago, Bryan Hicks left behind a lucrative corporate job to open a bakery with his trans girlfriend, Nadia Brooks.

In conservative Houston, Texas, they had to sue a transphobic landlord just to lease a space. Even so, the shop was

humming along until the Covid-19 pandemic slowed their business to a trickle. Cash-strapped and desperate, Bryan turns

to an unsavory character for a loan; when he's unable to pay it back, he's forced to rent out the bakery to an illegal trans

strip show to make some extra cash. The dancers and customers trash the place, and one night it gets so rowdy Bryan

fires a gun just to clear the store. How did his dream become such a nightmare? The novel moves back in time to tell the

history of the bakery, from the first "love cake" Bryan made for Nadia to Nadia's Hail Mary effort to win cash in a TV baking

competition. All the while, Bryan strives to be a supportive father to his queer son and his increasingly right-wing daughter.

Can Bryan save his bakery and his relationship with Nadia, or is he about to lose his love and livelihood in one fell swoop?

Bell's workmanlike prose captures both the tranquil atmosphere of the bakery and the wild energy of the trans party scene,

as here, when Bryan and Nadia visit a strip club: "Now that they were inside, Nadia looked overwhelmed, standing very

stiff. She looked scared to touch anything. Bryan grabbed her and led her through the mesh of bodies to the middle bar.

He handed Nadia a beer, and they both turned around to check out the raw scene."

From the author of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School, two best bros fake an engagement–but will their friendship survive?

It’s about time roommates Alejandro and Kenny get married. Or at least, that’s what all their close friends and family think when they announce their engagement. The kicker? The two are faking their whole relationship so Alejandro can get a green card. But if Han was going to marry anyone, it would be his ride or die since second grade.

Han has never been able to put down roots, and the only one who truly breaks through his walls is Kenny. Sweet, sensitive Kenny is newly single, and what better distraction from his soul-sucking relationship than proposing marriage to Han? Kenny can’t think of anything more fun than spending his life with his best friend, even if it’s just for a piece of paper. But as Kenny keeps up the charade, he’s soon struggling to resist their sizzling chemistry.

The line between fact and fiction begins to blur the closer they get to their wedding date. With all eyes on Han and Kenny—including a meddling ex and immigration officers—will these two bros make it down the altar for real?

Accidentally on Purpose dives into Kristen Kish’s childhood as a Korean adoptee in the Midwest, finding purpose in kitchens, and becoming the season 10 winner of—and now host—of Top Chef all the while navigating life in the spotlight, coming out in her adult years, and all the life lessons in between.

Kristen Kish never set out to live a public life—not when she was a carefree softball-tossing kid, not in high school working at a pretzel stand, not even, briefly, as a working model. And definitely not when she finally landed her true calling as a chef. But in those early days, becoming a chef meant tethering oneself to a restaurant, not a television set. But it happened naturally (or as naturally as possible, given all the technology and TV magic involved), even if it was totally unanticipated.
 
Of course, like most things in life, the road to this full circle moment—from Top Chef season 10 winner to now hosting—was so much more winding and complicated than it may have appeared from the outside. From growing up as an adoptee in the Midwest, to trying to fit in with all the other girls who were busy dating boys, to coming out and finding love when she least expected it, Kristen learned that, unlike a map, no set of plans or definitions can dictate or explain a life. In fact, accidents happen. That curveballs will come. And they will often be consequential to one’s path.
 
In Accidentally on Purpose, what defines Kristen’s story aren’t the missteps or even the pleasant surprises that crop up. It’s how to respond when they do, and the decisions made at those intersections. Because while accidents may be unexpected, they don’t have to be at odds with purpose. And as Kristen approaches life’s milestones, big and small, with intention—the ones she expected, and those she didn’t—she realizes she can write her own definitions and chart her own course.

A groundbreaking survey of the language used around queerness in the Arab world, with contributions by leading Arab queer writers, thinkers and activists, The Queer Arab Glossary is a first-of-its-kind survey of the linguistic landscape surrounding queerness in the Arab world. 

It brings together more than 300 words and terms used to refer to queer people across the spoken Arabic dialects, ranging from the humorous to the harrowing, serious to tongue-in-cheek, pejorative to endearing.

Featuring anecdotes and fascinating historical facts, the bilingual glossary paints a linguistic picture of how queer bodies are perceived within the Arab region. 

It includes insightful essays by eight leading Arab queer artists, academics, activists and writers, which situate the glossary in a modern social and political context.

With beautiful, witty illustrations by Haitham Haddad, The Queer Arab Glossary is a powerful response to myths about queer people in the Arab world. It is proof that the LGBTQI+ Arab community is alive and thriving.

LGBTQ+ influencers Terrell and Jarius open up about their joyful love story and family life—and the challenges they've encountered along the way—in this honest, powerful guidebook.

Terrell and Jarius Joseph—a picturesque home, adorable children, family businesses, and millions of fans online. Love Out Loud is Terrell and Jarius’s guide to help couples of all kinds sustain their relationship and nurture their nontraditional family. With the Josephs’s essential roadmap you’ll learn how to:
* Define your needs as individuals and as a couple to build the life of your dreams
* Recognize growing pains before they hurt your marriage
* Break tradition to discover your unique parenting style
* Build a circle of support for your children

We all crave genuine love, belonging, and the freedom to be our true selves, no matter what our family unit looks like. Love Out Loud is the story of the Josephs’ quest to redefine fatherhood. After enduring a devastating miscarriage followed by two premature births by surrogacy just five weeks apart, Terrell and Jarius realized that to have the family of their dreams, they needed to live and love by their own rules. Filled with empathetic advice and a healthy dose of real talk, you, too, can discover how to build a relationship and family your way and build the life of your dreams.

*ships in 7 - 10 business days*

When a Mariachi star transfers schools, he expects to be handed his new group's lead vocalist spot―what he gets instead is a tenacious current lead with a very familiar, very kissable face. In a twenty-four-hour span, Rafael Alvarez led North Amistad High School’s Mariachi Alma de la Frontera to their eleventh consecutive first-place win in the Mariachi Extravaganza de Nacional; and met, made out with, and almost hooked up with one of the cutest guys he’s ever met. Now eight months later, Rafie’s ready for one final win. What he didn’t plan for is his family moving to San Antonio before his senior year, forcing him to leave behind his group while dealing with the loss of the most important person in his life―his beloved abuelo. Another hitch in his plan: The Selena Quintanilla-Perez Academy’s Mariachi Todos Colores already has a lead vocalist, Rey Chavez―the boy Rafie made out with―who now stands between him winning and being the great Mariachi Rafie's abuelo always believed him to be. Despite their newfound rivalry for center stage, Rafie can’t squash his feelings for Rey. Now he must decide between the people he’s known his entire life or the one just starting to get to know the real him. Canto Contigo is a love letter to Mexican culture, family and legacy, the people who shape us, and allowing ourselves to forge our own path. At its heart, this is one of the most glorious rivals-to-lovers romance about finding the one who challenges you in the most extraordinary ways.