by Maria Haskins
If there is one thing I want you to take away from this list of reading recommendations for Pride Month, it’s that you should read queer all year. One way to do this is to get reading recommendations on a regular basis from, for example, Bogi Takács on their social media and at Bogi Reads the World, and Charles Payseur who shares queer speculative short fiction on his Patreon every month. I also recently found some great queer reading by Borrowed and Blue on BlueSky.
You can also check out the 2025 Pride Bundle, curated by Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott. It’s a great bunch of queer books, including The Map and the Territory by A.M. Tuomala, Be the Sea by Clara Ward, A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert, and So You Want to be A Robot by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.
Reading short fiction is another excellent way to get more queer fiction in your life. Some great anthology picks include the annual anthology We’re Here – The Best Queer Speculative Fiction from Neon Hemlock, and The Crawling Moon – Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread, also from NH. Or pick up the USA Today bestseller Amplitudes – Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, edited by Lee Mandelo and published by Erewhon.
Another anthology in my to-read pile is Inara: Light of Utopia from Meraj Publishing, “a groundbreaking anthology that unites the voices of queer and trans Palestinians from around the world”.
If you want to support a brand new anthology of queer fiction, there’s a Kickstarter running right now for Wrath Month – Stories of Queer Rage, described as the “punk anthology where queer rage kicks down the doors of fantasy, science-fiction and horror.” This anthology promises vengeful lesbian witches, antifascist mutants, and transfem superheroes, and I cannot wait to read it.
Also worth a look is a recently published special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly featuring trans speculative media and fiction. To quote the introduction by Jed Samer and Cáel M. Keegan, the issue “(re)turns to the speculative to better understand the present temporalization of trans life, haunted by a trans future that can by definition never actually take place.”
For more excellent queer fiction, check out the Lambda Literary Awards, AKA the Lammys. The Lammys are awarded by Lambda Literary, an organization that champions LGBTQ books and authors and the stated objective of the awards is “to garner national visibility for LGBTQ books”. Lambda even has a handy searchable database of winners from 1988 and onwards. The 2024 Lammy winners included Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang in the bisexual fiction category, I Keep My Exoskeleton to Myself by Marisa Crane in the LGBTQ speculative fiction category, and A Calculated Risk by Cari Hunter in the LGBTQ Mystery category.
If you have a hankering for queer non-fiction, one of my favorite essays in recent years is “Hostile Constructs: On Building Worlds from the Margins of Sex” by S. A. Chant in Strange Horizons, where Chant explores the role of gender and gender diversity in speculative fiction worldbuilding. I am also looking forward to reading So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color by Caro de Robertis.
Some of my recent favorite queer fiction reads include Simon Jimenez’s fantasy masterpiece, The Spear Cuts Through Water; Gwendolyn Kiste’s haunting suburban ghost story / troubled sapphic romance The Haunting of Velkwood (which just won a Stoker!); OK Psyche by Anya Johanna de Niro about a trans woman looking for a sense of belonging in a complex, often hostile world; and Izzy Wasserstein’s queer, noir, cyberpunkish technothriller These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart.
If you’re into fantasy fiction, you should definitely be reading R.B Lemberg’s work. Their 2024 novella Yoke of Stars and their 2022 novel The Unbalancing, both set in Lemberg’s intricately crafted and gorgeously imagined Birdverse, are must-reads as far as I’m concerned. You can get a taste of Birdverse in Lemberg’s short fiction, for example the novelette “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
One fantasy book that is currently at the top of my to-read pile is Kerstin Hall’s dark fantasy novel Asunder, about Karys Eska, a deathspeaker, “locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity.”
If you’re looking for science fiction, there’s Bogi Takács’s Power to Yield, a speculative short story collection “exploring gender identity, neurodivergence, and religion”; Suzan Palumbo’s multi-award nominated “queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella” Countess; Vincent Manibo’s Escape Velocity, taglined by the publisher as “Knives Out in space with a Parasite twist”; and Barbara Truelove’s Of Monsters and Mainframes, which involves a spaceship and Dracula, and is described as the “queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi”.
For something more science fantasy, check out Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series, starting off with the smash hit Gideon the Ninth.
Bestselling author / beloved internet icon Chuck Tingle has a lot of books, from erotica to fantasy and horror, under his pseudonymous belt. Two of his recent books are Camp Damascus, a horror novel about demonic involvement at a gay conversion camp in Montana, and Bury Your Gays, which just won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. Tingle’s latest book, Lucky Day, about the potential end of the world, is out this August.
To add more horror to your queer-all-year reading list, get your mitts on At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca, an intense tale “of death, trauma, and love”; The Lamb, a gothic coming-of-age tale by Lucy Rose; and I Can Fix Her by Rae Wilde, described as “This is How You Lose the Time War meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke”.
Other recent horror titles to check out include A.G.A. Wilmot’s Withered, about a haunted house and a haunted community; Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt about the lingering, destructive trauma of a night spent in an abandoned house; and anything and everything by Hailey Piper, including her upcoming short story collection Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, and her forthcoming horror/psychological thriller/erotica novel A Game in Yellow. Or, for a hit of cozy, Canadian horror set in modern-day Toronto, check out Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff.
Other recent titles to keep an eye out for are Motheater by Linda H. Codega, set in the Appalachian Mountains where “the last witch of the Ridge must choose sides in a clash between industry and nature”; The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth, a fast-paced paranormal thriller about a woman who uses her gift of speaking to the dead to find out the truth about her sister’s death; and Awakened by A.E. Osworth, where a coven of trans witches battle an evil AI.
My final addition to this list of Pride Month reading recommendations are titles to keep an eye out for later this year:
· The Haunting of William Thorn by Ben Alderson, a “split timeline queer twisted love story, set against the backdrop of a haunted English manor.” Coming in September 2025.
· The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by J.R. Dawson, set at a waystation for the dead located in Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan, and described as a “powerful and poignant contemporary Queer fantasy”. Coming in July 2025.
· Moonflow by Bitter Karella, described as “Annihilation meets Manhunt” and “a gloriously queer and irreverent psychedelic trip into the heart of an eldritch wood and the horrors of (cis)terhood”. Coming in September 2025.
· This Is My Body by Lindsay King-Miller, about the haunting legacy of an exorcism and described as a “darkly funny queer horror novel about family trauma and possession.” Coming in August 2025.
· Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell, a queer retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter where “a young woman is lured to a lush estate owned by a botanist who might be hiding dark secrets.” Coming in October.
· You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White, about an alien invasion in rural West Virginia. Coming in September 2025.
