20 Must-Read Queer Books to Get Excited About in the Second Half of 2022

I have loved or am excited about every book on this list, but I’ll be honest: every so often — maybe once or twice a year, if you’re lucky — a book comes along that just changes everything. This is that book for me. Sneha is a queer Indian American twentysomething struggling through life in Milwaukee in the midst of a tanked economy. There is too much life and depth in this novel to capture in a paragraph, but it’s mostly about friendship and work — two things that are rarely written about with such nuance and care. Go get your preorders on, this one is a masterpiece.

I loved Tsai’s debut, Dear Twin, so I was thrilled to discover they have a new book coming out this summer! When I learned that it’s a queer, biracial retelling of Frankenstein…I couldn’t hit that preorder button fast enough. Two queer scientists and the nonbinary creation one of them makes? Sign me up.

I don’t know what gods we’ve pleased in order to get so many incredible queer retellings this year, but I am not complaining. This retelling of Much Ado About Nothing stars Beatriz, a queer biracial woman who doesn’t take any nonsense, especially after the devastation of the 2016 election, and isn’t afraid to eviscerate anyone who comes for her or her family. Yeah, that’s all I need to know about this one.

I will never get enough of queernorm worlds, and this Persian-inspired fantasy novella sounds amazing. Firuz-e Jafari is nonbinary wielder of blood-magic who discovers a strange disease in their new home after fleeing from an oppressive regime that was murdering their people. What follows is moving story about imperialism, healing, family, and magic.

Joshua Whitehead has written poetry and contemporary fiction and edited an anthology of speculative fiction. Now’s he’s come out with a book of nonfiction. In this genre-defying collection of essays, musings, confessions, and memoirs, he explores the intimate and intricate connections between queerness, land, and Indigeneity. What will we do next? I can’t wait to find out (after I devour this book whole, of course).

This coming-of-age novel details the personal, familial, and political adventures of Trey, a Black gay man making his way through 1980s New York. After fleeing the confines and expectations of his wealthy family in Indianapolis, he looks to New York as a new beginning — but he arrives in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Trey becomes involved in the very beginning of ACT UP, and many real people show up in this novel, from legendary civil rights activist Bayard Rustin to gay rights activist Larry Kramer. Newson’s attention to historical details gives this moving novel a sense of urgency and immediacy.

In this inclusive new history, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a thoughtful, nuanced account of trans people throughout history, especially those whose lived experiences and gender identities have fallen outside the binary. From antiquity to the present day, and all over the world, there have always been people who defy easy gender categorization and reject binary norms. In telling their stories, Heyam illuminates hidden and important trans histories and invites readers to imagine new possibilities for the trans future.

If you’re not following Chen Chen on Instagram, I am very sad for you. His beautiful words are helping me get through the days until his second poetry collection is released. I can’t think of any other poet working today who has so much fun with language, who fills their poems with so much glee and silliness and frivolity — all things we badly need. His second collection tackles found and blood family, queer Asian American identity, working and loving through the pandemic, and a whole lot more. I can’t wait to eat up these poems, which I’m sure will be both gentle and fierce.

I don’t usually pay much attention to comps, but when the publisher’s summary for this book mentioned both Ace and Belly of the Beast — two books that have radically changed the way I think about the intersections of desire, sex, racial capitalism, queerness, and embodiment — I knew I had to have it. Sherronda J. Brown offers an in-depth exploration of being Black and asexual, offering thoughtful, incisive commentary on everything from acephobia and racism to the many ways that ace and a-spec people are too often barred from queer spaces and identities. This is a book we badly need in the world.

This book has two things I absolutely love in fiction: a messy mother-daughter relationship and a neighborhood that’s as vibrant as a character. Set in the 1930s in Hogan’s Alley, a thriving multicultural and immigrant neighborhood in Vancouver, it’s the story of two Black women: Junie, who longs for a life of artistic freedom, and her mother, a jazz singer struggling with alcoholism. Both of these characters, and the vibrant but changing community they belong to, come alive in this stirring novel.

In a beautiful combination of personal memoir, cultural criticism, and visual art created by her father, Geter explores her lineage as a queer woman and the daughter of a Black American man and a Muslim Nigerian woman. As she tracks her family’s movements across Africa and North America, she delves into art and music, migration and activism, queer community and grief.

Kacen Callender has been an auto-buy author for me ever since I read Felix Ever After. Their latest YA novel is about what happens to two friends after an accidental Twitter thread about one of their crushes goes viral. Internet culture, trans, nonbinary, and neurodivergent characters, messy teenagers being messy, a little bit of romance…what more could you want?

Poet Billy-Ray Belcourt’s first novel is, unsurprisingly, a genre-defying masterpiece. A queer Cree PhD student, exhausted and dismayed by the racism and settler colonialism inherent in the academy, abandons his dissertation and returns to his northern Alberta hometown to write a novel. This book is unlike anything else I’ve ever read: it’s academic and anti-academic, full of poetry, longing, theory, and philosophy. The unnamed narrator is unforgettable, his voice at once wry and playful and life-or-death serious.

Were Anne and Diana ever in love? Obviously. “Bosom friend” means girlfriend, right? Fight me on it all you want, I will die on this hill. Anyway, I can’t wait to get my hands on this contemporary middle grade retelling of Anne of Green Gables. Anne has finally found a foster family she likes in the Cuthberts, and as she’s getting used to her new home, she finds a new best friend in Diana — who she does not exactly feel platonic about.

Twentysomething Jade is a first generation Jamaican woman living in Toronto, grieving the sudden death of her twin sister and just trying to get through the day. She turns to friends, lovers, and ex-lovers to keep her busy, filling her days with hookups, love affairs, travel, and parties. As she navigates the ups and downs of life as a queer Black woman, she slowly begins to find her voice and her own place in the world.