Pretend It’s My Body

by Luke Dani Blue

Informed by the author’s experience in and between genders, this debut collection blurs fantasy and reality, excavating new meanings from our varied dysphorias.

In the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Daniel Lavery, these ten short stories ricochet between the lives we wish for and the ones we actually lead. A tornado survivor grapples with a new identity, a trans teen psychic can read only indecisive minds, and a woman informs her family of her plans to upload her consciousness and abandon her body. Ranging from con artists, middle-aged runaways, and prodigal "un-daughters," Luke Dani Blue’s cast of misfits insist on marginal lives made central and magical thinking made real.

Surreal, darkly humorous, and always deeply felt, Pretend It’s My Body is bound together by the act of searching—for a story of one’s own, for a glimpse of certainty, and for a spark of recognition and human connection.

IT CAME FROM THE CLOSET

edited by Joe Vallese

Through the lens of horror—from Halloween to Hereditary—queer and trans writers consider the films that deepened, amplified, and illuminated their own experiences.

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.

It Came from the Closet features twenty-five original essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.

THE AGE OF GOODBYES

by Li Zi Shu, translated by YZ Chin

By one of Southeast Asia’s most exciting writers, The Age of Goodbyes is a wildly inventive account of family history, political turmoil, and the redemptive grace of storytelling.

In 1969, in the wake of Malaysia's deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Third Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; “you” are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of “your” mother’s death, “you” are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding “your” lineage.

The Age of Goodbyes—which begins on page 513, a reference to the riots of May 13, 1969—is the acclaimed debut by Li Zi Shu. The winner of multiple awards and a Taiwanese bestseller, this dazzling novel is a profound exploration of what happens to personal memory when official accounts of history distort and render it taboo.

WSQ: 50!

Edited by Heather Rellihan, Jennifer C. Nash, and Charlene A. Carruthers

First published in 1972, Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2022. Originally printed as Women’s Studies Newsletter, the inaugural issue declared itself a “clearinghouse on Women’s Studies,” and soon became a key part of the Feminist Press’s mission to advance women’s scholarship in higher education. Over the past five decades, the journal has become a mainstay in the production of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship, continuing to challenge and adapt to the ever-evolving field.

In WSQ: 50!, academics critically reflect on the legacy of the longest-running feminist scholarly journal, tracing the history of the journal in conversation with other knowledge and activist projects and interdisciplinary fields, revisiting key pieces of writing from the past fifty years, and considering WSQ within the broad institutionalization of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In doing so, WSQ 50! charts a way forward for the next fifty years of interdisciplinary feminist knowledge projects.

SWEETLUST

by Asja Bakić, translated by Jennifer Zoble

In a dystopian world with no men, women are “rehabilitated” at an erotic amusement park. Climate change has caused massive flooding and warming in the Balkans, where one programmer builds a time machine. And a devious reimagining of The Sorrows of Young Werther refocuses to center a sexually adventurous Charlotte.

Asja Bakić deploys the speculative and weird to playfully interrogate conversations around artificial intelligence, gender fluidity, and environmental degradation. Once again Bakić upends her characters’ convictions and identities—as she did in her acclaimed debut Mars—and infuses each disorienting universe with sly humor and off-kilter eroticism. Both visceral and otherworldly, Sweetlust takes apart human desire and fragility, repeatedly framing pleasure as both inviting and perilous.

FAT OFF, FAT ON: A BIG BITCH MANIFESTO

by Clarkisha Kent

In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity.

There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental health issues and intergenerational trauma, at times Kent’s body felt like a cosmic punishment. In the face of body dysmorphia, homophobia, anti-Blackness, and respectability politics, the pursuit of “high self-esteem” seemed oxymoronic.

Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is a humorous, at times tragic, memoir that follows Kent on her journey to realizing that her body is a gift to be grown into, that sometimes family doesn’t always mean home, and how even ill-fated bisexual romances could free her from gender essentialism. Perfect for readers of Keah Brown’s The Pretty One, Alida Nugent’s You Don’t Have to Like Me, and Stephanie Yeboah’s Fattily Ever After, Kent’s debut explores her own lived experiences to illuminate how fatphobia intertwines with other oppressions. It stresses the importance of addressing the violence scored upon our minds and our bodies, and how we might begin the difficult—but joyful—work of setting ourselves free.