All posts tagged: Queer

Christianity is profoundly queer – Salon.com

Christianity is profoundly queer – Salon.com

As Pride Month unfolds, the Trump administration and its allies are ramping up their attacks on LGBTQ+ communities.  The Education Department has launched a Title IX probe into Smith College for admitting transgender women, targeted schools that provide education on gender and sexuality, rolled back federal protections for LGBTQ+ students, and erased LGBTQ+ identities from federal agencies and recognition. In state legislatures, bills targeting drag performances, gender-affirming care and same-sex families have proliferated at a record pace.  Leaders use a variety of weak explanations to justify these policies — that queer people are perverse, that we denigrate nuclear families and make a mockery of American values. But they all rest on a common foundation: a narrow interpretation of Christianity that frames LGBTQ+ identities as sinful, disordered and incompatible with faith. We are queer Christians who have spent decades studying theology. And we want to say plainly: that narrow interpretation of Christianity is shaky at best.  When one strips back the politics, culture wars and centuries of institutional distortion surrounding Christianity, something unexpected emerges. At its heart, …

25 New Queer YA Books to Add to Your Pride TBR

25 New Queer YA Books to Add to Your Pride TBR

It’s Pride Month, which is the perfect excuse to buy queer books! There are so many excellent new queer YA books out in 2026. Below, I’ve highlighted 25 of the most exciting ones, including contemporary fiction, mysteries and thrillers, SFF, horror, nonfiction, and graphic novels. An aro/ace love story, a sapphic thriller, trans horror, a pansexual mystery, a trans retelling of Dorian Gray, a queer graphic memoir—you’ll find that and more in the new queer YA books of 2026. Most of these came out earlier this year, but there are a few anticipated releases to preorder, like the final volume of Heartstopper by Alice Oseman, which is out in July. Now, let’s get started expanding your Pride Month TBR! New Queer YA Contemporary Books Out in 2026 Bad Queer by Gayathiri Kamalakanthan This mesmerizing YA romantic novel-in-verse follows a nonbinary teen in London as they come out to their family, navigate changing friendships, and fall in love for the first time. Poet Gayathiri Kamalakanthan writes with compassion, tenderness, and radiance that makes their debut book …

14 Must-Read New Queer Books Out in June 2026

14 Must-Read New Queer Books Out in June 2026

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame (Polyamorous Bisexual Fiction) Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman (Sapphic Fiction) The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford (Lesbian Fiction) (Reprint) Let’s Not Go Overboard Here by Erica Hendry (Bisexual Woman Fiction) My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction by Deborah Levy (Sapphic Fiction) Motherclown by Harriet Alida Lye (Queer Fiction) There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson (Queer Fiction) Liquid by Mariam Rahmani (Queer Woman Fiction) (Paperback release) Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Queer Fiction) The Jellyfish Problem by Tessa Yang (F/F Fiction) Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas (Genderqueer Fiction) Missing in Soho (A Misty Divine Mystery #2) by Holly Stars (Drag Queen Mystery) The Last Time We Drowned by Saratoga Schaefer (Sapphic Thriller) The Long Con by Jenna Voris (Sapphic Thriller) Muñeca by Cynthia Gómez (F/F Gothic Horror) For the Bride by Becca Grischow (F/F Romance) The Ties Between Us by Chencia C. Higgins (F/F Romance) The Guest Book by Mae Marvel (F/F …

Rasheed Newson’s new novel resurrects a forgotten Black queer Hollywood

Rasheed Newson’s new novel resurrects a forgotten Black queer Hollywood

On the Shelf There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood Flatiron Books: 300 pages, $29 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Twenty pages into “There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood” by bestselling Pasadena author Rasheed Newson, I had to stop reading. Not because the story and characters were anything less than gripping — I was utterly transfixed. Not because I was unmoved by the setting, the 1950s version of the iconic landmarks where today’s Angelenos, myself included, work, play, eat and drink: Griffith Park, the L.A. Central Library, the Paramount Pictures lot, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Tam O’Shanter in Atwater Village and the Black Cat in Silver Lake, site of America’s first queer riot, also depicted in the book. No, it was writerly admiration — OK, envy — that stopped me. As I turned the pages, I kept scribbling the same question in the margins. “How did Newson do this?” How did Newson, author of the 2022 bestseller “My Government Means …

Tip Toe review – Alan Cumming is extraordinary in this terrifying, landmark queer drama

Tip Toe review – Alan Cumming is extraordinary in this terrifying, landmark queer drama

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Tragedy looms like a plummeting meteor from the opening shots of Russell T Davies’s Tip Toe, the camera crawling over prosaic Mancunian suburbia to reveal a man hanging, lifeless, from a lamp post. The victim, we soon learn, is Leo Struthers (Alan Cumming), the owner of an LGBTQ+ bar in Manchester’s gay village. Channel 4’s punchy state-of-the-nation drama depicts the buildup to what we come to understand is a lynching, as it examines the homophobia and bigotry that are, Davies suggests, undergoing a dangerous resurgence in Britain today. When we first meet Leo alive, he is running out of his house in his pants, chasing vainly after a casual hookup who has made off with his laptop. He ends up locked out of his own home – there’s a metaphor there, you might think – and is forced to seek refuge …

‘Boy,’ queer anthems, AIDS, horror movies

‘Boy,’ queer anthems, AIDS, horror movies

Book of Love — the Philadelphia-bred synth-pop quartet best known for the hypnotic 1985 single “Boy” — are releasing a 40th anniversary reissue of their landmark debut album on June 26, just in time for Pride. The band emerged from Philadelphia’s art school scene in 1983, relocating to New York’s East Village at a moment when the downtown creative world was colliding with the nascent synth-pop revolution. Their early break came as the opening act for two Depeche Mode tours in 1985 and 1986, exposing them to massive audiences who recognized a kindred sensibility. Their music built on tubular bells and deadpan vocals and an emotional undertow that felt unlike anything else in the American pop landscape. They never became household names, but in queer clubs and on college radio they built a following that has proven remarkably durable Ahead of a sold-out 10-city fall tour with all four original members, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with songwriter and keyboardist Ted Ottaviano and lead singer Susan Ottaviano (no relation) over Zoom. I want to start …

Queer Books and Authors are at a Breaking Point

Queer Books and Authors are at a Breaking Point

I’ve noticed a trend in the news stories coming out about queer books and authors: it’s clear that five years of unrelenting and escalating censorship has brought us to a breaking point. It’s not sustainable for authors, librarians, and teachers to endure years of anti-LGBTQ abuse. It’s becoming harder to get queer books published, harder to sell queer books, and harder to make a living doing it—especially when it comes to queer kidlit and YA. For queer authors of color and other multiply marginalized people, the pressure is even more intense. There’s no sign of this slowing down, either: a national “Don’t Say Trans” bill just passed the House. The fight for queer books badly needs reinforcements. … School Library Journal published an article called “Are LGBTQIA+ Voices Being Pushed Out of Kid Lit?” that includes interviews with authors and agents describing how publishers have stopped acquiring “diverse” books or dramatically reduced their numbers. For queer books that have already been published, sales have cratered. Small publishers focusing on diverse books have seen their sales …

8 Spooky Queer Folk Horror Books

8 Spooky Queer Folk Horror Books

Poisoned Pen Press In Bone of my Bone, when Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted orphan, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest, everything changes when they discover a dying man clutching a strange wooden box. Inside: the gilded skull of a saint. In She Waits Where Shadows Gather, when a devastating car crash leaves Carlos bedridden, he’s not only trapped in the house, he’s hostage in his own body. Avery, now caretaker and prisoner, watches helplessly as their once-solid marriage crumbles under the weight of secrets and an unspeakable evil. Folk horror is my favorite horror subgenre. Well, to be exact, it’s in a two-way tie with gothic horror. These folklore inspired-stories where (often rural) isolation looms ever closer, where sinister rituals have become the norm, where mysterious creatures hover on the edges of woods or in the depths of the ocean, and where long-held superstitions drive the plot forward, satiate my penchance for tales where the impossible becomes possible, …

2026 Cannes Film Festival 5 Takeaways: AI, Queer Cinema

2026 Cannes Film Festival 5 Takeaways: AI, Queer Cinema

Quiet on the surface, Cannes 2026 exposed the fault lines reshaping cinema — from the evolving indie ecosystem and the studios’ festival retreat to the industry’s uneasy embrace of AI. Published on May 23, 2026 (L to R): Competition favorite ‘The Black Ball,’ ‘Club Kid’ director Jordan Firstsman, Vin Diesel at ‘The Fast and The Furious’ screening, humanoid robot at Cannes. Cannes Film Festival, Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu,Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio, Anna KURTH / AFP The 79th Cannes Film Festival was, on the surface, a more subdued edition. No studio films, fewer stars and a lineup more meh than magnifique. But that relative calm was deceptive. Beneath it, Cannes 2026 functioned less as a showcase of immediate hits than as a seismic map of the indie film industry, revealing shifting tectonic plates in the transformation of the indie sector, the changing role of studios on the festival circuit, and the accelerating impact of AI across production and marketing. What followed on the Croisette was not noise, but signal. Hollywood Stayed Home — and Everyone Noticed Image Credit: …

Queer Horror Books Hitting Shelves for Pride Month 2026

Queer Horror Books Hitting Shelves for Pride Month 2026

Pride Month is just around the corner, so it comes as no surprise that there are so many new queer horror books dropping in June. If you’re looking for more queer horror stories to add to your TBR for Pride Month and beyond, here are four LGBTQ horror novels you have to get your hands on. And lucky you! The first book comes out right at the start of June. Grab your TBR because it’s about to grow. We want to hear from you! As we move through 2026, we want to make sure Book Riot remains your go-to destination for all things bookish. Whether you’re here for the curated recommendations, latest industry news, or deep dives into reading culture, your feedback informs our media kit and how we represent this community. It will also shape our content and make Book Riot a place you want to be. To show our appreciation for your time, everyone who completes the survey will be entered for a chance to win a $50 USD ThriftBooks Gift Card. Complete the …