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Answer the phone; assign a call number; refer to case management; refer to counseling; most often, refer to both. Open an intake file, close another one. Ask a client if they’ve been here before—nod politely, like you don’t know they’re lying, when they say no. Re-open their sealed file. Paulina, the receptionist, buzzes the room with a message: Sarah is on Line 1 and she’s crying again. (Sarah’s always crying). They can hear her sobs echoing through the office over Amira’s soothing voice saying “deep breaths, in and out.” Her tears, leaking through the end of the receiver, leave a…
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If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left.
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by Samantha Allen 2/5 I loved Samantha Allen’s Real Queer America, but oh my god, I HATED this. I’m sorry, it just isn’t for me. I do not like this kind of mindless campiness. I found the characters one-dimensional and annoying, and there was not a single aspect of the plot I enjoyed. I gave it two stars instead of one because I recognize the artistic value of the book, and I can think of regulars I’ve had at the bookstores I’ve worked at who would have enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I’m really not a fan of this style of writing…
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When I started going to church—yes, as an adult, and yes, of my own free will, I thought I’d lie and tell everyone I was reading in the park. Every Sunday, that’s me, under the monkey tree at Barton Springs, reading in the park. If I hadn’t shared my location, maybe. Most likely, no one would have asked about my time at all and I could have spent my forbidden church Sundays as honest and godly as the wide-brimmed hat ladies in the front pew. “What the hell, Emily?” my friends asked, and I thought, “Yeah, what the hell, Emily?”…
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Two lovers went to the museum and wandered the rooms. He saw a painting and stood in front of it for too long. It was a few minutes before she realized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck looking at a painting. She stood next to him, looking at his face and then the face in the painting. What do you see? she asked. I don’t know, he said. He didn’t know. She was disappointed, then bored. He was looking at a face and she was looking at her watch. This is where everything changed. There was now a distance…
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by Catherine Lacey 5/5 I LOVED this book. One of my top reads of 2026! I had only ever seen it in passing and hadn’t heard much about it, but now I’ve gathered that Biography of X is pretty popular, at least within a certain literary crowd. I bought my copy at a bookstore bar, and while I was sitting with my glass of wine reading it, three different people approached me to tell me how much they loved it. I almost always love an alternate history, and this one was original enough to stand on its own but also…
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Beyond the curve in the road, past the old post office with the barred-up windows and the dead shrubs slumped by the graffiti-covered mailbox, there was a house. It had not been a home in some time. A man lived there, alone, dying, while the ghost of his son sat in his car with the engine running in the front driveway. Jean had been sitting in the car for some time now. She turned the engine off, once, about thirty minutes ago, and put her hand on the handle for a moment. She couldn’t make herself open the door. So…
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by Joy Sullivan I’ve always been haunted by choice. I want the city and the forest.Freedom but also babies. A home and the open highway. I love it when other people choose anything for me—dinner spots,weekend plans, hiking trails. It’s one tiny decision I’m absolvedfrom making. To choose is to be culpable and as a formerevangelical kid, there are few things I hate more than beingculpable. But being unable to choose becomes its own choice. When youdon’t decide, a decision still arrives. Once I held the fleeting body of a farm cat newly struck on theside of a busy Ohio…
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by Torrey Peters 4/5 I loved most of this novel. It’s very accessible queer lit, and I feel like it’s something I would be comfortable recommending to non-queer people and mainstream audiences. I think the comparison of the perspectives of trans women to divorced cis women is super clever, and I could see that strategy winning over some traditionally difficult audiences, should they happen to read Detransition, Baby. However, I did not like the ending at all. I mean, seriously, I hated that ending. I felt the book ultimately failed to explore what it set out to explore. I was…
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Reaching blindly in the dark, acornsstill grow roots, even when shut in a metal tinin a dark, dry room. I should know,I put them there. I was six years old andI wanted a forest in my closet. I counted outone hundred acorns from beneath the post oakin the front yard, and I waited, and I waited, andI waited, until I forgot what I was waiting for.And the acorns grew. I have been like the roots, too: blind anddirty, secret, forgotten, reaching out for a shapethat my body could fill, yearning for a groundto stand on. I was waiting for a…
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Emily Vance Brown 