Que(e)ry News

Que(e)ry in Print

Que(e)ry's in print! A chapter in Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice, just published by Library Juice Press, features an oral history of Que(e)ry parties and fundraising since 2010. Along with Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries, this two-volume set contains several other thoughtful and entertaining conversations on queerness in library and archives work. You can buy your own copy of volume 1 here and volume 2 here. 

Also, some of the Que(e)ry team were involved in this new volume Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches, just published by ALA Publishing. A number of chapters deal with gender, sexuality, and queer topics in cataloging and metadata. 

Fall 2021 Reads

Here's another selection of recent and forthcoming books that have caught our eyes. What's on your list? Send us your recommendations to add here, and look for these titles at your local libraries and independent bookstores!

Fiction:

• Several People are Typing /  Calvin Kasulke

• 100 Boyfriends / Brontez Purnell

• The Darkness Outside Us / Eliot Schrefer

• A Dream of A Woman: Stories / Casey Plett

• The World Cannot Give / Tara Isabella Burton

• Honey Girl / Morgan Rogers

• The Magician / Colm Tóibín

• Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck: Stories / Joe Okonkwo

• Radiant Fugitives / Nawaaz Ahmed

• The Airways / Jennifer Mills

• Things We Couldn't Say / Jay Coles

• The Wrong End of the Telescope / Rabih Alameddine

Memoir/Biography:

• The Audacity of a Kiss: A Memoir / Leslie Cohen

• Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark / Cassandra Peterson

• High Risk Homosexual : A Memoir / Edgar Gomez

• The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood / Krys Malcolm Belc

• Angela Davis: An Autobiography / Angela Davis

• We Are Not Broken / George M. Johnson

• Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir / Akwaeke Emezi

Non-Fiction:

• Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures / Adam Zmith

• Trans New York: Photos and Stories of Trans New Yorkers / Peter Bussian

• Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean / Andil Gosine

• The Freezer Door / Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

• LGBTQ Film Festivals: Curating Queerness / Antoine Damiens

Poetry:

• Time is a Mother / Ocean Vuong

• Imagine Us, the Swarm / Muriel Leung

• All the Rage / Rosamond S. King

• Black Girl, Call Home / Jasmine Mans

Graphic Novels/Comics:

• Flamer / Mike Curato

• Apsara Engine / Bishakh Som

• The Contradictions / Sophie Yanow

• Our Work is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance / Syan Rose

Pride Month 2021

Happy Pride Month! Que(e)ry turns 11 years old this month, and while we don't have an in-person celebration in the works yet, we want to share some other events, and a few recent and forthcoming queer books that have caught our eyes, including some Lammy winners! Pick them up from your local queer bookstore or library! 

Fiction:

• Arcadia / Emmannuelle Bayamack-Tam

• The Chosen and the Beautiful / Nghi Vo 

• Filthy Animals / Brandon Taylor

• Future Feeling / Joss Lake

• Love After the End : An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction / edited by Joshua Whitehead

• Neotenica / Joon Oluchi Lee

• The Recent East / Thomas Grattan

• Sorrowland / Rivers Solomon

• With Teeth / Kristen Arnett

• Yes, Daddy / Jonathan Parks-Ramage

• 99 Erics / Julia Serano

Non-Fiction:

• Belly of the Beast / Da'Shaun L. Harrison

• Cruising : An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime / Alex Espinoza 

• Fat and Queer : An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives / edited by Bruce Owens Grimm, Miguel M. Morales, and Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini

• For Now / Eileen Myles 

• Gay Bar : Why We Went Out / Jeremy Atherton Lin

• Hola Papi : How to Come Out in a Walmart parking Lot and Other Life Lessons / J.P. Brammer.

• Let the Record Show : A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 / Sarah Schulman

• Love's Next Meeting : The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture / Aaron Lecklider

• Mutual Aid : Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) / Dean Spade

• Punch Me Up to the Gods / Brian Broome

• The Secret to Superhuman Strength / Alison Bechdel

• Undrowned : Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals / Alexis Pauline Gumbs

• Wow, No Thank You / Samantha Irby

Poetry:

• Divine Fire / David Woo 

• Funeral Diva / Pamela Sneed

• Postcolonial Love Poem / Natalie Diaz

• The Renunciations / Donika Kelly

• Salt Body Shimmer / Aricka Foreman

• 13th Balloon / Mark Bibbins

Events:

June 10: Queer Love in Color: Jamal Jordan with Blair Imani (NYPL)

June 12: Brooklyn Pride

June 13: Brooklyn Liberation Action for Trans Youth

June 17: Ice Cream Social Celebrating Pride Month (Brooklyn; METRO Library Council)

June 27: Queer Liberation March (NYC)

June 27: Rainbow Roundtable Virtual Social (ALA Annual)

June 28: Stonewall Book Awards Celebration (Virtual, ALA Annual)

June 28: Virtual LGBTQ Pride Night (Library of Congress)

More June and Pride events hosted by:

• New York Public Library

• Brooklyn Public Library

• Queens Public Library

• Library of Congress

• BGSQD Bookstore

Fall 2020 Reads

Need some books for cozy nights at home? Gift ideas for the holiday season? Here are a few recent and forthcoming books that have caught our eyes. What's on your list? Send us your recommendations to add here, and see our list from the spring below, too. Look for these titles at your local libraries and independent bookstores!

Fiction:

• You Exist Too Much / Zaina Arafat

• King and the Dragonflies / Kacen Callender

• Bestiary / K-Ming Chang

• Butter Honey Pig Bread / Francesca Ekwuyasi

• Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel : Stories / Julian K. Jarboe

• The Prophets / Robert Jones, Jr. (available Jan. 5, 2021)

• The Thirty Names of Night / Zeyn Joukhadar

• Little Fish / Casey Plett

• Let's Get Back to the Party / Zak Salih (available February 16, 2021)

• Cemetery Boys / Aiden Thomas

• Memorial / Bryan Washington

• Jonny Appleseed / Joshua Whitehead

• The Tensorate series / Neon Yang (books 1-4)

Non-Fiction:

• Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through : An Essay / T. Fleischmann

• The Groom Will Keep His Name / Matt Ortile

• Dirty River : A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home / Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

• One Life : a memoir / Megan Rapinoe

• The Best of Me / David Sedaris

• Spellbound : A Graphic Memoir / Bishakh Som

• Heaven / Emerson Whitney

• XOXY : A Memoir / Kimberly M. Zieselman

Poetry:

• Bareback Nightfall / Joshua Escobar

• Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry / edited by Amber Dawn and Justin Ducharme

• Feed / Tommy Pico

• Devil's Lake / Sarah M. Sala

• We Want It All : An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics / edited by Andrea Abi-Karam & Kay Gabriel

Juneteenth

Happy Juneteenth! We honor the historic and ongoing fight for Black Freedom. 

Here are a few resources we'd like to highlight today:

• Juneteenth Book Fest, a series of videos released today, celebrating Black American stories and the people behind them. We're especially excited for the "Queer and Black, On and Off the Page" panel discussion, with authors Julian Winters, Claire Kann, Roya Marsh, Candice Iloh, and Ashley Woodfolk, and moderated by Leah Johnson.

• Juneteenth Syllabus by Kenja McCray and Jasmin C. Howard

• Crowdsourced Map of Black-Owned Bookstores by Subway Book Review

We have added these resources to our own Black Lives Matter Library Resource List which we are continuously updating.

Happy Tenth Birthday, Que(e)ry!

Que(e)ry's first event took place 10 years ago today, on June 18, 2010, at Blackout Bar in Brooklyn. Sadly, the bar has since closed, but you can check out some pictures of the party on Flickr. 

That party was a fundraiser for the Tom of Finland Foundation Archives, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Since then, we've raised over $20,000 for them and other queer libraries and archives!

While the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago was cancelled, we do look forward to celebrating with you in person whenever we can!

Update on COVID-19

We hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other during these difficult times! Check out Libraries Resists' Health and Pandemic Page containing information and resources for libraries' responding to COVID-19/Novel Coronavirus, and the latest information from the CDC and WHO.

If you're looking for something to read while staying home, check out our list of queer reads from last summer; and here are a few more recent or upcoming titles that caught our eyes:

Fiction:

• This Town Sleeps / Dennis E. Staples

• Confessions of the Fox / Jordy Rosenberg

• Real Life / Brandon Taylor

• America is Not the Heart / Elaine Castillo

• Frankissstein / Jeanette Winterson

• Fiebre Tropical / Juliana Delgado Lopera

• I Know You Know Who I Am / Peter Kispert

Non-Fiction:

• Here For It / R. Eric Thomas

• Something That May Shock and Discredit You / Daniel Mallory Ortberg 

• A Year Without a Name / Cyrus Grace Dunham

• In the Dream House / Carmen Maria Machado

Poetry:

• Homie / Danez Smith

• Soft Science / Franny Choi

• If They Come for Us / Fatima Ashgar

And check out the Stonewall Book Award winners of 2020, and the 2020 Rainbow Book List too.

Que(e)ry Summer Reads 2019

Happy Pride Month! Here are some queer reads we're excited to check out this summer. What do you have in your beach bags?

• Memoir/Biography

• How We Fight for Our Lives / Saeed Jones

• I'm Afraid of Men / Vivek Shraya

• Sissy : A Coming of Gender Story / Jacob Tobia

• Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion / Nishta J. Mehra

• Unbecoming / Anurahda Bhagwati

Poetry

• Evolution / Eileen Myles

• Live Oak, With Moss / Walt Whitman ; illustrated by Brian Selznick

• The Year of Blue Water / Yanyi

• Don't Call Us Dead / Danez Smith

Fiction

• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous / Ocean Vuong

• The Lost Coast / Amy Rose Capetta

• The Great Believers / Rebecca Makkai

• Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl / Andrea Lawlor

• I'm Open to Anything / William E. Jones

• Disoriental / Négar Djavadi ; translated by Tina Kover

• Sketchtasy / Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Graphic Novels/Comics

• Bloom / Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau

• On A Sunbeam / Tillie Walden

Non-Fiction

• Countersexual Manifesto / Paul B. Preciado

• Nîtisânak / Lindsay Nixon

• When Brooklyn Was Queer / Hugh Ryan

• Love and Resistance : Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era

Site migration

Que(e)ry has hosted its main website queeryparty.org on Tumblr since 2010 but recently found our site had been terminated without warning or explanation. It was restored, thankfully. But now, even before Tumblr's revised policy on adult content goes into effect December 17, we already notice a number of our posts incorrectly flagged as explicit or "adult," evidently because they contain LGBTQ-themed content. Both as queers and as information professionals, we recognize that every online platform we use comes with problems, but we no longer feel that Tumblr is a responsible or reliable home for our site. Both the new policies and the algorithmic methods for enforcing them are misguided and will especially impact the queer and trans folk, fetish and fandom communities, sex workers, and other marginalized groups who have used Tumblr as a tool for expression, activism, community, and livelihood. Also, we don't want to risk losing our content again, should Tumblr decide to terminate our account or delete posts.

Thank you for your patience while we migrate as much of our content as possible off of Tumblr. (We will not be migrating reblogs of other people's content). All of our (unflagged) content is all still there at http://queeryparty.tumblr.com/ (for now). You can also view our Tumblr site as preserved on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (most recently captured on November 30, 2018).

ALA midwinter in Denver

Going to ALA Midwinter 2018 in Denver? We sadly don't have a Que(e)ry party planned, but check out these events and resources:

Friday, Feb 9:

7:30-9:00pm: Feminist Task Force Meeting, CCC#110

Sunday, Feb 11:

1-2:30pm: Trans intersectionality discussion group, CCC #711

1-2:30pm: Building GLBTRT Archive and Planning GLBTRT Jubilee, CCC #106

3:30-5:30: ALA President’s Program: Are Libraries Neutral? CCC Ballroom 2/3

4-4:50: We Need Diverse Books: To Niche or Not to Niche? Shelving Diverse Books, PopTop Stage, Exhibit Hall

6:30-9:30pm: GLBTRT Social and Stonewall Adult Award Winner Announcement, Blush & Blu Bar

Ongoing Events:

Friday-Monday: 7-10am: EveryLibrary Stacks for the Stacks Pancake Fundraiser

Local resources:

Terry Mangan Library, GLBT Community Center, Denver

It Takes A Village Colorado

Gender Identity Center of Colorado

Minority and Women-Owned Businesses in Denver

See our older posts at queeryparty.tumblr.com