Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Melissa Giberson is a middle-aged suburban wife and mother of two kids, solidly planted in the life she's always wanted. Yet she longs for something more—something she cant quite put her finger on until, one day at the Y, she finds herself mesmerized by the sight of a naked woman and asks herself for the first time: Am I gay?

When divorce moves young R/B Mertz away from rural Pennsylvania and their abusive father, Mertz's life is torn in two. Mertz's mom and new stepdad dive headfirst into conservative Catholic homeschooling, entrenching themselves in a world dominated by saints, prayers, and having as many babies as possible, just as Mertz is starting to realize they might be queer. Trying to stave off the inevitable, Mertz later enrolls in a conservative Catholic college in Ohio.

At the dawn of the 1980s, there was one serious name in horror and exploitation film criticism: Bill Landis. While other magazines were concerned with behind-the-scenes information, tributes, and SFX tutorials, Landis' Sleazoid Express was one part film journal and one part anthropological study, seriously critiquing the grindhouse movies that played the theaters of 42nd Street while also documenting the dying subculture that had grown up around them.

The story of humanity cannot be told truthfully without the voices of those who lived outside the boundaries society tried to impose. For centuries, LGBTQ+ individuals shaped culture, politics, science, and art, even when their identities were hidden, erased, or condemned. This book brings their stories into the light, honouring ten figures who stood at the intersection of courage and change.

In his last year of university, Will thought he knew everyone he cared to know. Openly gay and volunteering at an AIDS helpline at the start of the crisis, he had found community at a frightening time amongst the theatre students, writers, and visual artists. He also knew who he wanted to avoid: the jocks. Until one day Will was invited into a secret Yale society that brought opposites together. On his first day, he was faced with Chris Maxey - a physically imposing, loud, star wrestler who seemed to be uncomfortable around Will and embody everything he reviled and feared.

In this memoir of her 40 weeks and five days in hell, Andrea Askowitz takes an unflinching look at her pregnant life from struggling with hormones to poor body image to a self imposed exile from family to take us on a ride through the turbulence of single lesbian motherhood. Along the way we meet her liberal parents as they struggle with their daughter's choices, the lover she longs to reconnect with who goes M.I.A. before the pregnancy, the friends who turn out to be no help at all and strangers who offer up some unlikely kindness.

Actress and playwright Tina Alexis Allen’s audacious memoir unravels her privileged suburban Catholic upbringing that was shaped by her formidable father—a man whose strict religious devotion and dedication to his large family hid his true nature and a life defined by deep secrets and...

“I’m determined to get to know the real Tommy, to trace the shape of my scars.” For years, Tommy Dorfman turned her back on her thoughts and emotions, hoping they’d simply go away. After a lifetime of confusion, she finally gained clarity around her gender and began to transition. But...

"Very good writers have an ability to make you understand what they're feeling. But the very best writers have an ability to make you understand what you're feeling. And that's where Michael Arceneaux sits, and that's what he does in this new book. It's like he's crawling around inside your head...

A new reissue of Philip Hoare's singular biography of Stephen Tennant. ‘Witty and amazing … both scholarly and hilarious at the same time’ John Waters, New York Times Philip Hoare’s fascinating profile of Britain’s most legendary and flamboyant aristocratic aesthete. With unparalleled...

"Get off your phone and read Jess Kimball Leslie's funny book!" -- Andy Cohen, host of Bravo's Watch What Happens LiveI Love My Computer Because My Friends Live in it is a hilarious memoir of growing up in the early days of the Internet and celebrating technology's role in our lives. Coming of...

“Exquisite. Full of wry humor, tenderness, and compassion.” —Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir about a mother and son’s outlandish odyssey of self-discovery, and the rag-tag community that rallied to help them when they needed it most...

In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of...

In this series of stories, you will encounter attractive actors, stunning fashion models, handsome artists, a suave British aristocrat, the activist and founder of a London gay paper, and a charismatic and very persistent millionaire. Also there are some really fantastic kissers! I mean exceptionally good!

As much music history as biography, Awop Bop Aloo Mop celebrates "Little" Richard Wayne Penniman, who burst onto the American scene in 1955 with his mega-hit "Tutti Frutti." Almost by himself, Little Richard wrote the anti-rules and poured the concrete for the foundation of a new musical art...

What happens when two women commit to serving the Catholic Church as nuns taking vows of chastity, but fall passionately in love? They defy the Church's rules against same-sex relationships and blaze a bold trail for a joyous life together at a time when LGBTQ people could be killed for being gay and same-sex marriage was decades in the future.

Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron’s frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress and happiness raising a gender-creative son. Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, her younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi".

“Hiraeth” [heer-eyeth] is a Welsh word that evokes a deep, often indescribable yearning for home, or the very essence of what home represents. In this poignant, sharp, and at times heart-wrenching memoir, Dan Morgan, a Welsh American from Pittsburgh, PA, opens up about the throes of addiction, struggling with sexual identity, and searching for a place to fit without abandoning himself. He shares the highs and lows of his life, touching on his conflicts with family and faith, as well as his adventures in stand-up comedy, Roller Derby, and his role as a Sociology professor.

Zami: A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers “Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women...

Luísa Marilac nasceu em Minas Gerais e assumiu-se travesti aos 17 anos. Além dos tradicionais traumas associados à transição de gênero em uma família conservadora e de classe baixa, levou sete facadas aos 16 anos, foi vítima de tráfico sexual na Europa, prostituiu-se, foi estuprada e presa mais de uma vez. Alçou-se à fama depois que viralizou no YouTube um vídeo seu com o bordão "E disseram que eu estava na pior".