Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Following in the footsteps of such category killers as Milk and Honey and Whiskey Words & a Shovel I, Fariha Róisín's poetry book is a collection of her thoughts as a young, queer, Muslim femme navigating the difficulties of her intersectionality. Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Róisín and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities.

'Trees in Winter by Richard Shimell is a wonderful, beautiful book for anyone who loves printmaking and nature. In this book Richard demonstrates his great skill as a printmaker, artist and writer, with the story of the paths taken to find his art as engaging as the images themselves.' ANGELA...

“Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us—the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived.” –Sasha Velour This book is a quilt, piecing together memoir, history, and theory into a living portrait of an artist and an art. Sasha Velour...

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 A revealing...

What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.

Brought to you by Penguin. Lucy Sante has often felt like an outsider. Born in Belgium to conservative Catholic working-class parents, she was transplanted to the United States without ever entirely settling here. But a feeling of home finally arrived when she moved to New York City in the early...

In this clear and absorbing memoir, John Sam Jones writes of a life lived on the edge. It is story of journeys and realisation, of acceptance and joy. From a boyhood on the coast of Wales to a traumatic period studying at Aberystwyth, to a scholarship at Berkley in California as the AIDS epidemic began to take hold before returning to Liverpool and north Wales to work in community engagement and sexual health. A journey of becoming a writer and chronicler of his experiences with award-winning books and the desire to become a campaigner for LGBT rights in Wales.

In Black. Fat. Femme: Revealing the Power of Visibly Queer Voices (in Media) and Learning to Love Yourself, educator and media critic Dr. Jonathan P. Higgins—aka Doctor Jon Paul—delivers an honest and extraordinary new take on how the author, and other Black Fat Femmes like them, have come to find and understand their identity. You'll learn about how standing at the intersection of multiple identities, communities, and causes shapes people and how they see the world.

Robert O’Brien loves cars. Growing up in Dublin, they provided a welcome refuge from the human interaction he found so difficult. His father’s race car, a BMW E30 M3 Sport Evolution he named the Beast, became his alter ego—powerful, admired, confident—and Robert began a quest to become a worthy owner. He completed a university degree, took courses to conquer his stutter and tried to come to terms with his sexuality. But still he remained more comfortable in the fantasy worlds of video games and television.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER An inspirational story of accepting and embracing two trans people in a family--a family who shows what's possible when you "lead with love." All Amanda Jetté Knox ever wanted was to enjoy a stable life. She never knew her biological father, and while her mother and...

It’s funny how life never pans out the way you’d expect. I always knew that something wasn’t right, that some part of my inside didn’t match my outside. What I didn’t know then is that I’m transgender, a realization that took a lifetime to fully unpack and understand. And to embrace. Growing up in Michigan I started off sheltered with no idea of what lay over the horizon, but serving in the navy opened my eyes to what possibilities might be within my grasp. I encountered many forks in the road, sometimes I made the right choice, sometimes my decisions were terribly wrong.

In this debut memoir, a James Beard Award–winning writer, whose childhood idea of fine dining was Howard Johnson’s, tells how he became one of Paris’s most influential food critics Until Alec Lobrano landed a job in the glamorous Paris office of Women’s Wear Daily, his main experience of...

Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen’s Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator’s compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women’s work and feminist protest. The indisputable “queen...

Karla Jay's memoir of an age whose tumultuous social and political movements fundamentally reshaped American culture takes listeners from her early days in the 1968 Columbia University student riots to her post-college involvement in New York radical women's groups and the New York Gay Liberation Front to Southern California in the early '70s, where she continued in the battle for gay civil rights. We see her helping to organize the takeover of The Ladies Home Journal and “ogle-ins” - where women staked out Wall Street and whistled at the men.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Believe by Nicola Adams, read by Emma Swan. At London 2012, Nicola Adams made history. The flyweight boxer - nicknamed the smiling assassin - becamethe first ever woman to win an Olympic Gold medal for boxing. In Rio 2016, with...

Staying Power, Zena Sharman's memoir in essays, is a beautiful and honest journey of care work, grief, parenting, and chosen family in the wake of intergenerational trauma. Exploring the lessons and inheritances of being raised by survivors of complex traumas, the book challenges the notion that one must be healed in order to parent well and celebrates the transformative power of queer family-making beyond gay marriage and assimilation into the nuclear family.

A love letter to queer of color theory and how it has helped the author to discover himself, reclaim identities, celebrate queer joy, and work towards liberation Marcos Gonsalez found his greatest source of joy when he encountered queer theory in college. As they put it, "queers and college go...

This confessional self-help guide explores the complex emotional truth of what it’s like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. Activist author Marissa LaRocca’s revelatory tale includes her struggle with her secrets, including sexuality, and how she emerged as an outspoken advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues.

From choirboy to drag act, grandson to mentor, poet to lover, Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In this formally inventive, candid and courageous book, he explores what he has carried in his body: wins and losses, shame and pride, pain and joy. Dean also investigates how radical self-acceptance and a willingness to abide with discomfort open up the possibility of a life lived beyond definition: a person unlimited.

Coming out can be awkward enough. Now try it as a Catholic schoolboy in 1970s Ohio. In this fearless and funny true story, the host and founder of the hit podcast RISK! shares all. From first grade through junior high, twelve-year-old Kevin and his best friend, Ben, were inseparable. But when Kevin divulged his biggest secret, Ben froze him out. The pint-size cold war lasted two years - until they went head-to-head for student council president. Team Ben’s smear campaign began. The school took sides. And Kevin decided to run with it.