The setting of a school attended by strange children with a gay headmaster combined with a bureaucratic ministry looking after the supernatural may scream "Harry Potter”, but queer author TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea is more Miss Peregrine than Professor McGonagall, with a dash of gay romance and well, the Antichrist thrown... Continue Reading →
There are books you enjoy. There are books you feel enriched by. And there are books you have to stop reading because you’re laughing too much as you take photos of quotes and send them to four different WhatsApp groups. R Eric Thomas’s Here For It, is that kind of book. Known for his snappy... Continue Reading →
Tomasz Jędrowski’s Swimming in the Dark has the critics swooning and it’s easy to see why. It’s a beautiful, lyrical romance set in 1980s Poland that blends history with the tale of sexual discovery. Ludwik Głowacki is young and idealistic, living under a repressive system and dreaming of escaping to the West. At a summer... Continue Reading →
Daphne Walters is finding life in Los Angeles tougher than she imagined. Her college roommate is giving her the cold shoulder, her boyfriend dumped her and she’s being hit on by skeevy L.A. douche-bags. One night she finds some peace and quiet in the swimming pool of the seemingly abandoned Rycroft Manor only to meet... Continue Reading →
If you need a pick-me-up at the moment you can do worse things than grab a copy of Yao Xiao’s collection of cartoons, Everything is Beautiful and I'm Not Afraid. Bringing together a selection of her serialised Baopu cartoons (a mix of old and new material), Everything is Beautiful and I'm Not Afraid charts Xiao’s... Continue Reading →
Is your Instagram feed full of your friends baking cakes, muffins, banana bread… endless variations of banana bread? No? Just me? Well okay, but there’s a weird connection between the LGBTQ+ community and the calming, homely, carb-inflused art of “Sugar - Butter - Flour” (to quote the musical Waitress). And there’s something equally warm and... Continue Reading →
Sometimes you just need to read something totally light and fluffy to lift your mood, and The Love Left Behind by Australian author Daniel de Lorne is exactly that - a sugary tonic of romance and emotional drama. It may be full of empty calories but that’s the fun of it. Airline pilot Nick returns... Continue Reading →
Between 2017-19 Los Angeles comic creator Sina Grace penned the adventures of Marvel’s Iceman. Over the course of two volumes, 15 individual issues, Grace led Iceman (aka Bobby Drake) through the process of finally coming to terms with his sexuality, dating men and embracing who he really is - and becoming Marvel Comics' most high... Continue Reading →
Dustin Lance Black’s memoir Mama’s Boy pulled up emotions I thought I’d long buried. The suffocating, terrifying fear that you live with, born from a mix of homophobia and religion, that infects introverted, creative gay boys. That unique blend of anxiety that comes from feeling that you are already broken and must hide behind a... Continue Reading →
The very existence of Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles feels subversive. Comic creators Mark Russell (writer) and Mike Feehan (pencils) took classic Hanna-Barbera characters and used them as a platform to talk about institutionalised homophobia in the 50s with harsh echoes for today. Reframing the pink, theatre loving, fourth-wall breaking cougar (clearly coded gay... Continue Reading →
