A "stunning" (Hanif Abdurraqib), "unputdownable" (Mary Karr) meditation on queerness, family, and desire. How do you know if you are transgender? How do you know if what you want and feel is real? How do you know whether to believe yourself? Cyrus Dunham's life always felt like a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman. But in a culture of relentless self-branding, and in a family subject to the intrusions and objectifications that attend fame, dissociation can come to feel normal. A Lambda Literary Award finalist, Dunham's fearless, searching debut brings us inside the chrysalis of a transition inflected as much by whiteness and proximity to wealth as by gender, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about identity. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely his , A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and selfhood. Named a Most Anticipated Book of the season by: Time NYLON Vogue ELLE Buzzfeed Bustle O Magazine Harper's Bazaar

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE RANDY SHILTS AWARD “I [once] said [to Frank] I was sorry I would never be able to vote for him as the first gay president of the United States. After reading this book, I am sorrier than ever.”—Garry Wills, The New York Review of Books Growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, Barney Frank made two vital discoveries about himself: he was attracted to government, and to men. He resolved to make a career out of the first and to keep the second a secret. Now, his sexual orientation is widely accepted, while his belief in government is embattled. Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage is his account of America’s transformation—and the tale of a truly momentous career. From the battle over AIDS funding in the 1980s to the 2008 financial crisis, Barney Frank played a key role, and in this feisty and often moving memoir, he candidly discusses the satisfactions, fears, and grudges that come with elected office. He recalls the emotional toll of living in the closet while publicly crusading against homophobia. He discusses painful quarrels with allies; friendships with public figures, from Tip O’Neill to Sonny Bono; and how he found love with his husband, Jim Ready, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to enter a same-sex marriage. The result is the story of an extraordinary political life, an original argument for rebuilding trust in government, and a guide to how change really happens—composed by a master of the art.

"[A] gorgeously-written . . . brave and generous memoir" about growing up in a family with conflicting ideas about being Jewish and finding your own path (Dani Shapiro, New York Times- bestselling author of Inheritance ). Though culturally Jewish, Elissa Altman was not raised religious. Her mother, an aspiring actor, didn't feel the ancient teachings of the Talmud were relevant to modern life. Her father, the son of a cantor whose family died in the Holocaust, was the consummate rule breaker, caught between his spiritual hunger and his ongoing culinary affair with shellfish and spam--all things treyf , that which is unkosher and therefore forbidden. Altman's youth was laced with contradiction and hope, betrayal and the yearning to belong. Synagogue on Saturday and Chinese pork ribs on Sunday. Bacon for breakfast before going to visit her orthodox grandparents. Longing for the religious traditions that grounded her friends' lives, Altman attended Hebrew school, only to discover her own prohibited desire for other women. After her parents' marriage fell apart, Altman found a haven at her grandmother's house, cooking meals that made her feel whole again while embracing her homosexuality. Her story is a poignant, humorous and uplifting account of learning how to honor your past while becoming your most authentic self. "What makes Treyf so original is the author's wry humor and her gimlet eye. . . . Her prose shines." -- The Wall Street Journal "A beautiful, brilliant memoir filled with striking images, unforgettable people, and vivid stories. . . . Wrought with such visceral love that the pages shimmer." --Kate Christensen, author of Blue Plate Special "Gorgeous, singular, heartbreaking, haunting." --Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year "Hard to put down." -- Booklist "Poignant and life-affirming." -- Kirkus Reviews

A young boy sitting on a piano bench realizes one day that he will never marry. At the time this seems merely a simple, if odd, fact, but as his attraction to boys grows stronger, he is pulled into a vortex of denial. Not just for one year or even ten, but for 25 years, he lives in an inverted world, a place like a photographic negative, where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster--until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in. Equal parts Oliver Sacks and George Orwell, with a dash of Woody Allen, Jonathan Rauch's memoir is by turns harrowing and funny, a grippingly intimate journey through a bizarre maze of self-torment that ends with an unexpected discovery. Many people, gay and straight, have lived through their own versions of this story, seeking to twist their personality in directions it just wouldn't go. Not all have been lucky enough to escape. First published in 2013, Denial has been revised for this new edition, which includes a new afterword by the author.

A series of discrete episodes among friends provide snapshots of one gay man's life. There are parties, concerts, dinners with everyday life - and death - interwoven in the rich story-telling. An actress, a painter, a set designer, a writer - all sweating and surviving in Manhattan, all scoring their first successes. Part autobiography and part documentary, artfully written, it details the lives of these creative people. Young and professional, they know there is more to life than money. There is trust and the sort of love that trades in deeds of kindness. Leventhal's debut novel was welcomed warmly garnering a Lambda Literary Awards Finalist in 1988, this new edition features a 2020 foreword by Christopher Bram.

"[A] swiftly written debut memoir...[Segal] vividly describes his firsthand experience as a teenager inside the Stonewall bar during the historic riots, his participation with the Gay Liberation Front, and amusing encounters with Elton John and Patti LaBelle . . . A jovial yet passionately delivered self-portrait inspiring awareness about LGBT history from one of the movement's true pioneers." --Kirkus Reviews "With great verve and spirit, Segal has rendered a lively and dramatic memoir of the early days of the gay rights struggle; the infighting over strategies and objectives; the long, hard road of progress; and a look at the challenges still ahead." --Booklist On December 11, 1973, Mark Segal disrupted a live broadcast of the CBS Evening News when he sat on the desk directly between the camera and news anchor Walter Cronkite, yelling, "Gays protest CBS prejudice!" He was wrestled to the studio floor by the stagehands on live national television, thus ending LGBT invisibility. But this one victory left many more battles to fight, and creativity was required to find a way to challenge stereotypes surrounding the LGBT community. Mark Segal's job, as he saw it, was to show the nation who gay people are: our sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. Because of activists like Mark Segal, whose life work is dramatically detailed in this poignant and important memoir, today there are openly LGBT people working in the White House and throughout corporate America. An entire community of gay world citizens is now finding the voice that they need to become visible.

As emotional as it is funny, Swish is the moving account of one man's journey from stereotype to truth.Joel Derfner is a knitter, an aerobics instructor, a cheerleader, a go-go dancer, and a musical theater composer, but when he realizes one day that he's a walking gay cliché, he embarks on a quest for deeper meaning. Confronting the demons of his past at an LGBT summer camp, using the Internet to "meet" men (many, many men), or going undercover to a conference of ex-gays, he discovers that what he's looking for--and sometimes even finds, hidden under the surface of everyday life--is his own identity.

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. Profiled in Film Comment and Rolling Stone for his pioneering work, Landis' over-the-top "Mr. Sleazoid" persona and double-life as an adult film star masked the pain behind the excess: a child genius whose intellect alienated him from his peers; a sexual abuse survivor who numbed his trauma with drugs; a consummate outcast who only felt at home among other outcasts. After settling into life as a husband, father, and author in the 90s, it seemed that Landis had turned a corner-but the ghosts of Times Square were never far behind him. Dead at the age of 49 on the eve of what should have been a successful comeback, his legacy has nominally been forgotten, most of his work lost, and his memory relegated to a footnote in journalism history. Now, award-winning author and journalist Preston Fassel (Our Lady of the Inferno; Fangoria magazine; The Daily Grindhouse) pieces together the full story of his life for the first time, from his turbulent childhood, to his meteoric rise in the New York vice scene, to his tragic demise on the streets of Chicago. Featuring exclusive interviews with Kurt Loder (MTV; Rolling Stone), Michael J. Weldon (Psychotronic Video), Art Ettinger (Ultra Violent Magazine), Carl Abrahamsson, Mike McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies; Teen Movie Hell), and others, plus excerpts from Landis' unpublished autobiographical novella Last Exit in Manattan and a reprint of Landis' seminal Fangoria interview with Andy Milligan, Landis at last pulls back the curtain on one of genre writing's most influential-yet unknown-figures. In that lost, damned, golden age called the 80s, there was a movie star named Bobby Spector and a writer named Mr. Sleazoid. Most importantly, there was a man named Bill Landis. This is his story.

Margaretha van Hulsteyn (also known as Scrappy) is the daughter of respected South African attorney Sir Willem van Hulsteyn, and an aspiring actress. While studying in London after the Great War, Scrappy changes her name to Marda Vanne and enters into a relationship with one of the foremost actresses of her day, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies. However, on a visit to her parents in the Union of South Africa, Marda meets Hans Strydom, an attorney and uncompromising radical politician with the soubriquet 'The Lion of the North'. Their meeting changes the course of her life, at least temporarily... Strydom went on to become a principal progenitor of the harshest discriminatory legislation, Apartheid, which endured for decades until his nephew, President FW de Klerk, in a volte-face , dismantled the laws of Apartheid.