June is Pride Month, a month dedicated to celebrating LGBTQI culture and voices, while advocating for recognition and protection of LGBTQI rights.
From book readings to formal galas there’s a range of events throughout Australia. Check out the events page on the Australian Pride Network site here.
In the meantime, read on for a selection of recent additions to the Vision Australia Library collection in both gay and lesbian fiction and non-fiction, as well as a preview of titles currently in production.
Not a member of the Vision Australia Library? Membership is free and available to anyone with a print disability. Find out more at the Vision Australia Library webpage or call 1300 654 656.
Gay fiction
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
The story of a sudden and powerful romance between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera.
Find Me by Andre Aciman
In this exploration of the varieties of love, the author of 'Call Me by Your Name' lets us back into his characters' lives years after their first meeting. Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the nuances of emotion that are the substance of passion.
An Honest Man by Ben Fergusson
In West Berlin in 1989, eighteen-year-old Ralf has just left school and is living a final golden summer with his three best friends. They spend their days swimming, smoking and daydreaming about the future, oblivious to the storm gathering on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.
My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci
Bekim, grows up a social outcast as an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners and a gay man in an unaccepting society. On a visit to a gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat who moves in with him and his boa constrictor. It is this witty, charming, manipulative creature who starts Bekim on a journey back to Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the history of his family.
Lesbian fiction
Cherry Beach by Laura McPhee-Brown
Hetty and Ness, best friends since childhood, have left suburban Melbourne for the first time to live abroad. Hetty is charming and captivating, the life of the party. Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her. As winter freezes the lakeside city, the dark undercurrents of Hetty's character - abusive relationships, a dangerous obsession with bodies of water - become ever stronger. Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Everisto
A moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women.
From a non-binary social media influencer to a ninety-three-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.
Non-fiction
Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family by Garrard Conley
When Garrard was a 19-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy programme that promised to 'cure' him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends and the God he had prayed to every day of his life.
Coming soon
Flesh to Flesh edited by Lee Hayes
Unapologetically raw in its approach to the sexual lives and happenings of African-American gay men, Flesh to Flesh is a gritty, pulsing view into a demographic that is often demonized and condemned.
Purple Panties edited by Zane
A new collection of lesbian erotica that will blow the sheets off beds everywhere.
Missionary No More edited by Zane
This latest collection of lesbian erotica will have readers squirming on the edge of their seats, curling up beneath the sheets, and fantasizing about the possibilities.
Forced Out: A Detective’s Story of Prejudice and Resilience by Kevin Maxwell
As a gay black man from a working-class family, Kevin Maxell could easily have been a poster boy for the police force's stated commitment to equal opportunities. Joining just after the 9/11 attacks, Kevin entered policing determined to keep communities safe in the face of a changing world.
The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers by Mark Gevisser
Follows protagonists from all over the globe to tell the story of how LGBT rights become one of the world's new human rights frontiers in the second decade of the twenty-first century.