This Queer Book Saved My Life

Latest Episodes:

Metes And Bounds with David Rephan and Jay Quinn May 02, 2023

Show notes

To be queer, young, and surfing on the beach. Where's your queer true north?
Our guests today are attorney David Rephan and Lambda Literary Award finalist Jay Quinn!

David shares with us how Jay's novel Metes and Bounds saved his life and how David continues to return to the novel as a queer true north. This was Jay's first novel and he went on to write four more as well as a memoir.

Metes and Bounds follows 18-year surfer, Matt, as he leaves home after his high school graduation to work for his uncle, a land surveyor. It’s about Matt's story of claiming his place as a surfer and as a gay man in the small and large world of construction sites, fishing piers, and surf breaks.
Buy Metes and Bounds
AbeBooks has a variety of copies for you to peruse. Check them out here:
https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/metes-and-bounds/author/jay-quinn/

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook
Credits
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, Natalie Cruz, Paul Kaefer, Nicole Olila, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, and Sean Smith
Patreon Subscribers: Awen Briem, Stephen D., Thomas Michna, and Gary Nygaard.

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7 Minutes in Book Heaven with Joseph Plaster and Kids on the Street Apr 25, 2023

Show notes

Meet Joseph Plaster and his new book Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin. It's 7 Minutes in Book Heaven! Where we meet queer authors and talk with them about the new books they have coming out for us to love and cuddle up with.

What's Kids on the Street about? Joseph explores the informal support networks that enabled abandoned and runaway queer youth to survive in tenderloin districts across the United States. He shows how they collectively and creatively managed the social trauma they experienced, in part by building relationships with johns, bartenders, hotel managers, bouncers, and other vice district denizens. By highlighting a politics where the marginal position of street kids is the basis for a moral economy of reciprocity, Plaster excavates a history of queer life that has been overshadowed by major narratives of gay progress and pride.
Buy Kids on the Street
Visit Duke University Press: https://www.dukeupress.edu/kids-on-the-street
Connect with Joseph Plaster
Twitter: @Jplaster3
Facebook: Joey Plaster
Website: https://www.josephplaster.com
Check out the film Song of Love (Un Chant d'Amour) that we chatted about
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043084/
Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook
Credits
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, Natalie Cruz, Paul Kaefer, Nicole Olila, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, and Sean Smith
Patreon Subscribers: Awen Briem, Stephen D., Thomas Michna, and Gary Nygaard.

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Goodbye To Berlin with Allison Vincent Apr 18, 2023

Show notes

Seriously, though. How DO we thread together all of our queer identities?
Our guest is writer, educator, and theater maker Allison Vincent and we talk about the queer book that saved her life: the novella Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.
Goodbye to Berlin is a Queer classic. Our hero moves to Berlin where he meets the incomparable Sally Bowles. They become roommates as he explores Berlin and his sexuality. The novella was adapted into the award-winning theatrical production and film Cabaret.

For Allison, it not only saved her in writing her college thesis, but it also provided visibility to her as a Queer woman to see herself represented in history. We dive into all the queer meanings of the novella's most famous line: "I am a camera with a shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking" and threading together all of our different identities.

Buy Goodbye to Berlin
Visit thisqueerbook.com/bookshop to purchase Goodbye to Berlin and all the books we discuss on our podcasts.

Connect with Allison
Twitter: @allisonrvincent
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=13955074
Transatlantic Love Affair: https://www.transatlanticloveaffair.org

E-Lending Library
Quatrefoil Library has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

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7 Minutes in Book Heaven with McKenzie Wark and Raving Apr 11, 2023

Show notes

Meet McKenzie Wark and her new book Raving. It's 7 Minutes in Book Heaven! Where we meet queer authors and talk with them about the new books they have coming out for us to love and cuddle up with.
What's Raving about?McKenzie takes us into the undisclosed locations of New York's thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures. Raving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave's sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital.
Buy Raving
Visit our Bookshop page at thisqueerbook.com/bookshop or at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781478019381

Connect with McKenzie
Twitter: @mckenziewark
Instagram: @mckenziewark3000

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The Bisexual Option with William Burleson Apr 04, 2023

Show notes

Going from unseen to seen.
This episode is the recording of our live event at Lush Lounge and Theater. And we welcome back William Burleson! You remember him from Season One, when we discussed how his book Bi America was life-giving for our guest Neil Aasve. Now, William talks with me about the book that saved his life: The Bisexual Option by Fritz Klein, MD. He shares with us, "I have to say, coming out as Bi, at first to myself, and then later to other people, there is really an uphill climb to find community. It's better today. We have Google. But nonetheless, it's still difficult. So when I went into a bookstore and I found the book The Bisexual Option, that was revolutionary."
And....William went on to meet Fritz who wrote the forward to Bill's own book!
Buy the books we discuss on this episode!
Visit thisqueerbook.com/bookshop to purchase The Bisexual Option or at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780985871703.
You can also purchase William's books too!
Home: Anthology at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781733976329.
Bi America: Myths, Truths, and Struggles of an Invisible Community at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781560234791
Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

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7 Minutes in Book Heaven with Gerardo Sámano Córdova and Monstrilio Mar 28, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to our LGBT podcast 7 Minutes in Book Heaven – presented to you by This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this podcast, we spend 7 minutes in our virtual studio interviewing LGBTQ authors about their new and upcoming books for us to love and cuddle up with. Today, we meet Gerardo Sámano Córdova and his new novel Monstrilio.

What it's about?Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.
Buy Monstrilio
Visit our Bookshop page at thisqueerbook.com/bookshop or at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781638930365

Connect with Gerardo
Website: gerardosamanocordova.com
Twitter: @samanito
Instagram: @samanito

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The Magic Mountain with Gerard Cabrera Mar 21, 2023

Show notes

When you go up that mountain you don't know what you'll find.
Welcome to our LGBT podcast! In this episode, we meet Gerard Cabrera (he/him) and I talk with him about The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Gerard tells me that, "The Magic Mountain is about educating yourself and trying to make decisions for how you want to live your own life. Do you want to follow a path of seeking freedom or do you want to follow a path of just maintaining a status quo so that you can survive? With AIDS raging, I think that was a very salient sort of internal debate for me."
Gerard is the author of the new novel Homo Novus and I talk with him all about it. What is the plot? It's Holy Week 1987. And Fr. Linus Fitzgerald, a Catholic priest, is confined to his hospital bed by an AIDS diagnosis, while being comforted by the seminarian he sexually abused as an adolescent.
Episode transcripts and more info are available at thisqueerbook.com/podcast/magic-mountain.
Buy the books we discuss on this episode!
Visit thisqueerbook.com/bookshop to purchase Gerard's novel Homo Novus and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.
Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our LGBT podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, Natalie Cruz, Paul Kaefer, Nicole Olila, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, and Sean Smith
Patreon Subscribers: Awen Briem, Stephen D., Thomas Michna, and Gary Nygaard.
E-Lending Library
Quatrefoil Library has created a curated lending library made up of the LGBT books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Visit our friends!

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7 Minutes in Book Heaven with B.G. Wolfe and April Renegade Mar 14, 2023

Show notes

Today, we meet B.G. Wolfe and and her new novel April Renegade. B.G. aims to write diverse characters and storylines, with emphasis on those in the LGBTQ+ community and those who struggle with their mental health like she does.

April Renegade is a coming-of-age punk rock and roll romance. According to Ash Lancing's fans, he has it all. He is the lead singer for a popular punk rock band, he's got a literal model for a girlfriend, a beautiful loft in NYC, and through the past ten years, he's had his best friend, Drew Dawson by his side through it all. But Ash doesn't really have it all. Because the one thing he desires, he can only have in the shadows and behind closed doors, and the exhaustive secrecy is no one's fault but his own.

Buy April Renegade
Visit our Bookshop page at thisqueerbook.com/bookshop or at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9798800797916
Connect with B.G.
Website: bgwolfe.com
Facebook: facebook.com/bgwolfeauthor
Instagram: @author_bgwolfe

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Simon vs. The Homosapiens Agenda with Jacob Aloi and Becky Albertalli Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

Reclaiming our coming out stories.
Welcome to our LGBT podcast! In this episode, we meet Jacob Aloi (he/him) and I talk with him about Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. This YA novel follows 16-year old Simon Spier as he navigates coming out as well as meeting his first love. The book really tackles coming out stories and owning them. It was also adapted into the rom-com Love, Simon which was the first LGBT rom-com by a major film studio.

Plus, Becky (she/her) joins us to discuss writing Simon and the challenges she had writing the novel as she navigated her own coming out journey.

Ticket Giveaway!
Email us at thisqueerbook@gmail.com to be entered into our contest to give 2 free tickets to the Guthrie Theater's production of Born With Teeth. The tickets are for March 10th. Email us by March 8th and we'll announce the winners on March 9th! Buy tickets at guthrietheater.org
Buy The Books We Discussed On This Episode!
Visit thisqueerbook.com/bookshop to purchase Becky's novels Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda and Imogen, Obviously.
Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, Natalie Cruz, Paul Kaefer, Nicole Olila, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, and Sean Smith
Patreon Subscribers: Awen Briem, Stephen D., Thomas Michna, and Gary Nygaard.
E-Lending Library
Quatrefoil Library has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

7 Minutes in Book Heaven with Michele Kirichanskaya and Ace Notes Feb 28, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to our LGBT podcast 7 Minutes in Book Heaven – presented to you by This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this short podcast, we spend 7 minutes in our virtual studio interviewing LGBTQ authors about their new and upcoming books for us to love and cuddle up with.

Today, we meet Michele Kirichanskaya and their new book Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks on Existing in an Allo World. Michele is a freelance journalist, primarily writing book reviews, interviews, pop-culture think pieces, and more.
Michele's book Ace Notes covers everything from coming out, explaining asexuality and understanding different types of attraction, to marriage, relationships, sex, consent, gatekeeping, religion, ace culture and more. This is the ultimate arsenal for whatever the allo world throws at you.

Pre-order Ace Notes!
To pre-order visit our Bookshop page! or at https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781839975226
You can also find the books we chat about on this episode: The Invisible Orientation (Julie Decker) and Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen).

Connect with Michele!
Website: michelekirichanskaya.com
Twitter: @michelekiricha1
Instagram: @michelekirichanskaya

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