Stack your reading list for Pride Month and beyond with these 12 titles chronicling the struggles and celebrations of the Queer community.
Art Essentials: Queer Art by Mollie E. Barnes, Gemma Rolls-Bentley | Thames & Hudson
Queer Art is a definitive compendium of LGBTQ+ artwork, highlighting the expansion and endurance of queer aesthetics within modern and contemporary art. Intergenerational and globally represented, its thoughtfully curated selection of practitioners paints a rich picture of queer visual culture, underscoring the complexity of lived experience, and cutting through basic understandings of the subject that locate “queerness” in overt homoeroticism and proven identity.
Anarchitecture After Everything: A Trans Manifesto by Jack Halberstam | MIT Press
Anarchitecture, a radical aesthetic practice of unmaking the built environment, staged a vigorous confrontation with urban renewal and gentrification projects in the 1970s. In Anarchitecture After Everything, Jack Halberstam identifies a powerful lexicon of transformation within anarchitecture, joining the movement’s practices of cutting and splitting with the destabilizing power of transness to detonate acts of formal violence in our time. Publication date: August, 2026
Fire Island Art: 100 Years Edited by John Dempsey | Monacelli
For nearly one hundred years, Fire Island has served as a haven for queer individuals from around the world. Ninety minutes away from New York City, the slender barrier island has been a source of creative innovation for its residents and visitors, which include some of the most influential artists of the past century. This book – the first of its kind – presents an art history of Fire Island, surveying the rich tapestry of visual artworks in all mediums created there since the 1930s.
How Queer Bookshops Changed the World by A.J. West | One World Publications
Travelling from Shakespeare and Company in Paris to Gay’s the Word in London to the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York, A.J. West has written the first history of these remarkable spaces. Tracing their evolution from under-the-counter operations to beloved out-and-proud institutions, West reveals how they stood at the vanguard of LGBTQ+ rights, offering support through the AIDS crisis and bringing the fight to Section 28.
Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000 by Barry Walters | Viking
The definitive history of LGBTQ music, from Stonewall to RuPaul, and its impact on culture and American life.
A Black Queer History of the United States by C. Riley Snorton, Darius Bost | Beacon Press
The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day.
The House Is (Not) a Prison: On the Queerness of Architecture by Colin Ripley | Concordia University Press
Where is sexuality, especially queer sexuality, in architecture? The House Is (Not) a Prison approaches this question from a radically new position, looking not for a theory of queer architecture, but rather for a queer theory of architecture.
Queer Roman Verse: An Anthology by C. Luke Soucy (Translator) | Liveright
A vital reclamation of queer themes in the poetry of ancient Rome from an electric new talent in classical translation.
From Infinite World: The Sound of the Hammond Organ and the Tragedy of AIDS in the Black Church by Ashon Thomas Crawley | W.W. Norton
The Hammond organ has long distinguished the Black church. Masters of the instrument, often Black queer men, invented and advanced gospel music, pioneered new modes of worship, and helped define Black life in the twentieth century. Profiling foundational figures in the church and Black life, Crawley’s lyrical work offers a captivating new portrait of the Black church as a site of refuge and rejection for Black queer genius.
The Queer Thing About Sin by Harry Tanner | Bloomsbury
A gripping new journey through ancient history, uncovering the origins of homophobia and the untold stories of those who dared to love.
In the Daylight of Our Existence: Architectural History and the Promise of Queer Theory by S.E. Eisterer, ed. | gta Verlag
Tracing the coalitional efforts of feminist, queer, and trans organizations in housing, health care, and artistic spaces, this book presents methods for crafting LGBTQIA+ histories of architecture by investigating planning, resistance, and refusal, all in favor of richer communal lives.
Keith Haring in 3D Edited by Larry Warsh and Glenn Adamson | Monacelli
A fresh perspective on the work of Keith Haring — one of the world’s most beloved contemporary artists — with a special focus on his three-dimensional work.
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