In honor of Pride Month, we’re excited to share a list of recommended reads from Susan Post and Audrey Kohler, our friends at BookWoman. The selected titles highlight LGBTQ+ to celebrate the stories that enrich the community with their activism, knowledge, pride, and respect. Check out the list below.

L: Black lesbian thought leaders have played a pivotal role as activists and in shaping feminist history and theory. This powerful and celebratory anthology shines a light on the words of many trailblazers, including Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, amongst others. Whether this is your introduction or you’re a seasoned reader on the subject, you’ll find something wonderful and inspiring. Mouths of Rain is also a great companion piece with Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought.

G: The Guncle is a love letter to gay uncles everywhere! This wonderfully sweet “Beach Read” has some real depth hidden amongst the laughs. If you’re looking for a fun, gay romp: look no further. I promise you will laugh out loud!

B: You’ll fall in LOVE with August and Jane as they tumble through time, queer love, and the q train. There’s never been a book that makes the NYC subway seem quite so magical. Featuring an all-star cast of queer characters, One Last Stop will make you want to join the friend group and live your wonderfully queer NYC life.

T: The first time I saw the title, Detransition, Baby, I gasped and then laughed. Torrey Peters makes transness, specifically trans womanhood the forefront of her provocative debut novel and I had so much fun reading it. It feels so liberating to read a story about trans people that don’t hold hands or stop to explain terminology for cisgender readers. Reading a mainstream book that focuses on transness and queer family units and all the messiness that comes along with that is one of the highlights of my 2021.

Q: I come back to this book every pride month since its release in 2019. We Are Everywhere has photos of openly queer people dating all the way back to 1912 and feels like flipping through a family photo album. You get to see how our queer ancestors created found families and organized them to begin the fight for queer liberation. This is an essential queer history book. “…gay history is not all about you. It’s about all of us, and none of us is free until all of us are free. It’s time all of us-everywhere-see that.”

+: Let the Record Show is written with so much love and detail for the movement of ACT UP, which makes sense when you learn in the lengthy introduction that Sarah Schulman was an active member and organizer. With each section and interview, you learn more about what made this movement unique and how civil rights movements of the past influenced how ACT UP advocated for HIV/AIDS patients. This is an essential read for anyone looking to learn more about political organizing, the AIDS epidemic, and queer American history.

We’re celebrating Pride Month in June but will continue to read with pride all year long here at the Texas Book Festival. LGBTQ+ voices deserve every platform possible to share their stories, including books, film, TV, theatre, and podcasting. Whether based in reality or fiction, we value all stories to build community and support systems encouraging diversity and inclusiveness. Today, we’re talking about film and TV! There is a lot brewing in Tinseltown, and I feel that LGBTQ+ stories are shining and winning more than ever. New talent (in front of and behind the screen) are given more opportunities to bring their stories to life and I’m here for every chance to learn and uplift.

There are a plethora of books that have been adapted for film and television over the years and I am always fascinated by the changes made to effectively reach audiences who are experiencing these stories cinematically. Sometimes new plot points are added to the story and sometimes plot points are cut for time. Maybe we’ll meet new characters based on a mashup of multiple original characters. There may be a change in setting or the time period. With that said, film and TV adaptations do sometimes recreate page-for-page beats for the screen, but oftentimes what we see is stylistically different from what we read. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and as an avid couch potato, I encourage these changes if that makes the experience all the more enjoyable.

As book readers, we can decide whether these choices work or if they do the original story justice. What I love about film and TV adaptations is that they give books a second chance at life. No matter the medium, if I like a story and care about the characters involved, I am going to consume it in any form that I can. The benefit of adaptations is that there is an opportunity to see our favorite books brought to life on screen and possibly discover new books after learning that they’ll be getting the Hollywood treatment.

Below are books that have recently been adapted for film, TV, and streaming or are underway soon. As we continue to cope with shifting production and release schedules due to the pandemic, I want to share the stories that are right at our fingertips. As always, please feel free to share more titles in the comments on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Love, Victor (available on Hulu)

Becky Albertalli’s novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was adapted to film in 2018 as Love, Simon starring Nick Robinson. The novel now has a spin-off series, Love, Victor, which recently premiered its second season on Hulu starring Michael Cimino. If you love rom-coms and rom-dram(a)s, you’ll love Victor and his band of friends.

Behind Her Eyes (available on Netflix)

Sarah Pinborough’s novel Behind Her Eyes was recently adapted to series for Netflix. The story takes viewers for a thrilling ride and ends with a twist (or two) that dares you to rewatch from the beginning and put on your best detective hat.

Eternals (in theaters November 5th)

Based on the comic book series of the same name, the film (directed by Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao) is part of the MCU’s Phase 4 and will feature the first openly gay superhero in a Marvel movie.

There are so many LGBTQ+ poets I’d like to celebrate this Pride month, so consider this list a brief spotlight of 2020 LGBTQ+ books of poetry. Whenever possible, I prefer to recommend books of poetry from writers who are working today because so often recommended books of poetry tend to be over twenty years old.

As with any list, it is by no means exhaustive, so please feel free to let us know your favorites on our Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook!

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

To quote poet Sasha West’s April 30 Friday Reads: “In POSTCOLONIAL LOVE POEM, Natalie Diaz brings us into the heart of love. Sometimes we move through desire: ‘I sleep her bees with my mouth of smoke,’ sometimes through a yearning for what colonial history erased: ‘we blossom from the original body: water / flowering and flowing until it became itself, and we, us.’ Through careful, luminous celebration, Diaz calls us back to the force of the world—What we are to each other. How we can care for each other. I am grateful for how her poems re-make my mind.”

We’d also like to congratulate Diaz again for recently winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Guillotine by Eduardo Corral

To quote myself from a previous Friday Reads: “As its name suggests, cuts are a core motif of Eduardo C. Corral’s GUILLOTINE. The opening poem “Ceremonial” sees the speaker removing a mole from their body, separating self and body. Other poems in the collection cut across land and borders, following the split of the self from the homeland. Despite its titular emphasis on the cut, GUILLOTINE still reads like a poetics of yearning — one that I come back to again and again.”

Homie by Danez Smith

I love this book — a book that is so full of tenderness, kindness, and, well, love. This is a book that is ambitious in its form, to be sure, but it is also wide-reaching in heart. So often joy and intimacy can feel fleeting and rare, but in their search to capture kinship on the page, Danez Smith has created a wonderful celebration of friendship and chosen family.

Indigo by Ellen Bass

From the publisher: INDIGO merges elegy and praise poem in an exploration of life’s complexities. Whether her subject is oysters, high heels, a pork chop, a beloved dog, or a wife’s return to health, Bass pulls us in with exquisite immediacy. Her lush and precisely observed descriptions allow us to feel the sheer primal pleasure of being alive in our own “succulent skin,” the pleasure of the gifts of hunger, desire, touch.

Here is the Sweet Hand by francine j. harris
In Here is the Sweet Hand, francine j. harris adeptly experiments with language and image to create a collection that feels rich in evocative ideas and speech. One of the things I most appreciate about this collection is its confident comfort in being in dialogue with writers such as Toni Morrison and hip-hop artists like Ty Dolla $ign.

Are you ready for a summer 2021 reading adventure full of tales and tails? Visit your central Texas libraries virtually or in-person to join literacy events for your entire family. We’ve gathered links to summer programming at our local libraries for your easy access. First stop, Austin Public Library! APL offers a mix of indoor and outdoor activities for your children, youth, and teens. Don’t forget about our central Texas libraries: Pflugerville Public Library, Cedar Park Public Library, Georgetown Public Library, and the Round Rock Public Library to attend virtual puppet shows, art lessons, animal spotlights, and lots more. You also can’t miss Watercolor Wednesdays at the Buda Public Library! Join us for a summer focused on reconnecting with family and friends, and of course, libraries!

¡De regreso a la biblioteca!

¿Estás listo para un verano 2021 lleno de aventura? Visita estas bibliotecas del centro de Texas virtualmente o en persona para disfrutar de eventos literarios para toda tu familia. Juntamos los enlaces para varias bibliotecas locales para que sea más fácil el acceso. Regresa a la Biblioteca Pública de Austin que tiene eventos para bebés, niños, y adolescentes. No olvides otras bibliotecas cercanas como Pflugerville Public Library , Cedar Park Public Library, Georgetown Public Library, y Round Rock Public Library que aunque no tienen todo accessible en español, si hay muchos recursos bilingües disponibles como cuentos con marionetas, lecciones de arte, y actividades para los amantes de los animales. En la Biblioteca de Buda habrá actividades de acuarela cada miércoles de este verano. ¡Te invitamos a divertirte con nosotros en nuestras bibliotecas este verano!

As TBF’s resident film/TV buff, I wanted to share a list of new films and television series adaptations by Asian American and Pacific Islander writers and artists for AAPI Heritage Month. From the page to the big and small screen, it’s important to represent diverse characters so that audiences can relate to true-to-life circumstances. No matter the genre, readers and viewers want to see characters who look like themselves or feel acknowledged by storytellers who come from similar backgrounds. It’s all about making a connection.

Whenever I fall in love with a book, I like to visualize the characters and put a face to the name. I wonder about which actors could portray them faithfully. I believe that movies and series have the capacity to take the written story to the next level (sometimes condensing or stretching the story) and readers can then relive the moments that we loved brought to life. Sometimes the story works better on the page, I appreciate the act of giving the story new legs and adapting to a different medium for further exposure to new audiences. So, without further ado, here’s a list of current and upcoming books to screen by AAPI storytellers.

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Movie adaptation premiered on Netflix January 2021)
Written and directed by Ramin Bahrani starring Adarsh Gourav, Priyanka Chopra, and Rajkummar Rao

Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han (Movie adaptation premiered on Netflix February 2021)
Directed by Michael Fimognari, written by Katie Lovejoy, starring Lana Condor and Noah Centineo

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong (Upcoming TV series adaptation by A24 and Greta Lee)

Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang (Upcoming TV series on Amazon starring Ali Wong)

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Upcoming TV series on Hulu)