The best LGBTQ books to read in July 2022

Words: Uli Lenart; Images: Supplied

Summer is the perfect season to dive into a book, and we’ve reviewed the best new queer reads (as well as one recently re-issued classic). Check out or top tips below:

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life (Paul Dalla Rosa/Serpent’s Tail)

A blisteringly brilliant and deliciously unsettling short-story collection from the exceptionally talented, Melbourne-based writer Paul Dalla Rosa. Whether working in a pancake parlour or in high-end fashion retail, lit by a laptop in a sex chat or by the camera of an acclaimed film director, stuck in an uncomfortable urban flat-share or feeling restless in a vacuous holiday rental in Mallorca, the characters in the ten stories in Dalla Rosa’s debut collection navigate the spaces between aspiration and delusion, ambition and aimlessness, the curated profile and the cold realism of life’s disappointments. There is lingering sadness and self-defeat, but also a captivating warmth, humour, insight and tenderness.

Packed with shrewd observation and protagonists whose loud internal lives struggle with a lack of connection and loneliness, these tales are a meditation on the emptiness we are left with when the millennial dream evaporates. It exquisitely captures the disassociation of life in the corporate, internet age: our projected selves an imitation of happiness and success as the washing-up sits undone and our debts accrue interest. The disorientating search for something meaningful in a world of self-regard and artifice. These poignant themes are explored masterfully in writing that is direct, haunting and unsparing. Sublime. For fans of Christos Tsiolkas, Bryan Washington, Brontez Purnell and Carmen Maria Machado. Out now

100 Queer Poems — An Anthology (Edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan/Vintage)

It could be the tendency towards introspection and sensitivity, a sense of observing life somehow from the outside looking in, or maybe it’s just the abundance of natural talent, but there is something about writing incredible poetry that queer people seem to excel at. In 100 Queer Poems, Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan, editors and acclaimed poets in their own right, have compiled a diverse and gratifying new anthology of LGBTQ+ verse.

It’s a joyous and moving celebration of both new voices and iconic poets of the past, ranging from the 20th century to the present day. Questioning and re-evaluating what is meant by the term ‘a queer poem’, there are classics by Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Wilfred Owen, Charlotte Mew and June Jordan, contemporary figures such as Mark Doty, Jericho Brown, Carol Ann Duffy, Kei Miller, Kae Tempest, Natalie Diaz and Ocean Vuong, alongside amazing new voices including Chen Chen, Richard Scott, Harry Josephine Giles, Verity Spott and Jay Bernard. Divided into Childhoods and Adolescence; Domesticities; Relationships; Landscapes; the City and Queering Histories, this is an abundantly rich and rewarding collection, capturing how queer poets and their work speak to one another across the generations. Out now

I Don’t Take Requests (DJ Fat Tony/Coronet)

The refreshing, inspiring and candid new autobiography from the funniest man on Instagram, DJ Fat Tony. This no-holds-barred memoir takes us on a trip which tracks the legendary DJ’s every high and comedown with humour, heart and candour. It explores his childhood on a south London estate split between petty crime and sexual abuse at the hands of an older man, and the wild teenage life spent as a shop assistant who stole more than he sold. Then there’s his spell as a drag queen and a prostitute’s maid.  Also covered are the glitzy array of A-list pals whose appearances never feel gratuitous, the three-decades-long drugbinge that took nearly all his teeth and almost his life, and his tireless work in supporting other recovering addicts.

Fifteen years sober, Fat Tony’s lost none of the acidic wit that makes him loved and feared in equal measure. A word to the wise: if you ever see him behind the decks, don’t ask him for a request! Written with Michael Hennegan. Out now

My Dead Book: A Novel (Nate Lippens/Pilot Press)

Dark, twisted, reflective and precise, My Dead Book is a novel comprised of nonlinear fragments or vignettes about a gay man who is haunted by insomnia and his past as he approaches his 50th birthday. In the dead of night, he remembers his friends who died in the late 80s and 90s, his years as a teenage outcast, drug-user and sex worker, and ruminates on working-class survival, queer ageing, Aids, and his place in the world.

Nate Lippens is a writer from Wisconsin and My Dead Book is his debut novel. Ingenious, tight and razor-sharp. Out now

Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories (Edited by Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell/RIBA Publishing)

In this beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated coffee-table book, a range of writers share stories of unique queer spaces from around the world including The Black Lesbian and Gay Centre, London; Category Is Books, Glasgow; Christopher Street, New York; Coppelia, Havana; New Sazae, Tokyo; ONE Institute for Homophile Studies, Los Angeles; Pop-Up spaces, Dhaka; Queer House Party, Online; Santiago Apostol Cathedral, Nicaragua; and the Trans Memory Archive, Buenos Aires. Fascinating and joyous. With a foreword by Olivia Laing. Out now

QUEER CLASSIC: Nevada (Imogen Binnie/Picador)

We can’t overstate how electrifying and brilliant this messy and wise punk-trans American modern classic is. Maria, a trans woman in her 30s, seems to be living life adjacent to herself. She spends her aimless days working in a New York bookstore, trying to remain true to a punk ethos while popping pills, wondering if strangers will clock her as trans, neglecting her friends, faking orgasms, and generally drinking herself into a stupor.

After her girlfriend confesses to cheating on her, Maria’s lackadaisical attitude at work finally catches up with her and she does what every sensible person would do in her position. She takes her now ex-girlfriend’s car, scores some heroin and heads for the Pacific, embarking on her version of the Great American Road Trip. Along the way, she encounters James, a troubled young stoner who works in the local Wal-Mart. Maria recognises her younger self in him and the pair form an unlikely but instant connection.

Originally published in 2013 by Topside Press, this groundbreaking cult classic has now been reissued in the UK by Picador. It’s raw, smart, provocative and inspired.