Pride Month Reads
In honour of Pride Month, we’ve rounded up eleven works across our nonfiction, fiction, and poetry publications which centre LGBTQ+ characters and stories. These reads will be accessible online regardless of subscription status until August.
Nonfiction
“Homebodies” by J.P. Letkemann
One time, we were raking leaves at my father’s cottage, and Ben rushed toward me excitedly. “Look, Jake! Look what I found!” he said. “A butterfly cocoon!”
In his hand, he was holding a pinecone.
To this day, he maintains he was joking.
“Mother and Child” by Dora Dueck
But if I claim the icon’s gravity and harmony for the occasion of our daughter’s coming out, I certainly cannot claim its serenity. She was nervous. She spoke slowly and carefully, consulting her papers, and beneath my held-calm exterior, my guts were roiling as I grasped what she’d said.
A revised version of “Mother and Child” appears in Return Stroke: essays & memoir
“The Plague Came with No Directions” by thom vernon
We kids balanced on the tips of our toes. Ready to bolt, duck, or escape. An attack could come anytime or anywhere. There were always incoming missiles. Once I made the mistake of shoveling an elderly neighbour’s sidewalk without asking the woman first.
“White Sneakers” by Tim McCaskill
People stop in the street to look at us as we pass, and we begin to feel like our glowing illuminated futuristic feet are a bit out of place. Yes we’re tourists, but we’d hoped to be maybe a little less obvious.
“How to Make a Gay Icon” by Kevin Shaw
While Garten will tell you that very cold butter is required to make the best biscuits, the ingredients for making a gay icon are less precise.
Fiction
Content warning: fatphobia, body shaming, light body horror
My body feels sluggish. I was excited this morning for the party. Even the thought of my extended family sleeping over didn’t faze me. But these days I often speak of excitement in the past tense.
“String Theory” by Jake Tobin Garret
Your dad’s job is so cool, Sam and Marlon said. He just gets to play video games all day. Kyle had shrugged. He didn’t tell them that his dad’s job mostly consisted of him squinting in front of a computer screen for hours typing tiny symbols and letting out frustrated grunts. Leave it to his dad to make even video games boring.
“Condolence” by Benjamin Lefebvre
…the prospect of entering a church for a funeral after learning how narrowly he’d missed being invited to join his friends for the most awkward-sounding threesome during a block of time in which his sex life had come to a screeching halt seemed to be beyond the realm of common decency.
Content warning: themes of abuse, intimate partner violence
When you finish, she lets loose a long and gusty sigh.
“So you remember standing in front of a building,” she says. “And?”
You guess that’s all it is, really, although it feels like so much more.
Poetry
“That Time I Called An Auntie A Bitch” by Grace Lau
I’d stolen
her joy, proved my very existence
was sin
yet again.
Three Poems by Mattew Stepanic
Content warning: mass shooting
Our tongues are weighted to hold down truths,
our legs ever alert, and our endurance
innumerable years long.
Thank you to our featured writers for sharing these stories.
Photo by Jack Lucas Smith on Unsplash