I’ve tried to include books that represent as broad a range of LGBTQIA+ identities as possible, but of course no list will ever reflect the messy, wonderful diversity of queer lives. You’ll find queer characters falling in and out of love, wrestling with big life decisions, contemplating time travel, turning into trees, having kids. There’s a book of Métis futurism, and a few collections that can only be defined as Weird Queer. These collections span a wide range of genres form contemporary and historical fiction to sci-fi and fabulism. I could write several more paragraphs like this, but I’ll refrain. I’m currently reading Pretend It’s My Body by Luke Dani Blue (out in September), and after that I plan to devour Gods of Want buy K-Ming Chang (out in July). I limited myself to books published in 2020 and after, which means I didn’t include Look Who’s Morphing by Tom Cho, Sea, Swallow Me by Craig Gidney Laurance, or Love After the End edited by Joshua Whitehead.

Believe me when I tell you that these 12 are just the beginning. She has written for the New YorkTimes, Harper’s Bazaar, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. So I’ve put together a list of 12 of my absolute favorite queer story collections from the past three years. Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, and A Safe Girl to Love the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers and the publisher at Little Puss Press. There are so many! More come out every month! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with non-queer short story collections, but as someone who grew up hungering for queer lit, this current abundance is especially satisfying. Now that I’ve started reading short story collections again, I can see clearly what the problem was: the stories I was reading before just weren’t queer enough! These days I cannot get short stories into my bloodstream fast enough. So, over the years, they mostly dropped out of my reading life. I tried to read a lot of story collections, but I’d always find myself mildly disappointed. I didn’t used to be a huge fan of short stories.

A dream of a woman by casey plett