Biographies & Memoirs

"I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share....

It’s 1996, and Jeremy has met the British boy of his dreams — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights, including immigration.

Bloomsbury presents The Loves of My Life by the legendary author Edmund White, a stunning, revelatory memoir of a lifetime of gay love and sex. Read by Joel Froomkin.

An inspiring and intimate self-portrait of the champion of equality that encompasses her brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism and an ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice....

Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life.

In the wake of a disastrous two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break—for three months she would abstain from dating, relationships and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Melissa, it was.

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries....

Multi-award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with their show Nanette. Now they take us through the defining moments in their life and their powerful decision to tell the truth—no matter the cost.

As she builds her own life anew, an Italian writer embarks on an all-consuming search for the true story of the mysterious princess H. H. Amrit Kaur of Mandi....

Stephen Fry has moved into a completely new stratosphere, both as a public figure, and a private man....

Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page....

This stirring and intimate collection brings together 30 unique narratives to paint a vivid portrait of what it means to be a queer Nigerian woman.

Every time Siri Lindley has faced what seemed impossible, she found a way to not only survive the situation, but to thrive within it. Finding a Way is her life-giving guide for listeners who are feeling stuck between the life they want to live and the life that they're living now....

Returning to Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, Fritz Bauer – a gay Jewish lawyer and outspoken critic of Hitler – was determined to reclaim the Germany he had once loved.

A heart-wrenching, eye-opening, and giggle-inducing memoir about what it's like to grow up not sure if you're (a) a boy, (b) a girl, (c) something in between, or (d) all of the above....

In 2010, Chelsea Manning, working as an intelligence analyst in the US Army in Iraq, disclosed 720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera....

Hey, I'm Jamie, a 29-year-old trans guy from the UK. I've been transitioning for 12 years now after realising I was trans (by accident!) at sixteen years old. I knew I was a boy since the age of four, but realised whilst growing up that I was different....

Following on from his hugely successful books, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles, comes the third chapter in Stephen Fry's life....

You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants...

A coming-of-age memoir about growing up queer in a strict Muslim household....

Star of stage and screen. Tireless supporter of charity. Runner. Political campaigner. Fashion icon. Human. There is no one quite like Eddie Izzard....

In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the 21st century....

With raw honesty, Vivek Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour....

Part memoir, part guide, Burning My Roti is essential listening for a new generation of South Asian women....

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today.

I Think I Like Girls shares everything that Rosie wishes she had known when she started dating women, offering answers to the questions that cross everyone's mind. From the first moment of coming out to finding community and navigating relationships, Rosie will offer her own stories and bring in those of other women, with warmth, humour and a happy helping of chaotic dates.

In the wake of a disastrous two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break—for three months she would abstain from dating, relationships and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Melissa, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship or another. It was time to focus on herself and examine the lifelong patterns that had got her to this point. When those three months ended, she decided to extend her celibate period, fearing that she had not yet gained the clarity she was searching for.

Bisexuality is often seen as something temporary, in spite of increasing openness around it: a sign of immaturity or a waystation on the road to a different sexuality altogether, rather than its own distinct entity. In this beautifully written cultural history, Sam Mills reclaims bisexuality as its own identity, interweaving her experience of being bisexual with illuminating portraits of a clutch of artists, writers and musicians, including Colette, Bessie Smith, Marlene Dietrich, Anaïs Nin, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Madonna.

It’s 1996, and Jeremy has met the British boy of his dreams — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights, including immigration. The pair snatch time in forests and deserts, London fashion shows, Berlin sex clubs and East Village hotel rooms. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in San Francisco. Deep House moves through the couple’s domiciles while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before.

Does peaking in high school ruin you for life? Was Miley Cyrus right, is it all about the climb (when it comes to building a career?) And what - scientifically - is the best way to mend a broken heart? Comedian Suzi Ruffell is considering life's big questions. In this brutally honest, funny, and often moving memoir, Suzi winningly tells her life story, and asks a host of experts to answer the tricky questions it prompts along the way. Diamond life advice comes from the likes of Elizabeth Day, Dolly Alderton, Charlene Douglas, Laura Bates, Dr Kirren Schnack, and more.

In the early 2000s, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey—both young artists trying to figure it all out—met at auditions for an unknown little TV show. Given that it was a show about lesbians living in Los Angeles, with the first ever ensemble cast of openly queer female characters, Kate and Leisha knew the project was going to be unlike anything else out there—that is, if it even got picked up.

Through the eyes of a reporter and the stomach of a hungry gay man, Dining Out examines the rise, impact and legacies of the nation's gay restaurants past, present, and future, connecting meals with memories. Hamburger Mary’s, Florent, a suburban Denny’s queered by kids: Piepenburg explores how these and many other gay restaurants, coffee shops, diners, and unconventional eateries have charted queer placemaking and changed the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement for the better.

Taking us through a criminalised underworld of pubs, parties and campaign gatherings, The Light of Day charts how Roger Butler helped bring about a change in the law, legalising sex between men, but soon found himself marginalised from the movement he kickstarted after becoming completely blind in his early 30s. Worn down trying to navigate life afresh in London, he left for Oxford, where he became increasingly isolated and never found the life partner he so desperately wanted.

As the daughter of a rabbi raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, Yehudis struggled to conform to the strict expectations placed upon her and her siblings. Outspoken, curious and desperate to know more about G-d, she felt fenced in by arbitrary rules and questions left unanswered. As she grew older, these restrictions intensified and her questions for G-d hung heavier than ever. Wry and exhilarating, Chutzpah is a fearless exploration of what is possible when one person simply refuses to choose between abandoning their roots and abandoning themselves.

In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—purely on account of our bodies.

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality.

Pete Crighton came of age in the early/mid 1980s in the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Growing up in Toronto, he was terrified that his friends and schoolmates would find out that he was “different” at a time when being gay felt like a death sentence. His only comfort was music, the songs a balm to his painful adolescence. Struggling to make sense of his sexuality and fear of the disease stifled Crighton as a sexual being. Instead of exploring sex, he began curating a massive music library.

When Wilco's 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was infamously criticized as "dad rock," Niko Stratis was a twenty-five-year-old closeted trans woman working in her dad's glass shop in the Yukon Territory. As she sought escape from her hypermasculine environment, Stratis found an unlikely lifeline amid dad rock's emotionally open and honest music. Listening to dad rock, Stratis could access worlds beyond her own and imagine a path forward.

Johannes Wirix-Speetjens realiseerde zich dat de kunstgeschiedenis vol queer iconen zit - van Leonard Bernstein tot Freddie Mercury. Deze ontdekkingen inspireerden hem eerst tot een serie podcasts voor de Vlaamse radiozender Klara, maar al snel groeide het idee: dit onderwerp verdient een boek. Met 'Classical Queers' brengt Johannes levens en passies samen in een kleurrijk portret van de kunstgeschiedenis die we dachten te kennen. De geschiedenis wordt vaak verteld vanuit een beperkt, mannelijk en heteroseksueel perspectief. Maar het verleden is zoveel kleurrijker dan dat!

Accidentally on Purpose dives into Kristen Kish’s childhood as a Korean adoptee in the Midwest, finding purpose in kitchens, and becoming the season 10 winner of—and now host—of Top Chef all the while navigating life in the spotlight, coming out in her adult years, and all the life lessons in between.