This is a quick, fun, historical heist story set in the 1860s with two queer leads, appropriate for young readers. Grace is a trans runaway, fleeing Georgia for California with the dream of a career on the stage. Flor is feared outlaw who haunts the canyons of New Mexico with her hawk, staging robberies whenever the opportunity strikes. The two don't have a very promising first meeting, but they decide to go in on a joint venture- sneaking into a Confederate gala to steal plans to sell to the Union Army. Its gorgeously illustrated in Melanie Gillman's trademark colored pencil style, a perfect media to render the peachy sky above the desert at dawn and the blushes of the heroines as they begin to develop more than business-partnership-feelings for each other. I picked up a full color ARC of this story at BookExpo 2019. While you wait for its fall release, check out Gillman's other queer YA series, As The Crow Flies , which is full of nature, teen girls, and feelings. You can read the first 300 pages online in webcomic form at http://www.melaniegillman.com/ or pick up the print edition from Iron Circus Comics. (Full disclosure, the author is a friend of mine and appears in my book!)

This is a sweet, magical story about friendship developing into romance, coming of age in the shadow of forceful parents, and getting in touch with the true source of one's own power. Nova Huang is a teen witch, living with her two grandmas after the death of her parents. She helps them take care of supernatural disturbances in their New England hometown. One night while investigating rumors in the woods, she discovers that her childhood crush, werewolf Tam Lang, has unexpected returned after a long absence. Tam now identifies as nonbinary, and has escaped a cult to try and defeat a demon that may already be connect to their soul. Nova immediately offers her home and her help, but overcoming this enemy will take more than even their combined powers. I got the chance to read an uncolored ARC of this book, which I got at BookExpo 2019, where I also met the authors. (Full disclosure, we have the same publisher and we are friends!) I can't wait to see what the book looks like when it is finished, because the line art is already gorgeous.

I've been a fan of Niki Smith for years and have been eagerly following the updates on this book ever since it was announced. It does not disappoint! Grayson and Hawke are twins, grandchildren of the Lord of House Sunderlay. They are forced to flee a bloody political coup and go into hiding in plain sight. They disguise themselves as twin sisters and enter as initiates into the Communion of Blue, a holy sisterhood of dyers, weavers, magic spinners, healers and guardians who live and train in a monastery in the city center. Hawke chaffs under the disguise of Hanna, wanting to return to their home and fight for his place as Sunderlay's Heir. But Grayson thrives as Grayce, finally able to live the studious, peaceful, female life she's always wanted. When it is announced that Lord Sunderlay's murderer is going to take his place on the council, the twins must bring the truth to light and choose the paths their lives will take.

This second volume of Kabi Nagata's diary comics deals mainly with mental health, depression, self-harm and hospitalization. The drawing style gets looser and looser as it goes along, which feels very appropriate given the subject matter. This is an intimate and raw portrait of someone whose life is completely falling apart, with periods of intense psychological pain punctuated by stretches of boredom and brief hope. By the end of the book she is once again living at home, having given up alcohol and formed a much stronger bond with her parents. I hope she's doing alright now, and keeps drawing comics.

Following the successful online Japanese publication of My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness Nagata was given a second series to write about her life, in diary-entry like installments. This volume collects the first 12 entries in which she struggles to become financially independent and move into her own apartment. Her paralyzing depression leads to many false starts: she spends about one month in her own place before turning around to move back home, partly because she wasn't able to afford to buy the bare necessities to furnish a place and partly because she didn't have the mental energy to plan ahead. She thinks deeply about her lack of community, and tries hard to reach out and strengthen high school friendships, with mixed success. Half way through the book she moves out a second time, partly to gain more privacy to work on her comics, which she has not shared with her parents. When she eventually does, they do not respond well. The final few chapters deal with a handling the pressure of internet comments and a crush. This story is just as messy and honest her first book, but because it is about chronicling events which are still unfolding, it's a little less cohesive- like life.

This book completely blew me away. I had already read and enjoyed other books by Tillie Walden, but this book exhibits her skills both as an artist and a writer at a completely new level. The pacing of the story, the style of the story, the plot and the emotions of the story are all braided into a completely seamless whole. Has anyone optioned the film rights for this story yet? I felt like I was hearing a soundtrack playing in my head as I read it. The story focuses on two different emotional times in the life of one woman named Mia. In the "current" timeline she has just started a new job as part of a spaceship crew that flies to different locations and does renovations on the mysterious, crumbling architecture of past civilizations. In the "past" timeline, we see Mia as a first year at a girls boarding school meet, befriend, and slowly fall in love with another student named Grace. Slowly the backgrounds of these two, and of the member's of Mia's crew, are unfolded to reveal a web of connections that I was surprised and delighted by. At this heart, this is a book about friendship, budding queer love and of growing into independence and self-confidence. In a total power move, Tillie Walden did not include a single male character in this 533 page story. We meet a nonbinary character who uses they/them pronouns, but other than that this is a universe entirely inhabited by girls and women. I loved it.

This is a beautiful, funny, insightful book full of truth and joy. Jacob Tobia was one of the first nonbinary superstars I discovered and started following on instagram when I began trying to answer my own question of "What does a nonbinary adult look like?" Despite loving their fashion, their feminism and their flirty photo captions for years, I didn't know even a fraction of their story. Jacob was born in 1991 in North Carolina to a loving, churchgoing family who were as supportive as they could be while still being pretty confused about their genderful child in a binary world. Jacob struggled through childhood bullying, came out as queer as a teen, wrote a college admittance essay about their first experience wearing high heels on campus and got into multiple Ivy League schools. From there, Jacob's ambition, activism and fashion only grew brighter and bolder, leading to nationally recognized fundraising projects for LGBTQ causes and to a trip to the White House during the Obama years. Amidst this wild success were periods of failure, fear, sorrow, and a lot of growth and self-discovery. I have been searching out and consuming queer coming age narratives for years; I didn't realize the extra layer of SEEN I would feel on reading an explicitly genderqueer journey. I'm so pleased that this book exists in the world, and so excited that soon my book can be shelved in the same section in a bookstore. Thank you, Jacob- I'm going to wearing more glitter going forward.

I wrote this book and I am proud of it.

I read this whole book in one day and when I closed it my first thought was "I hope I get a copy of this for Christmas because I wanted to read it again a second time, with a highlighter". Jill Soloway lays out the story of the inspiration and creation of the hit TV show Transparent, one of the first TV shows ever to focus so closely on trans issues, and also one of the first to be released on Amazon. At the very beginning of this process, Jill chose to cast a man instead of a trans woman in the part of Maura, the title character. As the show grew in size, scope, and popularity, Jill made a huge effort to bring on queer and trans people into every other aspect of the show: in costumes, in sets, in writing, in camera-work, as consultants, producers, directors. Exposed to this new, wonderfully queer world Jill began to discover their own queerness and nonbinary identity. They had passionate romances with women, dived deep into queer art, and supported the growing #MeToo movement. But casting Jeffrey Tambor as Maura had been a critical mistake, which by the fourth season would come to haunt the whole production. This is equally a story of Jill's work, family, and coming out. I love reading about how other creative people have built their body of work, where they have found success and failure. This is an insightful, empathetic review of a tumultuous set of events that aren't yet finished unfolding.