I had no queer friends. I kept going to the same bookstore hoping a girl would hit on me. Welcome to our new season! Today we meet Leslie Vincent and Michelle Tea! We’re talking about the book that saved Leslie's life: Valencia by Michelle Tea. As a music maker, Leslie Vincent performs jazz and the great American Songbook. She released her new album About Last Night earlier this year. Michelle Tea is a writer, Guggenheim Fellow, founder of Drag Queen Story Hour, and host of the podcast Your...
Sep 19, 2023•46 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Our series concludes today as we meet Rebecca Turkewitz and her new new spooky story collection: Here in the Night. New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop next Tuesday! September 19th! What's it about? The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz’s debut collection, Here in the Night, are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally nuanced. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont w...
Sep 12, 2023•10 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop September 19th. Today we meet Robert Kirby and his new graphic memoir: Marry Me A Little. What's it about? Rob recounts his experience of marrying his longtime partner, John, just after same-sex marriage was legalized in Minnesota in 2013. Heartwarming, honest, and slyly humorous, Ma...
Sep 05, 2023•11 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop this September. Today we meet Marisa Crane and their new novel: I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself . What's it about? Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror in this lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state. Kris is a new moth...
Aug 29, 2023•13 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop this September. Today we meet Tristan Taormino and their new memoir: A Part of the Heart Can't Be Eaten. What's it about? Sex educator, filmmaker, and podcast host Tristan Taormino shares her coming-of-age story, revealing how her radical sexuality and unconventional career grew...
Aug 22, 2023•13 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop this September. Today we meet Lin Thompson and their new novel: The House That Whispers. What's it about? Eleven-year-old Simon and his siblings, Talia and Rose, are staying the week at Nanaleen's century-old house. This time, though, it’s not their usual summer vacation trip. I...
Aug 15, 2023•12 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop this September. Today we meet Lucian Childs and his new novel: Dreaming Home . What's it about? When a sister's casual act of betrayal awakens their father's demons--ones spawned by his time in Vietnamese POW camps--the effects of the ensuing violence against her brother ri...
Aug 08, 2023•13 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! New episodes of This Queer Book Saved My Life! drop this September. Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! Today we meet Dr. Gwen Bass and her new memoir: Immaculate Misconception: A Story of Biology and Belonging. What's it about? In the early 1980’s, 95% of all artificial inseminations were performed for married, heterosexual couples. Among the other 5% were people like ...
Aug 01, 2023•14 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! Today we meet Christine Suggs and their graphic novel ¡Ay, Mija! My Bilingual Summer in Mexico. In this bilingual, inventive, and heartfelt debut, graphic novel sixteen-year-old Christine explores a trip they took to Mexico to visit family, embracing and rebelling against their heritage and finding a sense of belonging. At first, Christine...
Jul 25, 2023•9 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series! Every Tuesday this summer we will feature new episodes of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven which has your next summer read! Today we meet Kelly Balch and their novel Aphrodite's Sister . This novel series follows Petra Ambrosi, who is a Goddess with empathic abilities, though she is emotionless herself. Throughout the novel, and its subsequent sequel, she is sent down to earth, falls in love with a mortal woman, wrestles to understand her diminishing gifts...
Jul 18, 2023•9 min
Welcome to our Summer of Book Love series with our newest episode of 7 Minutes in Book Heaven! Every Tuesday we feature your next summer read. Meet C.H. Williams and his new book One of a Thousand Names . This fantasy novel follows Rose, who is on a mission to avenge her father's death. As she sacrifices her friends, she must make a decision about whether avenging her father is worth the increasingly steep price. With gods and shadows and betrayal after betrayal, Rose will have to decide wh...
Jul 11, 2023•11 min
The book where your self-proclaimed fag hag decides to kidnap you. Today we meet Clark Carlton and Robert Rodi! Our guest is novelist, playwright, and producer Clark Carlton. You may know him from his sci-fi/fantasy novel Prophets of the Ghost Ants which launched his Antasy series. Our featured author is Robert Rodi who has published seven novels, and he also writes comic books, nonfiction, as well as a spoken-word performer and jazz singer. We’re talking about the book that saved Clark's l...
Jun 27, 2023•43 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Queer kids have to grow up so fast to protect ourselves. Our guest todays are Nick Bussett and A. Rey Pamatmat! Nick is the co-host of Gay Talk 2.0 and the Director of Development at the Shubert Theatre. Rey is an award winning playwright and writer. He is a GLAAD and Lambda nominee and the co-Director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. We’re talking about the play that saved Nick's life: Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them by A. Rey Pamatmat. Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them is about three kids ...
Jun 20, 2023•46 min•Season 3Ep. 16
All of the queer futures that we can build for ourselves. Our guest today is the CEO and founder of editaudio, Steph Colbourn. editaudio is a podcast production company with a mission to hire more women, nb and trans people in media. Founded in 2014, Steph put together an amazing queer team of producers and staff to make the audio industry more representative of what the word actually looks like. And it looks queer! Steph (they/she) shares with us the book that saved her life: The Waves by Virgi...
Jun 13, 2023•44 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Meet A.J. Irving and her new book The Wishing Flower ! An LGBTQ-inclusive story about understanding your peers, your feelings, and yourself, The Wishing Flower is a love letter to longing, belonging, and longing to belong. With stunning illustrations by Kip Alizadeh, The Wishing Flower will inspire readers to honor their wishes and show the world their truest selves. A.J. Irving grew up in Boise, Idaho, writing stories and daydreaming about becoming an author. Now, she writes picture books and p...
Jun 06, 2023•12 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Drag. Vodka. 90s subculture. And knowing you're gonna be ok. Our guest today is Nathan Eckstein (he/they) who is a writer, playwright, and graduate student at the University of Minnesota pursuing a Masters degrees in Architecture. They are also a candidate for another masters degree in Science Research Practices. Nathan shares with us how the memoir I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell saved his life. What’s extra special about this episode is that it was recorded live in front...
May 30, 2023•53 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Meet four-time HQ MIX Trophy winner for best Webcomic, Mário César and his new book Blessed Cure . Like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home , César's Blessed Cure uses comics to explore queer life. In this book, our hero, Acacio do Nascimento, knew he was a different boy from others. He would rather be playing with dolls than playing soccer. The hula hoop interested him more than cowboy pistols. Scared by the possibility of their son being a homosexual, Acacio's parents begin conversion the...
May 23, 2023•9 min•Season 3Ep. 12
I read it as a teenager. Then starred in it with Olympia Dukakis. Our guest today is writer, actor, and teacher Jonathan Fried. Jonathan shares with us how the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams saved his life. What’s extra special about this for Jonathan is that not only did this play have life-saving features for him as a teenager, he went on to star in it in a production with Olympia Dukakis! The Glass Menagerie follows the lives of the dysfunctional Wingfield family, son Tom, mot...
May 16, 2023•32 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Meet A.J. Bermudez and her darkly playful (and Lambda Literary Award nominated!) story collection: Stories No One Hopes Are About Them . These short stories explore characters who are ni de aquí, ni de allá—neither from here nor there—straddling competing worlds, disrupting paradigms, and transitioning from objects of other people’s stories to active subjects and protagonists of their own. Big things happen in this collection. But it’s also a collection of small intimacies: misremembered names, ...
May 09, 2023•9 min•Season 3Ep. 10
To be queer, young, and surfing on the beach. Where's your queer true north? Our guests today are attorney David Rephan and Lambda Literary Award finalist Jay Quinn! David shares with us how Jay's novel Metes and Bounds saved his life and how David continues to return to the novel as a queer true north. This was Jay's first novel and he went on to write four more as well as a memoir. Metes and Bounds follows 18-year surfer, Matt, as he leaves home after his high school graduation ...
May 02, 2023•37 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Meet Joseph Plaster and his new book Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin . It's 7 Minutes in Book Heaven! Where we meet queer authors and talk with them about the new books they have coming out for us to love and cuddle up with. What's Kids on the Street about? Joseph explores the informal support networks that enabled abandoned and runaway queer youth to survive in tenderloin districts across the United States. He shows how they collective...
Apr 25, 2023•15 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Seriously, though. How DO we thread together all of our queer identities? Our guest is writer, educator, and theater maker Allison Vincent and we talk about the queer book that saved her life: the novella Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. Goodbye to Berlin is a Queer classic. Our hero moves to Berlin where he meets the incomparable Sally Bowles. They become roommates as he explores Berlin and his sexuality. The novella was adapted into the award-winning theatrical production and film C...
Apr 18, 2023•46 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Meet McKenzie Wark and her new book Raving . It's 7 Minutes in Book Heaven! Where we meet queer authors and talk with them about the new books they have coming out for us to love and cuddle up with. What's Raving about? McKenzie takes us into the undisclosed locations of New York's thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures. Raving to techno is an art an...
Apr 11, 2023•10 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Going from unseen to seen. This episode is the recording of our live event at Lush Lounge and Theater. And we welcome back William Burleson! You remember him from Season One, when we discussed how his book Bi America was life-giving for our guest Neil Aasve. Now, William talks with me about the book that saved his life: The Bisexual Option by Fritz Klein, MD. He shares with us, "I have to say, coming out as Bi, at first to myself, and then later to other people, there is really an uphill cl...
Apr 04, 2023•39 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Welcome to our LGBT podcast 7 Minutes in Book Heaven – presented to you by This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this podcast, we spend 7 minutes in our virtual studio interviewing LGBTQ authors about their new and upcoming books for us to love and cuddle up with. Today, we meet Gerardo Sámano Córdova and his new novel Monstrilio. What it's about? Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic ...
Mar 28, 2023•11 min•Season 3Ep. 4
When you go up that mountain you don't know what you'll find. Welcome to our LGBT podcast! In this episode, we meet Gerard Cabrera (he/him) and I talk with him about The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Gerard tells me that, " The Magic Mountain is about educating yourself and trying to make decisions for how you want to live your own life. Do you want to follow a path of seeking freedom or do you want to follow a path of just maintaining a status quo so that you can survive? With A...
Mar 21, 2023•50 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Welcome to our LGBT podcast 7 Minutes in Book Heaven – presented to you by This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this podcast, we spend 7 minutes in our virtual studio interviewing LGBTQ authors about their new and upcoming books for us to love and cuddle up with. Today, we meet B.G. Wolfe and and her new novel April Renegade. B.G. aims to write diverse characters and storylines, with emphasis on those in the LGBTQ+ community and those who struggle with their mental health like she does. April Reneg...
Mar 14, 2023•10 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Reclaiming our coming out stories. Welcome to our LGBT podcast! In this episode, we meet Jacob Aloi (he/him) and I talk with him about Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli . This YA novel follows 16-year old Simon Spier as he navigates coming out as well as meeting his first love. The book really tackles coming out stories and owning them. It was also adapted into the rom-com Love, Simon which was the first LGBT rom-com by a major film studio. Plus, Becky (she/her) joins us to d...
Mar 07, 2023•52 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Welcome to our LGBT podcast 7 Minutes in Book Heaven – presented to you by This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this short podcast, we spend 7 minutes in our virtual studio interviewing LGBTQ authors about their new and upcoming books for us to love and cuddle up with. Today, we meet Michele Kirichanskaya and their new book Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks on Existing in an Allo World. Michele is a freelance journalist, primarily writing book reviews, interviews, pop-culture think pieces, and more. Miche...
Feb 28, 2023•10 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Welcome to our LGBT podcast 7 Minutes in Book Heaven – presented to you by This Queer Book Saved My Life! In this short podcast, we spend 7 minutes in our virtual studio interviewing LGBTQ authors about their new and upcoming books for us to love and cuddle up with. Today, we meet Joshua Gonzales and his new book Keep Sweet: My Homemade Recipe for a Fulfilling Gay Life . He is an LGBTQ+ Latino actor and writer living in NYC. He is also the host of the podcast Keep Sweet: The Positive World podca...
Feb 21, 2023•11 min•Season 2Ep. 21
