As of July, Our Queerest Shelves is three years old! Writing this newsletter is truly the highlight of my professional life. Being paid to write about queer books is a dream come true. One of my favorite parts is tracking the new queer books coming out and seeing how that number has climbed in recent years. It’s also gotten more diverse in every sense of the word, though there is definitely still room to grow there.

Of course, new books aren’t everything. Bookish online spaces can very easily end up focused entirely on new releases, ignoring the millions of amazing books that have been out for years. So, I thought it would be fun to do a look back at the buzziest books of one year ago: the biggest queer book releases of August 2023. A big perk of looking backward is that the paperback releases are usually out at that point. After a year, how many of these have you read?

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Did you read any of these? Let’s chat in the comments!

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