Our next episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops June 16th! In our off weeks we air episodes from The Gaily Show. It's the only daily LGBTQ news and talk show in the US! John hosts it and it airs on AM950-KTNF, WCPT 820 AM, plus weekly on NewsTalk WHMP (Amherst, MA) and Alternative Talk 1150AM KKNW (Seattle).

In this episode, John sits down with award-winning author and queer historian Hugh Ryan to unpack the pre-internet landscape of LGBTQ+ life in the 1990s. They dive into everything from the wild mega-clubs of New York City and finding queer history using the library’s Dewey Decimal System to the terrifying reality of the “second silence” surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Get ready to explore the analog era of the queer community before Ryan’s new book, My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer 90s and Beyond, hits shelves on May 26th.

Watch on YouTube

We're in video too! You can watch this episode at youtube.com/@thegailyshow

Credits

Host/Founder: John Parker (learn more about my name change)
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Production and Distribution Support: Brett Johnson, AM950
Marketing/Advertising Support: Chad Larson, Laura Hedlund, Jennifer Ogren, AM950
Accounting and Creative Support: Gordy Erickson

Support the show

Why would I ever want to have a body and why should I allow it to want what it wants?

Today we meet Jill Rosenberg and we’re talking about the queer book that saved her life: Sea of Tranquility by Paul Elliott Russell. And Paul joins us for the conversation!

Jill is a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA Program at the University of Montana. Her fiction has been published by the Kenyon Review, Swamp Pink, Black Warrior Review, and other journals. Her collection of stories, Now I’m Photogenic and Other Stories I Tell Myself won the St. Lawrence Book Prize and is out now!

Paul Elliott Russell is a four-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and two time winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction. He is the author of seven novels and his upcoming novel The Angels Came to Sodom in the Evening will be out this fall. His 1995 nonfiction book, The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present has been translated into ten languages. He taught at Vassar College for 38 years till retirement in 2021. The Library of Homosexual Congress will publish his short story collection titled Desire in the Fall of 2027.

Sea of Tranquility is the story of a splinted nuclear family - spanning from the optimistic time of the first moon shot to the bleak time of the early AIDS years.

Connect with Jill and Paul

Jill's website: jillrosenberg.me

Paul's website: paulrussellwriter.com

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of Sea of Tranquility here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780312303723

But your copy of Now I'm Photogenic and Other Stories I Tell Myself: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781625572172

Pre-order The Angels Came To Sodom in the Evening: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781917352161

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Terry D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson

Quatrefoil Library

Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

Our next episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops June 2nd! In our off weeks we air episodes from The Gaily Show. It's the only daily LGBTQ news and talk show in the US! John hosts it and it airs on AM950-KTNF, WCPT 820 AM, and weekly on NewsTalk WHMP.

Today:

Ilana Masad and Stevie K. Seibert Desjarlais join us to talk about their new book: Here For All The Reasons Why We Watch The Bachelor.

Then: Dr. Samuel Clowes Huneke joins us to talk about Texas Tech University banning LGBTQ research. Plus, MAGA is using federal funds to promote MAGA think tanks in Europe. And, the Virginia congressional map debacle: the State Supreme Court tossed out both the new voter approved map. Now what?

Get Here For All The Reasons here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781684426126

Ilana Masad is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism whose work has been widely published. She holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is the author of the novels All My Mother’s Lovers and Beings.

Stevie K. Seibert Desjarlais is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Her writing appears in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and Pedagogy.

Dr. Samuel Clowes Huneke is an award-winning associate professor of history at George Mason University. A historian of modern Germany, he is the author of numerous books and articles, including States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany and A Queer Theory of the State. His new book I Will Not Abandon You Queer Women in Nazi Germany is out now.

You can buy his books and learn more about his research at his website: samuelcloweshuneke.com.

Buy A Queer Theory of State: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9783982389462
Buy States of Liberation: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781487542146
Buy I Will Not Abandon You: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781487554347

Watch on YouTube

We're in video too! You can watch this episode at youtube.com/@thegailyshow

Credits

Host/Founder: John Parker (learn more about my name change)
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Production and Distribution Support: Brett Johnson, AM950
Marketing/Advertising Support: Chad Larson, Laura Hedlund, Jennifer Ogren, AM950
Accounting and Creative Support: Gordy Erickson

Support the show

I came out and needed to understand: what kind of gay am I?

Today we meet Dr. Perry Zurn and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg.

Dr. Zurn is Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University. He researches primarily in political philosophy, critical theory, and LGBTQ+ studies and has collaborated in psychology and network neuroscience. Dr. Zurn is the author or coauthor of 100+ additional publications in philosophy, political theory, LGBTQ+ studies, and network science and has given 250+ talks at local, national, and international venues. His work has been featured in over 50 media outlets, ranging from podcasts, to radio, television, and mainstream news outlets. His newest book Cisgender: Disorienting a Category comes out this July.

Stone Butch Blues was Leslie Feinberg’s first novel published in 1993. The novel won the 1994 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award and 1994 Lambda Literary Award. Groundbreaking in its time for its exploration of gender, the novel established Feinberg as the first author to put forward a Marxist version of “transgender liberation.” The novel has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has even been passed hand-to-hand inside prisons. The earnings from a translated version went to ASWAT Palestinian Gay Women.

Leslie Feinberg identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist. Feinberg was a journalist for Workers World and edited the "Political Prisoners" page for 15 years, ultimately serving as managing editor. Feinberg also wrote "Lavender & Red" for Workers World which was a 120-part series exploring the links between socialism and LGBT history. They also authored: Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba, Transgender Warriors: Making History and Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, and the novel Drag King Dreams. Feinberg died on November 15, 2014 and hir last words were: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”

Connect with Perry

website: perryzurn.com
bluesky: @perryzurn.bsky.social

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

How to get your copy of Stone Butch Blues:

• Print on Demand Paperback through Lulu
• Get a free PDF copy of Stone Butch Blues here: https://www.lesliefeinberg.net
• Ask your local library or independent bookstore!

Buy your copy of Cisgender: Disorienting a Category here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781478038771

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson

Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

Our next episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops May 19th! In our off weeks we air episodes from The Gaily Show. It's the only daily LGBTQ news and talk show in the US! John hosts it and it airs on AM950-KTNF, WCPT 820 AM, and weekly on NewsTalk WHMP.

Today: How can states fight back against fascism and Trump? Turns out there is a taxonomy of five tiers of resistance that States can do right now. It has been developed and researched by Christopher Armitage and he joins us to discuss.

Christopher Armitage is an Air Force veteran, journalist, former law enforcement officer, and author of Conservatism: America’s Personality Disorder and the Substack The Existentialist Republic. You can hear him regularly on the Thom Hartmann show. Read The Existentialist Republic here: https://cmarmitage.substack.com

Watch on YouTube

We're in video too! You can watch this episode at youtube.com/@thegailyshow

Credits

Host/Founder: John Parker (learn more about my name change)
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Production and Distribution Support: Brett Johnson, AM950
Marketing/Advertising Support: Chad Larson, Laura Hedlund, Jennifer Ogren, AM950
Accounting and Creative Support: Gordy Erickson

Support the show

This book was a vivid portrayal of queer desire. It didn't have a happy ending, but it had a positive ending.

Today we meet Lynette D'Amico and we’re talking about the queer book that saved her life: Carol by Patricia Highsmith.

Lynette D'Amico is an essayist and fiction writer whose work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Ocean State Review and at Brevity, Slag Glass City, Short Reads, and Guernica. Her memoir in essays Men I Hate, won the Gournay Nonfiction Prize and was published by Mad Creek Books in 2026. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She makes her home in Rhode Island, but she has a prairie eye.

Originally published as The Price of Salt, Carol is based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life. It tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany--the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation.

Patricia Highsmith was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Connect with Lynette

website: lynettedamico.com
instagram: @sicilianblade2
substack: substack.com/@lynettedamico

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of Carol here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780393325997

Buy your copy of Men I Hate: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780814259696

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson
Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

Our next episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops May 5th! In our off weeks we air episodes from The Gaily Show. It's the only daily LGBTQ news and talk show in the US! John hosts it and it airs on AM950-KTNF, WCPT 820 AM, and weekly on NewsTalk WHMP.

Today: the Queer experience isn’t bound to state boundaries. Our queer lives span borders (and so do the anti-LGBTQ coalitions). So on today’s Unpack This For Me episode we look at the Great State of Arizona!

Joseph Darius Jaafari the Editor in Chief and Founder of LOOKOUT, Arizona’s LGBTQ newsroom. He shares the LOOKOUT’S reporting from across Arizona. Since launching in 2022, LOOKOUT has won the General Excellence in Newswriting award from the Arizona Media Association. Their newsletters have also won several awards including, “Best Source for LGBTQ News.”

Read all of the LOOKOUT’S reporting here: https://www.lookoutnews.org

Watch on YouTube

We're in video too! You can watch this episode at youtube.com/@thegailyshow

Credits

Host/Founder: John Parker (learn more about my name change)
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Production and Distribution Support: Brett Johnson, AM950
Marketing/Advertising Support: Chad Larson, Laura Hedlund, Jennifer Ogren, AM950
Accounting and Creative Support: Gordy Erickson

Support the show

Between 50-75% of my friends died of AIDS. I was trying to figure out what had happened to our community.

Today we meet Gabriel Rotello and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: Gay New York by George Chauncey.

Gabriel Rotello is an Emmy-nominated and GLAAD Award-winning writer, director, producer, journalist and musician. He published his nonfiction book in 1997: Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men. In 1989 he launched OutWeek Magazine as its editor-in-chief. In 1993, he became the first openly gay op-ed columnist for a major American newspaper, New York Newsday. He was also a columnist for The Advocate. For almost three decades, Gabriel has written, directed and produced dozens of television documentaries for HBO, Netflix, National Geographic, and Comedy Central.

Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed in the closet, where all gay men were isolated, invisible, and ashamed. Based on years of research in diaries, letters, newspaper stories, and police reports, George Chauncey describes the saloons, speakeasies, and streets where queer men gathered; the intimate parties and immense drag balls where they celebrated; the highly visible residential enclaves they built in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Times Square; and the complex prewar sexual culture they inhabited, which did not divide men into heterosexuals and homosexuals.

George Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and previously taught at Yale and the University of Chicago.

Connect with Gabriel
website: gabrielrotello.com

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of Gay New York here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781541699212

Buy your copy of The CBGB Conspiracy: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9798888249093

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson
Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

Jonah Mixon-Webster joins us to discuss his new poetry collection Promise/Threat. It’s described as, “a virtuosic sophomore collection that plunges the reader into the tenebrous realm between dreams and reality and firmly establishes him as an essential voice in American poetry.” Then, Luna McNamara joins us to discuss her new novel The Witch and the Huntress. In it, “Two of Greek mythology’s most complex and powerful women—Medea and Atalanta—join forces on Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece in this suspenseful, sapphic reimagining from the acclaimed author of Psyche and Eros.” It comes out April 21, 2026.

Buy your copy of Promise/Threat: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780593803066
Connect with Jonah: https://www.instagram.com/jmixweb/

Pre-order your copy of The Witch and the Huntress: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780063295131
Connect with Luna: https://www.lunamcnamarawriter.com

Watch on YouTube

We're in video too! You can watch this episode at youtube.com/@thegailyshow

Credits

Host/Founder: John Parker (learn more about my name change)
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Production and Distribution Support: Brett Johnson, AM950
Marketing/Advertising Support: Chad Larson, Laura Hedlund, Jennifer Ogren, AM950
Accounting and Creative Support: Gordy Erickson

Support the show

This book helped me understand my brain and in particular the queer brain.

Today we meet Max Hovey and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs.

Max Hovey is a London-based writer, creator, and queer advocate. He dedicates his platform to sparking discussions about and promoting body acceptance, sex positivity, mental health awareness, and other topics relating to LGBTQIA+ issues. His writing and work have been featured in the Independent, Attitude Magazine, GQ, Bustle, and other outlets. No Fats, No Fems: A Guide to Queer Empathy and Unpacking Prejudice is his first book (comes out May 19, 2026).

Through brave individual stories and compassionate analysis, The Velvet Rage explores how shame is insidious, and can be traced back to childhood feelings of "otherness". Drawing on contemporary psychological research, The Velvet Rage offers a path to emotional well-being and an end to self-defeating behavior.

Alan Downs, PhD is a clinical psychologist and the bestselling author of seven books.

Connect with Max

youtube: youtube.com/@climaxlgbtq
instagram: @max_hovey
tiktok: @maxhovey

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of The Velvet Rage here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780802135223

Buy your copy of No Fats No Femmes: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780063423466

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson
Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show