We have such an issue with: what should we educate children with?

Today we meet Dr. Helen Webberley and we’re talking about the queer book that saved her life: My Daddies! by Gareth Peter. And Gareth joins us for the conversation!

Dr. Webberley is a doctor, gender specialist, and medical educator with years of experience across medicine, science, sexual health, and gender identity. In 2015, Dr. Webberley supported a young trans boy who had been left without care by UK's National Health System. That’s when she founded GenderGP. The small medical service quickly became a lifeline for trans people across the UK and beyond. Now, her goals include developing training for healthcare professionals, improving legal protections for the trans community, and championing a global shift towards patient-led, rights-based models of care.

Gareth Peter has had a career as a composer and lyricist for theater, with his songs performed on stage by West End and Broadway voices across the United Kingdom and internationally. He founded the Broadway School of Performing Arts, a part-time theater school, in 2004. In 2018, he was a top-ten Penguin Random House Write Now finalist. Recent books include a series with Scholastic titled This Book is Full Of, including This Book Is Full of Unicorns and this Book Is Full Of Bunnies. Gareth lives in Nottingham with his partner and his two wonderful adopted children.

My Daddies! is a funny, heartfelt picture-book celebrating same-sex parents and shared story time, perfect for introducing children to the different kinds of family in the world today.

Connect with Dr. Webberley and Gareth

Dr. Webberley's website: helenwebberley.com
GenderGP: gendergp.com

Gareth's website: storywise.uk/gareth-peter
Instagram: @gareth.peter

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 My Daddies! here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314591/my-daddies-by-peter-gareth/9780241405772

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

A new episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops August 4th! 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 (Minneapolis), WCPT 820 AM (Chicago), 92.7 FM WMDX (Madison, WI), plus weekly on NewsTalk WHMP (Amherst, MA) and Alternative Talk 1150AM KKNW (Seattle).

In this episode, two former guests of This Queer Book Saved My Life joined John on The Gaily Show! Paul Russell talked about his upcoming novel The Angels Came to Sodom in the Evening which comes out on October 6, 2026. And it was the third Friday of the month, which meant author and critic Ilana Masad was back to share this month's queer book recommendations:

• Hotshot: A Life on Fire by River Selby
• I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Mac Crane
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

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, as well as the coeditor of the forthcoming anthology Here for All the Reasons: Why We Watch The Bachelor. https://www.ilanamasad.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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

As a kid I always wondered where do I belong?

Today we meet Mario Elías and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: The Color of Summer by  Reinaldo Arenas.

Mario Elías is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, photography, painting, and printmaking. His book Queering the Male Gaze reimagined masterpieces of the classical and modern canon through essays and self-portraiture, exploring often-overlooked queer and female figures who shaped them. He is the founder of The KindaSuper Project, a philanthropic initiative offering free photography and video services to underserved communities. His debut novel Beloved Disciples just came out earlier this spring.

The Color of Summer is a Rabelaisian tale of survival by wits and wit and ultimately a powerful and passionate story about the triumph of the human spirit over the forces of political and sexual repression. This novel is the fulfillment of author Reinaldo Arenas' life's work, the Pentagonía, a five-volume cycle of novels that is his "secret history of Cuba."

Reinaldo Arenas was born in Cuba in 1943. In 1980, he was one of 120,000 Cubans who arrived in the United States on the Mariel boatlift. Arenas settled in New York where he lived until his death from AIDS ten years later. His extraordinary memoir, Before Night Falls, was named one of the fourteen "Best Books of 1993" by the editors of The New York Times Book Review and has now been made into a major motion picture.

Connect with Mario Elías

website: kindasuper.com
instagram: @kindasupermario

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 Color of Summer: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780140157192

Buy your copy of Beloved Disciples: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781612943374

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

A new episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops July 21st! 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 (Minneapolis), WCPT 820 AM (Chicago), 92.7 FM WMDX (Madison, WI), plus weekly on NewsTalk WHMP (Amherst, MA) and Alternative Talk 1150AM KKNW (Seattle).

In this episode, Troy Ford joins us to discuss his new novel Waterspout. Then Rasheed Newsom stops by to talk about his newest novel There's Only One Sin in Hollywood.

Connect with Troy at https://troyfordauthor.com and at Substack at https://troyford.substack.com

Connect with Rasheed at https://www.rasheednewson.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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

I had never discovered a queer character who didn't die at the end. This book changed that.

Today we meet Gregory A. Kompes and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: Maurice by E.M. Forster

Gregory is founder of The Writer Workshop and an award winning, bestselling author of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He’s the author of Shards, as well as the Broadway series that includes Flash Mob, The Middle Man, Tamburlaine, Obsequies, and Busker. Become a VIP Reader at https://kompes.com.

Maurice is set in the elegant Edwardian world of Cambridge undergraduate life and introduces us to Maurice Hall when he is fourteen. We follow him through public school, then Cambridge University, and finally into his father's firm. In a highly structured society, Maurice is a conventional young man in almost every way--except that he is homosexual. Maurice was ahead of its time in its theme and in its affirmation that love between men can be happy

E. M. Forster was one of the major novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in 1879 and educated at Cambridge. His other novels include A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India.

Connect with Gregory A. Kompes

website: kompes.com
bluesky: @gregoryakompes.bsky.social
instagram: @GregoryAKompes

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 Maurice: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780393310320

Buy your copy of Shards: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9798995967408

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

We know we promised a new episode today, but Pride month got the best of us with The Gaily Show and we're taking the week off to recuperate. So, our next episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops July 7th! 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 (Minneapolis), WCPT 820 AM (Chicago), 92.7 FM WMDX (Madison, WI), plus weekly on NewsTalk WHMP (Amherst, MA) and Alternative Talk 1150AM KKNW (Seattle).

In this episode, as Pride month winds down, we take a look at what does Pride month means these days? What do we need it to be? How different are the Prides we’re going to this year from the original ones? To unpack this for us, we’re joined by Dr. Brier is a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and History at the University of Illinois – Chicago. She co-curated the award-winning exhibition “Out in Chicago” on LGBT history at the Chicago History Museum.

Get Dr. Brier’s book Infectious Ideas: US Political Response to the AIDS Crisis  here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780807872116 

Check out History Moves here: https://historymoves.org

Connect with Dr. Brier here: https://hist.uic.edu/profiles/brier-jennifer/

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

Our next episode of This Queer Book Saved My Life drops June 30th! 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 (Minneapolis), WCPT 820 AM (Chicago), 92.7 FM WMDX (Madison, WI), plus weekly on NewsTalk WHMP (Amherst, MA) and Alternative Talk 1150AM KKNW (Seattle).

In this episode, it’s the third Friday of the month and every third Friday of the month John welcomes author and critic Ilana Masad for her reviews and recommendations!

Ilana Masad is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, StoryQuartlerly, Catapult, Buzzfeed, Joyland, The Account, and many more. She is the author of the novel All My Mother’s Lovers and the Lambda Literary Award winning novel Beings.

Masad holds a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has taught a wide variety of creative writing and literature courses, and also provides editorial services to authors.

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

This book raised something that was running subterranean in my system back up to the surface again.

Today we meet J. Brooke and we’re talking about the queer book that saved their life: Transition: Becoming Who I Was Always Meant to Be by Chaz Bono.

J’s full-length poetry book, I Can Tell You The Version That Will Make You Take My Side won the Editor’s Choice Prize at Driftwood Press. It is now available everywhere you get your books. J has received two Pushcart nominations, a 2025 Best of The Net nomination, and there were a Finalist for the 2025 Iowa Review Nonfiction Prize. Their autobiographical essay “HYBRID” won Columbia Journal’s 2020 Special Issue Nonfiction Award. Their work appears in Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Harvard Review and elsewhere. J is the Prose Book Reviews Editor at The Rumpus, Poetry Editor at Trans Poetics Archive, former Nonfiction Editor at Stonecoast Review.

In Transition: Becoming Who I Was Always Meant to Be Chaz Bono shares his deeply moving and ultimately triumphant account of the physical and emotional process that brought him to a place of peace, and finally happiness. With a message to anyone who has ever felt that they couldn’t be who they really are, Transition is as inspirational as it is intimate.

Chaz Bono is an LGBTQ rights advocate, acclaimed author, and the only child of famed entertainers Sonny and Cher. He has written three books, including Transition, his groundbreaking account of a forty-year struggle to match his gender identity with his physical body and his transformation from female to male.

Connect with J. Brooke

website: jbrookewrites.com
bluesky: jbrookewrites.bsky.social
instagram: @jbrooke_writes

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 Transition: Becoming Who I Was Always Meant to Be https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780452298002

Buy your copy of I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781949065435

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show

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

Real quick: yes, you too can be a guest on our podcast! If you have a queer book that had a life-saving impact for you, then please visit thisqueerbook.com and fill out the form on the homepage! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Support the show