Our 2026 Pride Booklist
By Gregory Luce and Norah Vawter
Happy Pride to all our LGBTQ+ readers and allies! Once again, Washington Unbound is very happy to present our Pride booklist. This year’s compilation includes works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biography, demonstrating the range of themes, interests, and styles of queer writers. We are sure that readers of any and all genders, preferences, and tastes will find their next great read(s) here.
We are grateful to DMV literary mavens Kim Roberts Meikle and Regie Cabico for their suggestions. Have a summer of great reading!
Anthology edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson
A bright and uplifting collection of poetry and prose for all those who believe love is the antidote to hate. The writing in these pages proves that love is shown in action, intent, healing, and hope. Capital Love is the second in a series of pocket-sized anthologies from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, showcasing our region’s rich cross-section of literary talent, including LGBTQ+.
Biography by Nicholas Boggs
Nicholas Boggs, born and educated in D.C., movingly presents Baldwin as the avatar of Black queer literary history and breathes new life into the genre with a volume that will enrich scholarship for the LGBTQ+ community.
Acts of Resistance: Essential Essays, Archival Encounters, and New Poems
Poetry by Cheryl Clarke
Acts of Resistance gathers Clarke's most beloved essays alongside archival finds and recent poems. These essays and others defined generations of lesbian, feminist, and queer thinkers, writers and activists. Discover—or revisit—the inimitable Cheryl Clarke through Acts of Resistance.
Poetry by Katherine Gekker
The vagaries of love—romantic, sexual, or platonic—are an eternal theme for poetry, but Katherine Gekker manages to bring fresh observations to the subject in her second collection, O My Charmer. By turns witty and angry, contented and fearful, the poems in this book are compelling as they chart various phases of a sometimes turbulent same-sex relationship. (Read our review here).
Young adult fiction by Steven Gellman
This coming of age novel explores queer romance, family, mental health, and retro geek culture. Coming out is hard, especially when you have two gay moms. At least it is for Simon Bugg. He doesn't want the world to think that having gay parents has turned him gay. And he certainly doesn't want anyone to know about the alien in his stomach that's trying to kill him.
I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women of Nazi Germany
Nonfiction by Samuel Clowes Huneke
Award-winning historian Samuel Clowes Huneke shows how love, queer resistance, and collective action survived in the harrowing circumstances of Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research, Huneke takes readers into a hidden world, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organize to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned.
Biscuit Box
Poetry by Dwayne Lawson-Brown
From DMV Renaissance Award winning author Dwayne Lawson-Brown, comes a collection of haiku, senryu, and various short works meant to feed your poetry craving. The work captured in Biscuit Box explores topics mundane and monumental; from the innocence of a crush, to commentary on the root causes of gun violence across America.
How to Moth
Poetry by Hailey Leithauser
How to Moth will be published as a part of the Sewanee Poetry Series (LSU Press) in the summer of 2026. Leithauser’s work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Agni, Ecotone, Literary Matters and Best American Poetry 2025.
Novel by Benny B. Peterson
A bighearted debut novel about queer yearning, indie musicians, and bushwacking a thorny path back to your first love. Jamie is bad at endings, which is why she's stuck at a dead-end Baltimore newspaper job, continuing to have break-up sex with her first-ever hetero partner, and haunted by the what-ifs of her ex-girlfriend Mari—a charismatic and brilliant musician—and their former band together, the Maidenheads.
The District’s Departed: A Guidebook to DC Cemeteries
Nonfiction by Kim Roberts Meikle
The definitive guidebook to celebrated and obscure cemeteries in and around the nation’s capital. Perfect for the “tombstone tourist,” this guidebook to eleven cemeteries in and around the District of Columbia offers informative walking tours of these places of repose and reflection, mapping each cemetery’s distinct character derived from the landscape, the local community, and the historical era in which it was established, and showcasing exquisite artistic and architectural styles. Forthcoming in October,
Turn Where: A Geography of Home
Essays by Chet'la Sebree
In Turn (W)here, Sebree turns to the page for answers, seamlessly weaving memoir with history and cultural criticism in a collection of inventive essays bound by themes of movement, home, inheritance, and belonging. Spanning continents, geographies, and states of mind, Sebree lights a pathway for the wanderer, the seeker—anyone propelled into the unknown by the desire for a place to truly belong.
Speaking in Italics
Poetry by Gregg Shapiro
Speaking in Italics is the fifth book in Gregg Shapiro’s Talking Heads-inspired pentagony.
We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2025 (forthcoming Fall 2026)
Fiction anthology edited by Bogi Takács & Charles Payseur
This anthology is published by the DC-based small press Neon Hemlock, which publishes speculative fiction, zines, and queer chapbooks. While the featured authors hail from all over, the list does include at least three authors based in the DMV or with strong local ties: Ryan Cole, Maya Dean, and Jarune Uwujaren.
Poetry by Yermihayu Ahron Taub
A meditation not so much on the search for home, but on the coming to terms with what is, here and now, home. The poet engages the distant past and the pressing present as well as various companionate figures. Taken as a whole, the book anchors the single queer figure within landscapes of desire, community, and politics, staking power, however fraught, in milieus long declared off limits or denied. Eight poems in the collection also have a Yiddish version.
Celestial Fire: Songs for a Love That Dares
Poetry by Dan Vera
These intimate poems are filled with vulnerability, longing, hope, and resilience. They honor queer devotion as a force capable of healing hearts and transforming history through a practice of tenderness rooted in the belief that love can be both sacred act and quiet revolution.
