Washington Unbound Pride 2025 Booklist
by Norah Vawter and Gregory Luce
In the current political climate, recognizing June as Pride Month is more important than ever. All around us, we’re seeing hate, bigotry, and discrimination weaponized against LGBTQ people (and so many other marginalized groups). At Washington Unbound we think the best way to respond is to be vocal allies to the queer community. We also want to celebrate and uplift queer voices in the best way we know. A booklist!
Read on for our recommendations. All books on this list were published in the last two years by Washington D.C. area authors, and some are brand-new. These authors span the District, Maryland, and Virginia, and the spectrum of queer identity. We’ve included poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and two new anthologies of D.C. area writers’ work. We know that we’ve only scratched the surface of books we could have included on this list because there’s so much amazing writing coming out of our community. If you have recommendations for books (by local or non-local authors) to celebrate Pride, let us know by sharing in the comments. We’ve also highlighted some events with LGBTQ authors in our June newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here, and you’ll find even more events in our D.C. area literary event guide. Also check out Capital Pride Alliance and WorldPride DC for more local events and resources.
Happy Pride!
ANTHOLOGIES
Capital Queer: A Pride Celebration from Washington Writers Publishing House
Edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson
Featuring a mix of well-known, emerging, and new writers throughout the DMV, this collection honors the LGBTQ+ experience through poetry, fiction, and essay. With themes of love, resilience, identity, and liberation, these powerful works speak to the heart of what it means to live authentically and creatively.
[Attend the book launch on June 10 at 7 pm at Kramers, 1517 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington DC.]
The Light Looks Like Me: Words on Love from Queer Youth
Published by Shout Mouse Press
An anthology of work from young people across the LGBTQ+ spectrum exploring what love looks like to them, in all its iterations. Their explorations, from young people aged 13-24 in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, move from poetry to prose to comics to art and back again to poetry.
[Attend the book launch on June 3 from 6 – 7:30 pm at Apple Carnegie Library, 801 K St NW, Washington, DC 20001].
POETRY
A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex and other Hyperboles, Mysteries, Parables and Fantasias
By Regie Cabico
Regie Cabico’s first full-length poetry collection includes more than four dozen new poems that reflect on the poet’s life. Inspired by Frank O’Hara and Gertrude Stein, A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex is a multiverse of surreal and witty meditations, a tarot of micro-poetic divinations. Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri wrote, “This is poetry of light and hope.”
[Cabico is co-hosting a Humanities DC Culture Series panel on June 26 from 7 – 8:30 pm at Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G Street NW, DC. Details here.]
By Miguel Avero. Translated by Jona Colson
Though the author is not local, the translator, Jona Colson, and the publisher, Washington Writers Publishing House, are. Colson, the co-president and poetry editor of Washington Writers Publishing House, has said of this book: “Miguel Avero’s poems demonstrate linguistic experimentation and music, which is infused in both the original and the translation. Aguas/Waters by Avero helps make sense of life and the self, highlighting the tradition of magical realism, and this translation will bring this important author to readers in the DMV and in the nation.”
[Colson will be featured at the aforementioned book launch for Capital Pride at Kramers on June 10.]
By Casey Catherine Moore
Moore interrogates, queers, and modernizes the myth of Psyche. Rich in explanatory notes and annotations, the book reflects Moore’s extensive scholarship and her strong poetic skills. These poems present a Psyche for the modern world, but also reveal many aspects of the poet’s psyche as she struggles to maintain equilibrium while navigating bipolar illness and sexuality outside the heteronormative.
[Read Greg’s full review of Psyche. And check out the next installment of Electric Euphoria, the open mic series for queer and neurodivergent poets hosted by Casey Catherine Moore, on June 5 at 7 pm. 500 8th St. SE, Washington, DC. Details here.]
FICTION
We’re Gonna Get Through This Together
By Z. Hanna
This debut book is a smart, lyrical, and incisively witty short story collection about the murky waters we find ourselves in when we try to fight against injustice and search for a place to belong. At once satirical and earnest, this collection explores race, class, gender, sexuality, and the politics of activism.
[Read Norah’s full review of We’re Gonna Get Through This Together.]
By Be Steadwell
Singer-songwriter and filmmaker Be Steadwell's lyrical debut is Practical Magic meets Black Cake in this warm and wry family drama with a magical twist about three sisters, a vision of princes, true love, and revolution, and one very complicated year of self-realization, family dynamics, and learning to let go.
[Attend the book launch on June 4 from 7 – 8 pm at Loyalty Bookstore at the DC Pop Up, 1155 Dahlia St NW, Washington DC, DC 20012.]
NONFICTION
by Jean Grae
Flatiron Books (March 2025)
These laugh-out-loud essays cover everything from aging gracefully, what happens when you look for community and almost start a cult, befriending childhood demons, gender fluidity in middle age, and more, taking us from the author’s childhood in 1980s New York City to present-day Baltimore.
[Grae will be in conversation with fellow queer authors Jackie Domenus and Miriam Zoila Pérez on June 6 at 6:30 pm at Little DIstrict Books, 737 8th St. SE, Washington, DC 20003.]
Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance
by Denali Sai Nalamalapu
Drawing from original interviews with the author, Holler is an illustrated look at six inspiring changemakers. Denali Nalamalapu, a climate organizer in their own right, introduces readers to the ordinary people who became resisters of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that spans approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia.
[Nalamalapu will be discussing this book and local activism on June 6 from 7 – 9 pm at Old Town Books, 130 S. Royal Street, Alexandria, VA.]
