A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A fanzine is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and popularized within science fiction fandom, entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949.
Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.
Nicola Griffith is a British American novelist, essayist, and teacher. She has won the Washington State Book Award (twice), Nebula Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, World Fantasy Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and six Lambda Literary Awards. In 2024 she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Susan Choi is an American novelist.
Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics.
No Skin Off My Ass is a 1991 comedy-drama film by Bruce LaBruce.
Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and has identified with the San Francisco, California literary and arts community for many years. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their exposition of the queercore community.
Richard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. He is the author of the collection Crush, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2004. His second book of poems, War of the Foxes, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2015.
Katherine V. Forrest is a Canadian-born American writer, best known for her novels about lesbian police detective Kate Delafield. Her books have won and been finalists for Lambda Literary Award twelve times, as well as other awards. She has been referred to by some "a founding mother of lesbian fiction writing."
Lillian Faderman is an American historian whose books on lesbian history and LGBT history have earned critical praise and awards. The New York Times named three of her books on its "Notable Books of the Year" list. In addition, The Guardian named her book, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History. She was a professor of English at California State University, Fresno, which bestowed her emeritus status, and a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She retired from academe in 2007. Faderman has been referred to as "the mother of lesbian history" for her groundbreaking research and writings on lesbian culture, literature, and history.
Joan Nestle is a Lambda Award winning writer and editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which holds, among other things, everything she has ever written. She is openly lesbian and sees her work of archiving history as critical to her identity as "a woman, as a lesbian, and as a Jew."
The Feminist Press at CUNY is an American independent nonprofit literary publisher of the City University of New York, based in New York City. It primarily publishes feminist literature that promotes freedom of expression and social justice.
Retard Disco is an American, Los Angeles-based record label. The label launched with two debut releases by 14 Year Old Girls and Hawnay Troof in 2003. The label subsequently released over two dozen records by artists including Partyline, Epsilons, The Younger Lovers, Bark Bark Bark and more.
Nicole J. Georges is an American illustrator, writer, zinester, podcaster, and educator. She is well known for authoring the autobiographical comic zine Invincible Summer, whose individual issues have been collected into two anthologies published by Tugboat Press and Microcosm Publishing. Some of her other notable works include the graphic memoirs Calling Dr. Laura and Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home. In addition to this, Georges creates comics and teaches others how to make them, produces the Podcast Sagittarian Matters, and illustrates portraits of animals. She currently divides her time between Los Angeles, California and Portland, Oregon.
I Want Your Love is the title of both a 2010 short film and a 2012 feature-length film. Both films were directed and written by Travis Mathews. The drama films both revolve around the friends and ex-lovers of Jesse Metzger, a gay man in his mid-30s who is forced to move back to his hometown from San Francisco due to financial reasons.
The Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation to a work of fiction on gay male themes. As the award is presented based on themes in the work, not the sexuality or gender of the writer, women and heterosexual men may also be nominated for or win the award.
Justin Chin (1969–2015) was a Malaysian-American poet, essayist and performer. In his work he often dealt with queer Asian-American identity and interrogated this category's personal and political circumstances.
Rivers Solomon is an American author of speculative and literary fiction. In 2018, they received the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award in Fiction for their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and in 2020 their second novel, The Deep, won the Lambda Literary Award. Their third novel, Sorrowland, was published in May 2021, and won the Otherwise Award.
Margaret Killjoy is an American author, musician, and podcast host. She is best known for her speculative fiction in the steampunk and folk horror genres, in particular for her two-book Danielle Cain series. Killjoy is involved in several musical projects across genres, including black metal, neofolk, and electronica. She founded the feminist black metal band Feminazgûl in 2018.
Nature Poem is a book-length poem written by Tommy Pico, a Native American poet born and raised on Viejas Indian Reservation of Kumeyaay nation. It was published by Tin House in 2017. It was preceded by the publication of IRL (2016), followed by both Junk (2018) and Feed (2019). Nature Poem was written in first-person narration following the character Teebs, a queer “NDN”. Teebs is a fictional character, and a development of Pico’s alter-ego and performance persona. Teebs confronts the stereotypes put upon him by white colonialism, such as Indian Americans' association with nature, by refusing to write a nature poem.
