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The Lambda Literary Review seeks to elevate LGBTQ+ literature through reviews, interviews, and features. We make space for conversations across genres to showcase the nuances of our community.

This Month's Most Anticipated

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September’s Most Anticipated List

Edit Team
New In List
9 min read
From grade school to parenthood, September attracts a similar attention distinct from any other month throughout our lives. It’s like the friend who cancels plans at the last minute, then complains that they never do anything ‘exciting’. It’s the raisin in an oatmeal cookie disguising itself all too well as a Hershey’s chocolate chip. It’s the parking curb that’s always just a hair closer to your hubcap than you think. In sum, September is the party-pooper: the quasi-autumnal spoilsport of a season full of warmth, fun, and laxed responsibility. Read More

Latest Reviews

Read This! Excerpt from the delicacy of embracing spirals by mimi tempestt

Suzi Garcia
Reviews
20 min read
We are thrilled to share an excerpt from Lambda Literary fellow mimi tempestt's second book the delicacy of embracing spirals (City Lights, 2023), which "presents a blend of theatre and melodrama, narrative and lyricism,and ranges from a confrontation with abusive lovers and predatory promoters, to an excoriation of police brutality and gender oppression, to a critique of the commodification of Black artists for white consumption."  Read More

Foucault in Warsaw: A Fascinating Peek into Gay Life behind the Iron Curtain 

Lane Igoudin
Reviews
5 min read
At the time of his death from complications of AIDS in 1984, Michel Foucault was considered one of the 20th century’s most influential intellectuals and philosophers. His work forever changed our understanding of sanity, sexuality, morality, and crime. And yet his life concealed a personal secret that might explain how he first arrived at his profound realizations about society. This secret is finally exposed to light in Foucault in Warsaw – a new book by Remigiusz Ryziński, a writer, gender studies scholar, and professor of philosophy at the University of Warsaw. Nominated for Poland’s most prestigious literary award, Foucault in Warsaw tells its fascinating story through colorful and fast-paced documentary reportage. Read More

Recent Interviews

With a Love Letter to Queer Black Folx, Dior Stephens Draws a Velvet Rope Around the Table They Set for Their Community

Stephen Patrick Bell
Interviews
10 min read
Dior Stephens' CRUEL/CRUEL is a meticulously arranged series of poems that contrasts playful lightness with the heavy weight of racial conflict and tension in a form that is both startling and familiar in its restrained mix of anger and hope. Each poem's eye is turned inward with an intensity that burns through the self, revealing a brilliant mirror reflecting the world through the Black body. To watch Stephens perform is an ecstatic delight, and I was fortunate enough to speak with them after their initial tour. Read More

And That’s How You Fall for the Scam: An Interview with Rafael Frumkin, Author of Confidence

Ruth Joffre
Interviews
7 min read
Every day, it seems, there is a new con, a new scanner worming their way into the limelight. We live in a country where a bankrupt businessman can lie his way to the presidency, mega-corporations steal billions of dollars from workers in unpaid wages, and PR firms launder the reputations of executives who lie about trying to cure cancer. Amid all this highly institutionalized scam artistry, Rafael Frumkin’s Confidence offers readers a chance to laugh at the absurdity of these structures. Read More

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