The world appeared in stages with each rung of the ladder I climbed.

The transworld was so beautiful, so vast! There was so much to explore!

Homophobia is everywhere. I didn't realize I would grapple with it upon leaving Nigeria.

In this excerpt from Eva Baltasar's novel of the same name, which is shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize, the narrator unwillingly goes along with her partner's plans for assisted reproduction.

Whatever you do in Turkey, you do it alone.

This year we celebrate Pride Month with seven pieces depicting Queer characters confronting decisive moments.

When I was twenty-three, I met my first girlfriend, who then went off with a man after just four months—and eventually married him.

It's your skin I feel sliding beneath my soapy palms.

The rhythmic flow of Shadow Heights was something she often missed and longed for while she was in Joburg.

My departure had nothing to do with you or your brother.

I love you all even more in exile

From that day on, her memories of Danchen were frozen.

I'm not like you, Pak.

In order to get a visa, they had to explain to him how two women went about having sex.

I suspect something in Kinue / reminds him of his own life.

I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman

In echoes of the Kafka text from which this poem takes its name, a queer man longs to confront his homophobic father for a lifetime of injury in this poem by Berlin-based writer and artist Ricardo Domeneck.

They’re as naked as the day they were born

The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper / Than that of ancient Greece

somewhere in between the promise and the certainty of rain / the bounds of things / —all things, including you— / are blurred

The characters in the works presented here demand recognition of the full spectrum of Queer experience in often hostile environments.

They looked at me like I was sick.

Aren’t you the one with the tattoos?

She can't count how many times she had silicone applied to her body.

The señora is not going to back down.

She smelled of Schubert.

Have you ever had the feeling that even if you wanted to, you'd never blend in?

A dispiriting narrowness has defined canons of Urdu feminist writing from previous decades.

Her sagacity immortalized even her scattered, sporadic axioms.

If I had a spare season, I would’ve rushed to whisper vulgar words

All the pieces are told in the first person, lending intimacy and immediacy to the events they describe.

I heard that their overflowing hormones made them dangerously seductive.

Caught off guard, we were laughably weak.

Now, thanks to our authors, we’re ready to step forth into the sun.

It's not very clear to me if he was asking for help or wanting me to leave them alone.

Perhaps I’m not ready yet to plan out my entire future, but right now these are the arms I need around me.

Oh, Master Song, who would have guessed your heart was hard as steel?

This night sealed, consecrated, my future as a writer absolutely.

I had two choices: I could wrest back control of my life or I could die.

I guzzle the wine and ask him if he likes women now.

These kids could be just clever, fancy thugs.

We were five minutes out on our jeep when the sound of an explosion big enough to shake the car resounded from behind us.

I knew better than anyone else that Oh was not gay, that he was just using these rumors.

I went to Iraq to make a queer film the likes of which the world had never seen.

The contributors to our Queer issues produce narratives that elude facile compartmentalization.

He’s the third white soldier I’ve met this month.

Why was he the one with the keys to Michel Foucault’s apartment?

I didn’t know Dori’s wounds, and Dori didn’t know mine—perhaps that’s why we could see each other as we were in that moment.

I can’t stand that one the way someone with a chronic sinus infection can’t stand abnormal shifts in weather.

One day this violation will be in the past, consigned to oblivion, long forgotten.

In the wilderness, you live in a simple house, you wake to your beloved’s face, you almost exclusively hear her voice.

'Mantique thought today at sunrise would be a good time to kill herself.

The present, very often, takes its definitive shape in the past.

They didn’t get any satisfaction from coming out.

We were both quite fat, but Ali’s body carried more promise than mine.