The writers here are pushing the boundary of the known and working against the grain of the status quo.

In this troubling context, the need for portrayals of queer lives around the world becomes even more urgent.

The Fang forest is a free space. Now you are free.

He was a candy you wanted to pop in your mouth and suck real slow.

Go and find a father for your child.

There are feminist or postcolonial translation strategies so why not queer ones, too?

© 2017 Beldan Sezen. Translation of the text © 2017 Charlotte Collins. Translation of the signs and newspaper headlines © 2017 Canan Marasligil. All rights reserved.

It's this: we’re seeking water / Where there is only thirst.

Damned parents,” he said in a soft voice, “look what they’ve made of me.”

You cover it up, disguise it, use Vaseline, soap . . .

Because of all that, I only rode buses that were almost empty.

“What if we ran out of things to talk about?”

Behind the bigotry and hyperbole lurk the fear of the unknown, the threat to the status quo.

Because what you felt when he turned you down was how I felt whenever I looked at you.

At home, no one suspects I do this. Imagine. It’d destroy my marriage.

“Everyone’s queer in this bloody prison!”

I suddenly realized that he was wearing a wig and the skin beneath his clothing was as coarse as tree bark.

I’ve been unfaithful on Good Friday, Mother’s Day, Christmas and even during a coup d’état.

In the locker rooms, wild combat rages more openly than elsewhere.

It wasn’t a question of my boss finding out I’m gay . . .

What’s the point of love without suffering?

These are stirring notes as we launch our sixth annual Queer issue.

I’d never found the plant or flower that could serve as punctuation.

The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.

“You're so gay you even want to get it on with men in cartoon strips!”

Dusk in the Latin Quarter was like a fairy tale or a love poem, like a Klimt mosaic, like glowing, rose-colored clouds reaching toward the heavens.

My face was more akin to Florentine portraits of androgynous ephebes than to paintings of ancient heroes.

Your problem is that you say you are gay but have never seen a gay guy in your entire life.”

An omnivorous poet, / I eat everything.

It was almost Christmas, I had a cavity, and I was in the process of getting dumped.

In fact, Teldj no longer felt anything at all. She only pretended to. She only thought about Algeria.

His skin and hair gave off an intoxicating scent of apples.

I opened it and wrote the first date, and what would be the first chapter of that extraordinary life that was my own.

The first pride Rosa felt on this day was for herself.