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This episode’s centers on Sophie Lewis’s new book Femmephilia. A collection of essays published in various outlets over the last several years, this book will take readers through a number of disparate topics, from the recent Disney remake of The Little Mermaid to experiments with psychedelics to the bizarre meanings one might find at its end. Uniting it all though is an unapologetically anticapitalist and utopian feminism, one that sees in various examples and experiences of femme glimpses both of the contradictions of our present moment and brief glimmers of what an emancipated world might look like. Sophie Lewis is a freelance writer, with work appearing in a number of outlets including London Review of Books, The Drift and e-flux. Her previous books are Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family and Full Surrogacy Now.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sociology of Gender in India brings together feminist and queer scholarship to chart the changing landscape of gender debates in Indian sociology. Spanning over five decades of disciplinary evolution, this volume interrogates how gender, caste, sexuality, class, and digitalisation intersect in shaping contemporary social life. With chapters by a new generation of scholars, it critically engages with foundational debates in kinship, marriage, labour, media, nationalism, and pedagogy, while foregrounding neglected areas such as femtech, queer infrastructures, and digital precarity. The volume not only reanimates classic concerns of Indian feminist sociology but also aims to intervene in global conversations on intersectionality, decolonial knowledge, and the sociology of everyday life. Pushpesh Kumar teaches sociology at the University of Hyderabad. He has written extensively on gender and sexuality issues.  Rituparna Patgiri teaches Sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Her research explores questions of culture, food, media, gender, and pedagogy.  Deepali Aparajita Dungdung teaches in the Department of Sociology, Ranchi University. Her research examines the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and care work within contemporary capitalism, with her more recent work focusing on language, education, and development. Priyam Sinha is an Early-Career Fellow at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, where her work sits at the intersection of critical media industry studies, production cultures, disability studies, gender studies, and digital media development in Asia. She previously held a Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University Berlin, and her doctoral research was awarded by the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Her articles appear in the European Journal of Cultural Studies; Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; and South Asian Diaspora, among others. Committed to public scholarship, she is a regular host on the New Books Network and has written for the Economic and Political Weekly, the Asian Film Archive, and FemAsia. Her work can be found at here and you can follow her on X here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Professor Tom Hulme's second book reconstructs the erotic and romantic lives of queer men in Belfast across roughly seventy years, from the recriminalisation of sex between men in the 1880s to the emergence of a mainstream public debate about homosexuality in the 1950s. It follows men cruising the city centre, reading and passing around homosexual novels, forging relationships across the lines of class and religion, and navigating a world that was often more knowing and more tolerant than Northern Ireland's later reputation would suggest. Where we might expect only shame and fear, Hulme finds pride, defiance, and a guarded everyday acceptance, though one whose limits fell hard on those caught with much younger partners, and one that narrowed sharply after the Second World War. Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation (Cornell UP, 2026) is built from two very different archives, the criminal record of some sixty Belfast court cases and shaped by the violence of policing, and the extraordinary personal diaries of David Strain, forty-three volumes and perhaps two million words, brought into scholarly use here for the first time. Out of that pairing Hulme develops the book's broader argument, a case for intimate, emotionally invested methods in the history of sexuality, and two organising ideas: the "intimate queer city," in which Belfast's very scale and familiarity shaped how men met and loved, and the "queer Irish world," which places sailors, the docks, and migration between Belfast, Liverpool, and New York at the centre of the story. Along the way the book takes up religion and respectability, masculinity on trial, and the entanglement of queerness with the ethnonational and sectarian order of Ulster. Belfastmen is published open access by Cornell University Press and can be read for free through the Cornell Open initiative. About the author Tom Hulme is a professor at Queen's University Belfast and a cultural historian of modern Britain and Ireland. He is Principal Investigator of the Arts and Humanities Research Council project Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality Before Liberation, run with Professor Leanne McCormick, and the author of After the Shock City: Urban Culture. His work on queer history has appeared in Irish Historical Studies, The History of the Family, and the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and his research has been covered in the Guardian and the Irish Times. About the host Niall Herron is a PhD researcher in Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast. His ethnographic work examines queer experience during the Northern Ireland Troubles, taking the everyday as a focal point for how queerness and space were assembled across the period, and how sexuality, gender, region, ethnonational identity, and class were bound up together. His writing has appeared in the anthropology journal Ethnos and the academic queer history blog NOTCHES. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (U Chicago Press, 2025) traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world. Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies. Ketil Slagstad is a research fellow at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité: Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026). In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache, from early AIDS-activist monologues, to launching a counter city-wide “safe-sex” campaign that includes the public depiction of an affectionate gay couple, to leaving the States in a love that made them “the most beautiful boy in the world,” to becoming a Canadian queer poetry icon. Like countless fairies before them, Kirby scouts desire paths beyond mere survival for new queer voices to continue to amaze, flourish, and thrive. Or as Fairy says, “This way >>>” Kirby is the author of She (KFB, 2025), Poetry is Queer (Palimpsest Press, 2021), This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019), featured columnist at Send My Love to Anyone and publisher at Knife | Fork | Book. kirbyfairy.ca Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Learn more about Hollay here. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) examines these political and social changes, evaluates how actors have successfully integrated LGBTQ+ needs into the mainstream policy agenda, and provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the policymaking processes from an LGBTQ+ perspective. Drawing on data from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA, it presents a systematic framework for understanding "queering public policy" as a policy process. The final chapter offers a roadmap for scholars interested in exploring this evolving field further. This book will appeal to anyone interested in public policy, public administration, and queer studies. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fifty years ago, tennis player Renée Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women’s draw of the 1977 US Open—marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renée eventually won her case. Though she lost in the first round of the singles tournament, she and her tennis partner made it to the finals in doubles, losing to Martina Navratilova and her partner. Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer (HarperOne, 2026) chronicles Richards’s extraordinary life, moving from her tumultuous upbringing in Queens, New York, to her career as a successful eye surgeon; her years as a star tennis player to her role as a transgender pioneer. Now in her nineties, Renée remains a complex figure: A person who changed the sports world forever yet questions the place of trans athletes in that world today. GLAAD award-nominated sports journalist Julie Kliegman deftly probes these contradictions, drawing on intimate interviews and offering critical reflections on what is at stake for athletes, fans, and the queer community today, at a time when trans participation in sports is more hotly contested—and condemned—than ever before. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope (Barnes and Noble Press, 2026) is Ryan Michael Schweitzer's collection of first-hand narratives from LGBTQ individuals across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the region, Schweitzer gathers stories of violence, blackmail, forced marriage, surveillance, and exile alongside quieter accounts of love, friendship, and endurance. Rather than presenting a single Central Asian LGBTQ experience, the book traces how legal status, state security apparatuses, family structure, and religious revival intersect differently in each country to shape what visibility and safety look like for queer people in the region. About the host Cholpon Ramizova is a London-based creator and researcher. She holds a Master's in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London. Her thematic interests are in migration, displacement, identity, gender and nationalism—and in the ways these intersect within the Central Asia context. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Queer theory and reproductive justice need each other—now more than ever. As liberals and leftists increasingly frame reproductive justice in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, often adopting the language of “queerness,” it has become difficult to see that their political demands and strategies are often quite conservative. In Reproductive Justice, Queerly (U California Press, 2026), Carly Thomsen examines typical reproductive justice issues—including abortion, surrogacy, crisis pregnancy centers, paid parental leave, and parenting—in queer ways. She shows what can happen when we bring queer theory and reproductive justice together: a queerer, more powerful articulation of what we are fighting for. Your host Yining Pan is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are. In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. In Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity (New Press, 2026), Dr. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes. Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Dr. Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan's new edited volume Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family and Healing (U Regina Press, 2026) is a powerful anthology that brings together writers, activists, and scholars who meditate, reflect, and share stories of queer Muslim life, that contains the complexity of rage, grief and resilience but also joy, love, and healing. In the process, Thawer and Khan deconstruct the limitations of western centric formulations of mental health and wellness, which is often individualistic and commodified, and invite readers to think through a decolonial approach that honours Muslim spirituality, religiosity, and culture, which can help us shift towards collectivistic and liberatory goals of healing. This anthology is a great resource for those who are mental health practitioners, and relevant to those who think about gender, sexuality, and Islam. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and Identity at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, joins Jana Byars to talk about⁠ Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork⁠ (University of Michigan Press, 2026) delves into lesbian radio history and its evolution into queer feminist podcasting today, exploring the politics, aesthetics, and cultural activism embedded in queer feminist soundwork. Through deeply personal and archival explorations, Stacey Copeland traces the emergence of queer feminist soundwork—a unique blend of community-led storytelling, political resistance, and creative expression rooted in feminist and LGBTQ+ activism. At the heart of the book lies a powerful idea: sound is not just heard but felt, connecting generations through shared voices and struggles. In conversation with award-winning and cutting-edge queer and feminist podcast producers from across Canada and the U.S., Lavender Sounds invites us to turn a feminist embodied ear to the past to uncover the ways gender, race, and sexual orientations are embedded in our everyday media listening practices. From pioneering Canadian radio shows like Vancouver's The Lesbian Show and Montreal's Dykes on Mykes to today's queer chumcasts and audio documentary, Lavender Sounds is a journey through auditory landscapes where joy, protest, intimacy, and identity intersect. This book opens a vibrant conversation about how radio and podcasting are vital tools for marginalized communities to connect, create, and claim space in the media world. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic Books, 2026) is a practical, consent-centered guide to healing body trauma through embodiment and creativity. Drawing on somatic therapy—grounding, breath, orientation, gentle movement—and expressive arts—collage, drawing, clay, movement, music, voice—within a harm-reduction frame of pacing, choice, and safety plans, Wednesdae Reim Ifrach (REAT, ATR-BC, LPC) shares grounded practices, case vignettes, and simple rituals to help you move from shut down or on high alert into steadier, more connected living. The book follows a simple arc: first, feel and steady your nervous system; next, turn those sensations into art and story; and finally, build rituals and relationships that help the changes last—whether you’re navigating dysphoria, ED recovery, chronic stress, or nervous system dysregulation. Inside you’ll find: Body check-ins (quick prompts to name sensations and needs), short breath & movement practices (1–10 minutes), and sensory prompts (sight/sound/touch/smell/taste) Art invitations (collage, drawing, movement, sound/voice) with step-by-step guidance and safety notes Consent & harm-reduction tools (opt-in/out menus, pacing, crisis planning) to keep the work manageable Community practices & rituals (altar-making, release-writing, witness circles) to anchor change in daily lif A queer-centered lens on healing, embodiment, and creativity Warm, inclusive, and usable on your own or with a therapist, Queer Expressions helps you build a more livable relationship with your body—and a story big enough to hold who you are becoming. Wednesdae Reim Ifrach is a trans/non-binary art therapist and counselor dedicated to providing gender-affirming, trauma-informed care that emphasizes healing-centered engagement, body justice, intersectional social justice, and equitable access to eating disorder treatment. They co-own and operate Rainbow Recovery, offering clinical supervision, consultations, trainings, workshops, counseling, and art therapy services to clients in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. As a full-time professor at Moravian University, Wednesdae teaches mental health counseling, social work, and expressive art courses, inspiring future professionals. Over the past decade, they have led trainings and workshops for organizations such as the American Art Therapy Association, National Alliance for Eating Disorders, and Yale University, among others. Previously, Wednesdae founded the country’s first 2sLGBTQIA+ Eating Disorder Program, served on Project HEAL’s Board, and presided over the Connecticut Art Therapy Association. They currently co-chair the Health Professionals in Training Program on the GLMA Board. Their expertise addresses LGBTQ+ concerns and trauma, honoring each client’s identity. Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at [email protected]. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023). Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality (Oxford University Press, 2026), Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child. These categories are presented as natural truths, but Dembroff reveals them as man-made myths--ones that construct a reality in which being characterized as Woman, Animal, or Child marks moral degradation. By no coincidence, feminization, dehumanization, and infantilization are the very degradations used to make a man 'less of a man'. But this book is more than critique; it's also a guide to transformation especially for those grappling with what it means to be a man under patriarchy. Patriarchy's myths celebrate the identity Man, but these myths are no friend to most men. Promising strength and superiority, they instead fuel isolation, emotional repression, and relentless pressure to prove oneself while propping up systems that enrich the powerful few. Rather than deliver freedom and prosperity, these myths entrap and impoverish. Real Men on Top invites readers to see through them and, in so doing, to find new possibilities for living, relating, and becoming human. Sharp, daring, and deeply felt, Real Men on Top is a book for anyone who senses that something is deeply wrong with the way we live and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality. Robin Dembroff is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale University Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Straighten Up, Girls and Boys: How Schools Have Shaped Sexuality and Gender (Harvard Education Press, 2026), acclaimed historian and educator Jackie M. Blount exposes the hidden history of how American schools have carefully shaped and policed gender and sexuality--affecting every student and educator, past and present. With clarity and compassion, she invites readers not only to understand these forces, but to take action for positive change in their own school communities. Drawing on centuries of school design, hiring practices, and classroom curriculum, Blount uncovers how seemingly neutral decisions--from the layout of restrooms to textbooks and teacher roles--have been used to enforce binary gender norms and rigid expectations around sexuality. She explores the implications for both students and educators, highlighting moments of resistance and progress, but also the persistence of exclusion and harm. Through vivid historical storytelling and fresh analysis, Blount connects the dots between age-old anxieties and today's most pressing debates around LGBTQ+ issues in schools. This book empowers educators with the knowledge and historical context needed to question entrenched practices and build more supportive school cultures. Encouraging both critical reflection and practical action, Blount's work is a vital resource for anyone committed to fostering respect and opportunity for every member of the school community. Jackie M. Blount is professor emeritus of educational studies at the Ohio State University. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.