My 2026 Pride Month Reading List and Recommendations
This year, we stopped flying the American flag outside our home and replaced it with the Progress Pride flag.
Not because I'm not proud to be from this country — I am — but I'm not proud of who is running it, or the seeds of discontent he continues to sow to make us see each other as enemies rather than neighbors.
That's what Pride looks like for me in 2026.
Not a parade or a celebration but a flag. A quiet, year-round declaration to all who drive by that we are here and that we refuse to be ashamed of who we are just because shame is once again being used against us.
I'll be honest: I'm tired of starting this annual post the same way.
Tired of noting that the erasure is ongoing, that our books are still being banned, that corporations have quietly abandoned the commitments they made when it was fashionable to make them. All of that is still true.
What I want to focus on is something simpler: people have been trying to erase queer people for as long as we have existed (so, like, ever), yet we are still here. Our forebears didn't give up when the stakes were far higher than they are today, and I'm not about to either.
So, whether you are an advocate, ally or member of the community, if you don't know where to start to show support, all you need to do is read. Open your mind to a different perspective, a different kind of love and a different understanding of people who, right now, are being asked to make themselves smaller.
Books are a reminder that we never have, and we never will.
2026 Pride Month Reading Recommendations
If you’re looking for a book (or two) to read this Pride, consider these queer-focused stories — some by queer creators, others allies.
By Queer Creators:
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible and His Mother by Rabih Alameddine
Gaysians by Mike Curato
Here the Whole Time by Vitor Martins
Man o’ War by Cory McCarthy
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
David Sedaris Collection
Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
By Non-Queer Creators, But Centered Around Queer Stories:
The Entire “Game Changers” Series by Rachel Reid
Books I’ll Attempt to Read for Pride Month
Note: all descriptions are adapted from the respective dustjacket.
Disorderly Men by Edward Cahill
Genre: Historical Fiction
Goodreads Average Rating: 4.19
Pre-Stonewall New York, a police raid on a gay bar, and three men whose lives are thrown together as a result — a Wall Street banker living a double life in the suburbs, a Columbia professor whose relationship is already strained and a working-class Irish kid with nothing left to lose.
A Sharp Endless Need by Mac Crane
Genre: Romance
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.79
A coming-of-age story set in rural Pennsylvania in 2004, following a star basketball player whose senior year begins with her father's death and the arrival of a transfer student who upends everything. Queerness, grief, ambition and the particular ache of small-town life — what’s not to like?
In Tongues by Thomas Grattan
Genre: Historical Fiction
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.91
A young gay man leaves Minnesota for New York City in 2001 and falls into the orbit of a powerful art world couple — a story about class, desire, ambition and the specific hunger of someone who has been told his whole life that the world wasn't built for him.
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Classics
Goodreads Average Rating: 4.02
A landmark of lesbian literature originally published in 1952 under a pseudonym, it was radical for its time — a love story between two women that refused to punish its characters for being who they were. The novel that later became the film "Carol.” This will be my first Highsmith novel.
The Fantasies of Future Things by Doug Jones
Genre: Historical Fiction
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.66
Set in Atlanta in 1992 as the city prepares for the 1996 Olympics. Two young Black gay men work for a real estate developer displacing their own community — navigating internalized homophobia, racial identity, ambition and desire in a city that promises everything and delivers unevenly.
The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul
Genre: Memoir
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.79
While I can’t say I’m a diehard fan, RuPaul’s lasting career and cultural impact are worth celebration. This memoir traces his childhood growing up Black, poor and queer, through the Atlanta and New York underground scenes, toward the global superstardom that was, as he puts it, predestined.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
Genre: Literary Fiction
Goodreads Average Rating: 4.65
After devouring his first two novels, "Shuggie Bain" and “Young Mungo,” I know it’s time to carve out some time for tears this summer. A son returns home to his Hebridean island after art school, broke and without prospects, to a father who is a pillar of the local Presbyterian church and deeply suspicious of who his son has become.
Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
Genre: Poetry
Goodreads Average Rating: 4.17
Vuong's debut poetry collection moves across the Vietnam War, displacement, queer desire, grief and family. Having already read his novels and his second collection, going back to where it started feels overdue.
