For most parts of the country, Pride season is nearly gone and summer and fall remain in the coming months. There’s still plenty of time to catch up on your reading.
David Sedaris, currently “in the hard part of getting old – the part where everything irritates you,” continues to find ways to make readers laugh out loud in his marvelous new essay collection “The Land and Its People” (Little, Brown, 2026). Sedaris’ 28 tales of family, friends, travel, politics, rams, Duolingo and his marriage to Hugh Hamrick never ceases to delight us at a time when we really crave it.
Ryan O’Connell has a distinctive way with words in his new book “Inspiration Porn: Essays” (St. Martin’s Press, 2026). Touching on a broad range of subjects including substance abuse and recovery, representation as a disabled gay man, and his complicated relationship with his family. O’Connell’s refreshing and particular voice makes for an uninhibited read.
Prolific gay writer Brad Gooch, who began as a poet and novelist, has focused more on non-fiction in recent years, including biography (“Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring”) and memoir (“Smash Cut”). Continuing in the memoir vein, Gooch’s latest is “Good Morning Moon: A Snapshot of an American Family” (Harper, 2026), follows the writer into middle age, marriage (to Paul), and fatherhood (through surrogacy), as well as an examination of his own childhood.
In recent years, there has been a plethora of books written about queer bars, including Krista Burton’s “Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America” and “Last Call South Florida: A History of 1,001 LGBTQ-Friendly Taverns, Haunts & Hangouts” by Fred Fejes and Rick Karlin. “The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces” (Beacon Press, 2026) by Rachel Karp is the latest.
At the time of this writing, the one-year anniversary of the passing of groundbreaking gay writer Edmund White was observed. White’s 2001 book “The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris” (Bloomsbury, 2026) has been reissued with a new foreword by gay writer Alexander Chee. The book focuses on two of White’s great loves: Paris and travel.
A pair of fascinating music memoirs round out this post-pride non-fiction reading list. The first is “Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, Devo, The Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music” (Jawbone Press, 2026) by gay, Grammy Award-winner Robert Margouleff with Jim Reilly, features a foreword by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh.
The second, described as “an intimate insider’s account of New York’s most radical cultural revolution,” is “No Wave: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene” (Beacon, 2026) by lesbian singer/songwriter Adele Bertei.
