Cipher Press

Herb and Lara are busy slinging coffees in their hometown – of Watford! While Herb dreams of leaving to write big gay plays for a big gay world, Lara’s dedication to being in the here and now keeps her firmly rooted. Plus she’s fallen madly in love with Cynthia, a high-femme roboteer here to finish her PhD, teaching her way through robot post-doc hell, stamping on the brains of robo-boys as she goes. Soon Watford will use Cynthia’s inventions to reinvent itself into the communised Watford Underburg, but not yet. Meanwhile, Lazarus is back at her mum’s. Her attempt at city life didn’t exactly go to plan, and now she spends her days working on a Yiddish translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and playing video games. With no capacity to think about her future and trying to forget her past, what will happen? Local football coach Butch Lichenstein, that’s what. A Pizza Hut, A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut is a wildly inventive and funny novel that counters the idea of the suburbs as a place queers leave and plays out the radical implications of staying put.

In Spencer’s fantasies, the breezy, queer streets of Provincetown are utopia, a place where he can be free. And when a violent attack in his suburban Arizona schoolyard sends him to the hospital, he decides queer utopia can’t wait. One night, with the help of his best friend, the teenage witch Joy, he hitches a ride to find it. What follows is a cross-country road odyssey throughout the USA, taking Spencer from new moon rituals in Arizona canyons to Texas bus stations, from the luxe drag stages of Houston’s Montrose district to the jazz-soaked streets of New Orleans and beyond. This new novel from Michelle Tea tells the story, by turns raw, romantic, and sweet, of a sheltered boy taking his first leap into queer life, among all the complicated queers who live it.

Following their discharge from hospital, Mirrorstage follows its narrator on a road trip through the grey, liminal landscapes of modern Britain. As they pass graffitied bus shelters, construction sites and flooded motorways, factories and high-rises, the narrator’s internal and external journeys begin to converge, leading them down paths they have been trying to avoid: the mental illness and substance use that led them to the inpatient ward, the uneasy balance of their own gender identity, their troubled relationship with their estranged father, the perils and pleasures of the queer scene, and the shame that has haunted them throughout their life. Woven around the psychoanalytic concept of its title, Mirrorstage is an experimental fable exploring the boundaries of selfhood and literary forms, told in fragments of prose and verse that are equal parts heartbreaking, sexy, and witty.

Cursed by an extreme and unrelenting beauty, Adrian has drawn the frenzied attention of adoring strangers since childhood. As a twenty-nine-year-old in New York City, he spends his days drifting between affairs with women (and occasionally men) who provide him with everything he needs, from spending money to luxurious vacations to even, once, a mini yacht. With this generosity comes a dangerous possessiveness that often puts him at risk of much worse than heartbreak. But as people begin removing their masks in the spring of 2021, Adrian''s aimless sexual availability is interrupted by a shocking discovery: he is no longer beautiful. Across the country, Adrian''s best friend and companion, Mark, a world-famous painter, has returned to the family home in rural Northern California. He''s faced with his own horrible revelation: he''s dying from the same mysterious disease that will soon take his mother and sister. Despite the depth of their platonic romance, neither man reveals his fate to the other. Feeling as if he''s disappearing from sight, Adrian searches for answers among his thousands of lovers. In a race against his failing body, Mark becomes obsessed with watching fifty-two VHS tapes of unknown origin, left to him by his sister, before it''s too late. ''An astounding writer, seemingly unconstrained by taboos and waist-deep down in the maw of life'' (Torrey Peters), Davey Davis presents a modern-day Casanova figure grappling with what it means to find true intimacy when his very existence means constant exposure to the world''s violent desire.

Terry Dactyl has lived many lives. Raised by boisterous lesbian mothers in Seattle, she comes of age as a trans girl in the 1980s in a world of dancing queens and late-night house parties just as the AIDS crisis ravages their world. After moving to New York City, Terry finds a new family among gender-bending club kids bonded by pageantry and drugs, fiercely loyal and unapologetic. She lands a job at a Soho gallery, where, after partying all night, she spends her days bringing club culture to the elite art world. Twenty years later, in a panic during the COVID-19 lockdown, Terry returns to a Seattle stifled by gentrification and pandemic isolation until resistance erupts following the murder of George Floyd, and her search for community ignites once again. In propulsive, intoxicating prose, Terry Dactyl traces an extraordinary journey from adolescence to adulthood, delivering a vital portrait of queer identity in all its peril and possibility.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas are the most famous married couple of Modernism, icons of literary queer history. But what if Alice had a secret? What if, underneath her thickly cultivated fringe and low brimmed hats, there was something sinister growing? What if, as Picasso claimed, Alice B. Toklas really did have a horn? This is what the mysterious voice on the phone is asking of her. And she''s in no position to hang up; a newly registered Private Investigator, she recently walked away from an exploitative job in academia, is bereaved following the sudden death of her partner, and has a kid to support. The case sounds ridiculous, but she needs the money. Okay, she tells the voice. I''ll find the horn. The job takes her from London to Paris to San Francisco, from a Hemingway''s kitchen table to a Beat-inspired hotel run by an investment bank. Just when she thinks the case is dead, that no horn exists, she finds herself knee-deep in trouble with someone hot on her heels... At once a reimagining of the lone wolf detective and a hilarious take down of self-important scholarship, Bone Horn is a smart, hilarious, sexy, and poignant mystery novel about queerness, unbearable grief, and the question of stories, and which are ours to tell.

In this extraordinary novel, Laurie Weeks captures the exuberance and mortification of a lesbian junkie as she navigates the chaos and horror of everyday life. Through longing monologues to Vivian Leigh, ranting letters to Sylvia Plath and to-do lists that never get done, Zipper Mouth gives us an unforgettable protagonist caught in a spiral of addiction, unrequited love, and mental health crises, and the effortlessly hilarious and strange inner workings of her mind. A messy and raw depiction of striving to live in a world that doesn''t cater to your brain chemistry, Zipper Mouth is an outstanding work of queer fiction. Come for the exalted nightclub epiphanies, stay for the devastating morning-after hangovers.

Boyfriends masquerade as straight bros to have fun on an early internet porn site. Sex on Viagra; sex on acid. A lesbian bar sells out, turning barflies into doms for hire. In Spain, an exchange student lets two young men flip a coin to see who will have her. A stranger on a train. A collegiate lesbian ‘it’ couple. A trans woman bashes back. Post-apocalyptic punk crushes. Slut eras. An American intellectual in Austria fucks and talks attachment styles with a Viennese queer. A jaded Black queen ponders race, apps and what the sex we have says about us. Taking us from the awkwardness of middle school to the transcendence of a sex club, SLUTS: Anthology presents an inspiringly diverse collection of writing – fiction and non-fiction, pro and con, philosophical and compulsive – exploring the eternally controversial word. Whether an insult or badge of honor, an identity or a state of mind, SLUTS engages some of the hottest minds of the moment to riff on the subject, exploring the nature of desire and its cultural consequences, creating a collection bound to become a classic of sex writing. Featuring work by: DL Alvarez * Jeremy Atherton Lin * Vera Blossom * Chloe Caldwell * Cristy Road Carrera * Sam Cohen * Tom Cole * Lydia Conklin * jimmy cooper * Lyn Corelle * Jenny Fran Davis * Cyrus Dunham * Hedi El Kholti * Robert Gluck * Miguel Gutierrez * Gary Indiana * Taleen Kali * Cheryl Klein * Gabrielle Korn * Nate Lippens * Meredith Maran * Carta Monir * Amanda Montell * Carely Moore * Bradford Nordeen * Baruch Porras-Hernandez * Kamala Puligandla * Brontez Purnell * Liara Roux * Andrea Sands * Daviel Shy * Jen Silverman * Anna Joy Springer * Laurie Stone * McKenzie Wark & Zoe Whittal