StoryBundle’s proud to feature The LGBT+ Bundle, a collection of award-winning and award-nominated LGBT focused books to celebrate Pride Month. Our curator Melissa Scott talks about how she put the bundle together:
First, no novels in which being queer means you’re evil, nor any in which it’s a doomed and tragic fate. There are places for the latter, but this is June and Pride Month, and I want to share books that celebrate queerness. I’ve also decided to focus on small press offerings, as they are more likely to be overlooked than books from the mainstream houses. I’ve tried to pick newer novels, and to reintroduce some older writers, and in general to include books and writers who you might not have seen yet. Unfortunately, this didn’t narrow things down very much at all.
In the end, I went with books I loved, books that showed me new facets of the LGBT+ experience, books that made me feel proud of being queer and an SF/F fan. This is an admittedly eclectic group — you’ll find historical fantasy, contemporary werewolves, superhero adventures, Victorian adventure, a YA ghost story, secondary world fantasies, a noir-inflected war between Heaven and Hell, and a couple of short story collections that individually span just as wide a range — but they are all written by authors at the top of their game. Six Spectrum and Lambda Literary Award finalists and winners are included in the group, and Riley Parra has been turned into a web series by Tello Films (and will debut in July, just after our bundle ends!). You’ll also find a diverse group of characters, worlds where the rules of sex and gender are profoundly different from our own, and stories that will hold you entranced until the very last word.