Queer Authors Spotlight
This Pride Month, we wanted to highlight a few titles by queer authors from our catalog to add to your shelves and reading lists this summer, from a queer coming of age Brazilian road trip novel to a 1950s modern classic of repressed queer desire:
Dola de Jong
Translated from the Dutch by Kristen Gehrman
When Bea meets Erica at the home of a mutual friend, this chance encounter sets the stage for the story of two women torn between desire and taboo in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Erica, a reckless young journalist, pursues passionate but abusive affairs with different women. Bea, a reserved secretary, grows increasingly obsessed with Erica, yet denial and shame keep her from recognizing her attraction. Only Bea’s discovery that Erica is half-Jewish and a member of the Dutch resistance—and thus in danger—brings her closer to accepting her own feelings.
First published in 1954 in the Netherlands, Dola de Jong’s The Tree and the Vine was a groundbreaking work in its time for its frank and sensitive depiction of the love between two women, now available in a new translation.
The Tree and the Vine by Dola de Jong (tr. Kristin Gehrman)
Elena Ferrante meets Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt in this 1950s classic of repressed queer desire, set against the rising threat of WWII. A groundbreaking work in its time for its frank and sensitive depiction of the love between two women torn between desire and taboo in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.
“De Jong depicts the darker, dangerous side of the world of same-sex desire, and the way it’s a source of torment—physical and psychological—for those who exist within it.”—The Paris Review
Carol Bensimon
Translated from the Portuguese by Beth Fowler
After a falling out, two friends reunite for a long-planned road trip through Brazil. As they drive from town to town, the complications of their friendship resurface. At the novel’s center is a romance, as Bensimon offers an intimate look into identity, love, and desire. By the end of the trip, the women must decide what the future holds, in a queer, coming-of-age debut novel that has been celebrated in Brazil.
We All Loved Cowboys by Carol Bensimon (tr. Beth Fowler)
Two women reunite after a falling out to embark on a long road trip through Brazil. Bensimon offers an intimate exploration of desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of female sexuality in this queer, Sad Girl coming-of-age road novel.
"This short but profoundly moving novel by the young Brazilian writer is one of the finest explorations of love you will find anywhere this year."—The Boston Globe
Mary Cappello
Firecracker Award, Finalist
Believer Book Award, Longlisted
In twenty-first century America, there is so much that holds or demands our attention without requiring it. Imagine the lecture as a radical opening.
Mary Cappello's Lecture is a song for the forgotten art of the lecture. Brimming with energy and erudition, it is an attempt to restore the lecture's capacity to wander, question, and excite. Cappello draws on examples from Virginia Woolf to Mary Ruefle, Ralph Waldo Emerson to James Baldwin, blending rigorous cultural criticism with personal history to explore the lecture in its many forms―from the aphorism to the note―and give new life to knowledge’s dramatic form.
Lecture is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.
Lecture by Mary Cappello
Blending rigorous cultural criticism with personal history, Cappello explores the lecture in its many forms―from the aphorism to the note―and gives new life to knowledge’s dramatic form. Drawing on examples from Virginia Woolf to Mary Ruefle, Ralph Waldo Emerson to James Baldwin, it is an attempt to restore the lecture's capacity to wander, question, and excite.
“A lively and playful challenge to resuscitate a form that has been considered all but dead.”—Kirkus Reviews
Mariana Oliver
Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches
Winner of the 2022 PEN Translation Prize
“Pondering revolutionary Cuba, the Berlin Wall, and the caves of Cappadocia, these essays explore themes of memory, war, movement, and home.”—The New Yorker
In her prize-winning debut, Mexican essayist Mariana Oliver trains her gaze on migration in its many forms, moving between real cities and other more inaccessible territories: language, memory, pain, desire, and the body. With an abiding curiosity and poetic ease, Oliver leads us through the underground city of Cappadocia, explores the vicissitudes of a Berlin marked by historical fracture, recalls a shocking childhood exodus, and recreates the intimacy of the spaces we inhabit. Blending criticism, reportage, and a travel writing all her own, Oliver presents a brilliant collection of essays that asks us what it means to leave the familiar behind and make the unfamiliar our own.
Migratory Birds is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.
Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver (tr. Julia Sanches)
Moving through geographic and intellectual spaces with an abiding curiosity and poetic ease, Oliver presents a brilliant collection of essays that asks us what it means to leave the familiar behind and make the unfamiliar our own.
“Oliver debuts with a thoughtful, roving meditation on migration, language, and home. In intimate pieces studded with references to history and literature, Oliver ponders such topics as the tug of home and the consequences of dislocation... Fans of lyrical essays will enjoy this literary global odyssey.”—Publishers Weekly