Between 50-75% of my friends died of AIDS. I was trying to figure out what had happened to our community.

Today we meet Gabriel Rotello and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: Gay New York by George Chauncey.

Gabriel Rotello is an Emmy-nominated and GLAAD Award-winning writer, director, producer, journalist and musician. He published his nonfiction book in 1997: Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men. In 1989 he launched OutWeek Magazine as its editor-in-chief. In 1993, he became the first openly gay op-ed columnist for a major American newspaper, New York Newsday. He was also a columnist for The Advocate. For almost three decades, Gabriel has written, directed and produced dozens of television documentaries for HBO, Netflix, National Geographic, and Comedy Central.

Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed in the closet, where all gay men were isolated, invisible, and ashamed. Based on years of research in diaries, letters, newspaper stories, and police reports, George Chauncey describes the saloons, speakeasies, and streets where queer men gathered; the intimate parties and immense drag balls where they celebrated; the highly visible residential enclaves they built in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Times Square; and the complex prewar sexual culture they inhabited, which did not divide men into heterosexuals and homosexuals.

George Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and previously taught at Yale and the University of Chicago.

Connect with Gabriel
website: gabrielrotello.com

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of Gay New York here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781541699212

Buy your copy of The CBGB Conspiracy: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9798888249093

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Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson
Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

This book helped me understand my brain and in particular the queer brain.

Today we meet Max Hovey and we’re talking about the queer book that saved his life: The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs.

Max Hovey is a London-based writer, creator, and queer advocate. He dedicates his platform to sparking discussions about and promoting body acceptance, sex positivity, mental health awareness, and other topics relating to LGBTQIA+ issues. His writing and work have been featured in the Independent, Attitude Magazine, GQ, Bustle, and other outlets. No Fats, No Fems: A Guide to Queer Empathy and Unpacking Prejudice is his first book (comes out May 19, 2026).

Through brave individual stories and compassionate analysis, The Velvet Rage explores how shame is insidious, and can be traced back to childhood feelings of "otherness". Drawing on contemporary psychological research, The Velvet Rage offers a path to emotional well-being and an end to self-defeating behavior.

Alan Downs, PhD is a clinical psychologist and the bestselling author of seven books.

Connect with Max

youtube: youtube.com/@climaxlgbtq
instagram: @max_hovey
tiktok: @maxhovey

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of The Velvet Rage here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780802135223

Buy your copy of No Fats No Femmes: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780063423466

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson
Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show

This book has a very fabulous determined, genderfluid, and Bi character. Reading her released something in me.

Today we meet Sarah Stone and we’re talking about the queer book that saved their life: The Passion by Jeanette Winterson.

Sarah Stone (she/they) is the author of Marriage to the Sea; Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th annual Northern California Book Awards; and The True Sources of the Nile, as well as co-author, with Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers.

Sarah’s work has appeared in many publications, including Ploughshares, StoryQuarterly, Scoundrel Time, Alta Journal online for the California Book Club, and A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft. She has taught for UC Berkeley, the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and Stanford Continuing Studies, AND has written for Korean public television, reported on human rights in Burundi, AND looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute.

The Passion was a 1987 novel described as "arresting, elegant." Set in Napoleon's Europe, The Passion tells the intertwined stories of Henri, a young Frenchmen who serves as a cook in Napoleon's army, and Villanelle who is a red-haired (and web-footed!) Venetian.

Jeanette Winterson's (CBE) first novel was Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. She has written thirteen novels, one memoir, and two collections of short stories. She has also written children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.

Connect with Sarah

website: sarahstoneauthor.com
instagram: @sarahstoneauthor

Our Bookshop
Visit our Bookshop for new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your copy of The Passion here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780802135223

Buy your copy of Marriage to the Sea: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9781961897847

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: John Parker
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Troy Ford, Jonathan Fried, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, Sean Smith, and Karsten Vagner
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Terry D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, Sofia Nerman, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson

Quatrefoil Library
Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Support the show