Alaina Leary

I didn't use the word "asexual" until I was a senior in college. I didn't so much use the word as slur it, in between a long drunken ramble, to my girlfriend and our best friend in our apartment's small kitchen.

In the aftermath of my rape, I became an activist for ending rape culture. And I quickly found that even in feminist circles, disability was often left out of the conversation completely.

I’ve been told by LGBTQ+ community members and cis straight folks that my identity isn’t real. I’m guessing they've either never seen my Top 10 Hot List (hint: it features all genders) or watched me Instagram stalk my favorite semi-celebrity crushes, because I am crushing hard on men, women, and nonbinary people.

We think of holidays and big moments first when we think about death. What we don’t talk about are the little moments in between, like surviving Autumn.

All I wanted, most days, was a cute apartment with big windows, sheer curtains billowing in the breeze, where I could sit comfortably and read a book.

If you’re looking for a Pride Month reading list, or just want to get more LGBTQ+ books on your radar this year, here are a few worth checking out.

Diverse genre fiction shares a lot in common with diverse literature, in that a lot of the challenges are the same. We still have to ask a lot of questions about who gets to tell what stories, what kinds of books and authors are published, what it means to get it right, and who is on staff at the publishing houses that produce genre fiction.

If you’re not currently poor, low-income, or broke, here’s what you can do this summer to support your friends and family members who might be.

I’ve walked the line between visibly and invisibly disabled my entire life.

"Writing about trauma or difficult experiences doesn’t repair that trauma,” said Melanie. “It doesn’t make it go away. But I kept hearing what a transformative thing it was for [the memoirists] to shape these stories into something that they could be proud of.”