The Queer Bookshelf

Many years ago, when there was a lot less of it about, I considered writing a book about trans-themed science fiction and fantasy. I did get an academic paper (and a trip to Italy) out of the idea. But by then I had started a publishing company, and soon after the amount of material I would have had to cover grew exponentially. I would not be so daft as to tackle such a big project these days.

Which should explain why my jaw hit the floor when I discovered that someone had written a book about queer-themed fiction, throughout history, and all over the world. The amount of work involved was simply staggering.

Then I was asked if I would interview Layla McCay about her book for my pals at Nofela, the queer bookshop in Swansea. Naturally I said yes. I wanted to find out how the heck she had done it.

Amazingly, McCay has actually read most of the books she writes about, although the foreign language ones she has mostly read in translation. Finding the books to list was a massive research operation involving libraries, dinner parties with queer friends, emails to famous writers and queer bookshops, online surveys, and even a Zoom call with a queer book club in Russia.

The Queer Bookshelf covers around 5000 years of literary history, starting with Gilgamesh and running up to the present day. The vast majority of the books listed were written in English but McCay has made a determined effort to find at least one book from as many countries as she can.

While the book is mostly limited to fiction, McCay’s tastes are very catholic. So yes, there are classics from Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall to Armistead Maupin and Jeanette Winterson. There is a chapter on crime, and one on SF&F. McCay is a big convert to speculative fiction (though like me she’s not a big fan of horror). Impressively she interviewed Chip Delany for the book.

A book like this could easily end up being very dry, but McCay doesn’t take an academic approach. Her prose is very readable, and it is peppered with anecdotes mostly gleaned from interviewing the owners of queer bookshops. Everyone’s favourite is the story of how a bookshop in the USA got an order for a book called Lesbian Nuns from someone whose address was in Vatican City, and who paid with a check drawn on the Bank of the Holy Spirit.

Our interview inevitably touched on the subject of book bans. Encouragingly McCay was very upbeat about the prospects. Back in the days of Wilde and Hall, there were very few queer books around, and almost nowhere where you could buy them. These days there are thousands and, if your local school or library is banned from stocking them by a right wing council, there are plenty of online stores who will happily sell you some. It will be very hard to get the genie back in the bottle.

From an SF&F reader’s point of view, the book isn’t hugely revelatory. You will probably be aware of most of the books that McCay mentions in that chapter. But for those of you with broader tastes there is an absolutely wealth of potential reading material recommended in The Queer Bookshelf. And even if you know about all of them, you will still find McCay’s prose good entertainment.

Title: The Queer Bookshelf
By: Layla McCay
Publisher: Scribe UK
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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