Staff Picks: Nora Demick’s Favorites
Hello! My name is Nora Alice (@noraalicee), and I’m an Assistant Marketing Manager for Viking, Riverhead and Penguin Books, as well as the co-chair of the Penguin Random House LGBTQ+ Network. I’m an all-over-the-place reader that tends to lean towards the fantastical in fiction, and the narrative in nonfiction. I believe fiercely in the importance of queer representation across the publishing spectrum, which you’ll find reflected in the below list. I hope you enjoy my recommendations and perhaps find something you weren’t expecting to find!
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Add to BookshelfOn Swift Horses
by Shannon Pufahl
This book is so close to my heart for so many reasons—one of the first titles I marketed on my own and so full of immersive, beautiful prose, it feels like you’ve been swept away into the past. On Swift Horses follows the lives of two queer characters in the tumultuous postwar period in the American West. I have passages printed out and hanging around my cubical when I need a second to stray away from work…
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$17.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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2
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Sister Outsider
by Audre Lorde
I couldn’t have made any literary list without including Audre Lorde. All of her work is indelible, but the spellbinding Sister Outsider was the first collection of hers I read. This gorgeous new edition also has a foreword by the brilliant poet Mahogany L. Browne.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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3
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Black Leopard, Red Wolf
by Marlon James
This was both the first bestseller and the first fantasy book I ever worked on, and through it, I learned so much. It’s a complex labyrinth of writing and the vast lore Marlon wields is so rich and vibrant. If you’re looking for your next epic fantasy series, this is the one for you!
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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4
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The Stonewall Reader
by
Written with archival material from the New York Public Library, this anthology chronicles the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after, featuring iconic activists across the spectrum of race, gender and socio-economic class. An irreplaceable book that thoroughly explains the context of what led to the Stonewall uprising, from those that were there.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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5
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Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
by Andrea Lawlor
This book is a little older than the others on this list, but I only read it for the first time this year. Unapologetically and radically queer, wild and incredibly original, Paul Takes The Form of a Mortal Girl is not constrained by genre or the typical structures of a novel. It’s untamed in ways I haven’t read before, and I just let myself get lost in its chaos.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
