As someone who grew up in Australia without any gay literary characters to relate to, I’m incredibly passionate about queer stories set in our beautiful country. We now have a wealth of brilliant books by LGBTQ+ authors, and I hope that by sharing my recommendations, our stories find even more of the readers they’re meant to find. I’ve focused on books featuring gay male protagonists, as that’s how I identify, and they’re the type of queer stories I relate to the most. Some of the books are fiction, others are memoir, some are written for teens and others are for adults, but all of them share an incredible level of authenticity.
This is a heartwarming contemporary story about a gay Aboriginal teen exploring his sexuality and falling in love for the first time, set against the vivid backdrop of a fictional, rural Indigenous community. It’s evocative and heady and compelling. It’s one of those stories that makes you want to reach into the book and hug all the characters and tell them everything is going to be okay. Such an important story from a brilliant new voice in Australian YA.
SHORTLISTED: 2022 CBCA Book of the Year, Older Readers
'I don't paint so much anymore,' I say, looking to my feet.
'Oh. Well, I got a boy who needs to do some art. You can help him out,' Aunty Pam says, like I have no say in the matter, like she didn't hear what I just said about not painting so much anymore. 'Jackson, this is Tomas. He's living with me for a little while.'
It's a hot summer, and life's going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It's almost Christmas, school's out, and he's hanging…
This book is gritty and raw and hard-hitting. It takes an honest (and at times, confronting) look at what it’s like to feel completely isolated because of your sexuality in rural Australia. The characters are vivid and relatable, and their plight is enthralling. The story deals with identity, belonging, toxic masculinity, and the dark side of coming to terms with who you are when the whole world seems like it’s against you. This book is not for the faint-hearted, but it’s brilliant nonetheless.
An emotional tale of identity, sexuality and suicide derived from personal experience about three teenage boys who struggle to come to terms with their homosexuality in a small Western Australian town. On the surface, nerd Zeke, punk Charlie and footy wannabe Hammer look like they have nothing in common. But scratch that surface and you’d find three boys in the throes of coming to terms with their homosexuality in a town where it is invisible. Invisible Boys is a raw, confronting YA novel that explores the complexities and trauma of rural gay identity with painful honesty, devastating consequences and, ultimately,…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
This is a stunning and heart-wrenching memoir about growing up gay in an all-boys Catholic school. Written by an award-winning Aussie journalist, the story delves into the challenges of coming to terms with your sexuality as a fourteen-year-old boy, when you’re surrounded by rugby-obsessed schoolmates and rigid views of masculinity. It’s a heartbreaking book, but ultimately hopeful, and it’s one that every Australian (and non-Australian!) needs to read.
Optioned for a major film, Fourteen is this generation’s Holding the Man – a moving coming-of-age memoir about a young man’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school.
This is a story about my fourteenth year of life as a gay kid at an all-boys rugby-mad Catholic school in regional Queensland. It was a year in which I started to discover who I was, and deeply hated what was revealed. It was a year in which I had my first crush and first devastating heartbreak. It was a year of torment, bullying…
This book is beautiful from start to finish. The setting is so vivid (that Brisbane humidity and the purple jacarandas, I mean, I am right there!) and the writing is lyrical and gorgeous. The main characters are relatable and adorable and you find yourself cheering for them from the very first page. The story is full of awkward teen experiences, fun banter, tons of swoony scenes, and some truly touching moments.
This smart and charming queer YA rom-com about falling for your best friend will win the hearts of fans of Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli.
Henry Hamlet doesn’t know what he wants after school ends. It’s his last semester of high school, and all he’s sure of is his uncanny ability to make situations awkward. Luckily, he can always hide behind his enigmatic best friend, Len. They’ve been friends since forever, but Len is mysterious and Henry is clumsy, and Len is a heartthrob and Henry is a neurotic mess. Somehow it’s always worked.
A grumpy-sunshine, slow-burn, sweet-and-steamy romance set in wild and beautiful small-town Colorado. Lane Gravers is a wanderer, adventurer, yoga instructor, and social butterfly when she meets reserved, quiet, pensive Logan Hickory, a loner inventor with a painful past.
Dive into this small-town, steamy romance between two opposites who find love…
This is a classic of Australian literature, and for very good reason. Set during the AIDS epidemic in Australia in the late 1970s through to the early 90s, this memoir plunges us into the author’s life. We begin during his high school days—when he first notices his attraction to boys and starts sneaking out of the house to find ways to explore his sexuality—and follow him all the way through to his inevitably tragic death. It is a truly heartbreaking story, but incredibly life-affirming. An absolute must-read.
From the land of Down Under comes this true story about a male high school drama student who falls in love with the captain of the football team. Winner of the United Nations Human Rights Award for Nonfiction, HOLDING THE MAN has been adapted into a play opening in America in September 2007. The playwright who adapted the book for stage refers to this a a memoir of striking and unapologetic honesty.
Luca is ready to audition for the Australian Ballet School. All it takes to crush his dreams is one missed step... and a broken foot. Jordan is the gorgeous rowing star and school captain of Luca's new school. Everyone says he's straight - but Luca’s not so sure...
As their unlikely bond grows stronger, Luca starts to wonder: who is he without ballet? And is he setting himself up for another heartbreak?
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
Haunted by her choices, including marrying an abusive con man, thirty-five-year-old Elizabeth has been unable to speak for two years. She is further devastated when she learns an old boyfriend has died. Nothing in her life…
