Groundbreaking works exploring art in the farmhouses of rural Tennessee, the Alaskan outdoors, esteemed museums and galleries, ancient Greece, and vogueing balls in Harlem. 

These books are awash with dreams of utopia animated by desire, radical politics, innovation, and imagination.

This collection contains:

Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan: Art about glaciers, queer relationships, political anxiety, and the meaning of blackness in open space—Winner of the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Nonfiction and the 2022 Jean Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, Borealis, is a shapeshifting logbook of Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s experiences moving through the Alaskan outdoors.

Pretentiousness by Dan Fox: This rigorous, passionate study of culture is for anyone who has braved being different, whether that’s making a stand against artistic consensus or running the gauntlet of the last bus home dressed differently from everyone else. Fox draws on a wide range of references to argue that pretentiousness is the engine oil of culture; the essential lubricant in the development of all arts.

Socialist Realism by Trisha Low: In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore—sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find. Attempting to reconcile her desires with her radical politics, she asks: do our quests to fulfill our deepest wishes propel us forward, or keep us trapped in the rubble of our deteriorating world?

Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T Fleischmann: How do the bodies we inhabit affect our relationship with art? How does art affect our relationship to our bodies? In this winner of the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, T Fleischmann uses Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s artworks—piles of candy, stacks of paper, puzzles—as a path through questions of love and loss, violence and rejuvenation, gender and sexuality.