Lavender Lit Club: Recent Episodes
Julie Arhelger, Jillian Kurashima
We are Lavender Lit Club, a queer book review podcast hosted by Julie Arhelger and Julian Kurashima. Every month we discuss a book written by queer authors or that takes on LGBT+ themes and features queer and diverse characters. We'll delve into it all: scifi and speculative fiction, thrillers and mystery, poetry and nonfiction, classic novels and emerging writers. Welcome to the club!
Ocean Vuong's debut, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, is a complicated novel tackling themes of trauma, poverty, homophobia, and death. We discuss language, what is accessible and not, but also the beauty of poetry and how Vuong's themes carry from his poetry into his prose.
In this episode we discuss the parody/fanfiction/spinoff thing that is Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. This is a silly and queer alternative perspective on the Chosen One trope we all already love reading, and we dig into what that means and if it reaches it's queer potential.
In our second poetry minisode, we read and discuss five of our favorite queer poems. "Come slowly--Eden" by Emily Dickensen, "After God Herself" by Justice Ameer, "Hubble Photographs: After Sappho" by Adrienne Rich, "Tonight in Oakland" by Danez Smith, and "Ardent" by Jill McDonough.
We discuss Tom Spanbauer's queer filled western The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon.
We discuss Ivan Coyote's memoir Tomboy Survival Guide and the importance of representation.
In our first episode we discuss Rivers Solomon's debut An Unkindness of Ghosts. A scifi adventure on the generation ship Matilda, An Unkindness of Ghosts follows Aster in her quest to solve the mystery of her mother's death and navigate the dangers of the ship and its legacy of trauma. This book is packed full of diverse queer characters and culture, and though it often delves into dark tragedy, it is an immersive read we couldn't put down.