Standard Books

In 1998, TASCHEN introduced the world to the masterful art of Touko Laaksonen with The Art of Pleasure. Prior to that, Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, enjoyed an intense cult following in the international gay community but was largely unknown to a broader audience. In 2009, TASCHEN followed up with the ultimate Tom overview: Tom of Finland XXL, a beautiful big collector's edition with over 1,000 images, covering six decades of the artist's career. The work was gathered from collections across the United States and Europe with the help of the Tom of Finland Foundation, featuring many drawings, paintings, and sketches never previously reproduced. Other images had only been seen out of context and were finally presented in the sequential order Tom intended for full artistic appreciation and erotic impact. The elegant oversized volume showed the full range of Tom's talent, from sensitive portraits to frank sexual pleasure to tender expressions of love and haunting tributes to young men struck down by AIDS, and was completed by eight commissioned essays on Tom's social and personal impact by Camille Paglia, John Waters, Armistead Maupin, Todd Oldham, and others, plus a scholarly analysis of individual drawings by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith.

Poetry, chapbook, 20 pages.

His Boyfriend Materials is the debut chapbook by Stephen Yuffrida Brown. It is a brief exploration into the validity and nuance of temporary connection, particularly in the context of queer romance and hookup culture. Navigating seduction, tenderness, outrage, and loneliness, it clings to a lingering optimism. Rather than the classic hope left behind in Pandora's box, however, this takes the form of the sudden spark and ignition of new attraction. Stephen Yuffrida Brown (he/him) is a writer-activist with a Philly attitude and an academic background in LGBT+ studies. He is currently pursuing his MFA in the halls of Rathalla, a decadent Gilded Age castle just off the Philadelphia Main Line.

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages.

The Angels Have Always Been Black is a metamorphosis of Black girlhood, queer sexuality, God, and family. Through a mix of traditional forms, as well as her own style of verse, the angels will take you up, then down, then up again, weaving hope through all the memories, beloved and triggering, before resting once again on the shelves of Mommy’s freshly dusted mahogany shrunk. This narrative is matured into Black womanhood on these wings, journeying home, earth, riverlands, and sky. Granny braids your hair, a new lover breaks your heart, and Black women prevail. Aliyah Curry is a queer Southern bred writer, focusing on Black female sexuality and mental health.

Stand at attention with this pocket-sized army of free, proud, masculine fantasy men committed to pleasure and male camaraderie. With multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings, as well as personal photographs and sketches, The Little Book of Tom: Military Men celebrates the artist’s most iconic vision of masculine perfection.

Criminal justice never looked so good as in this pocket-sized collection of Tom of Finland’s favorite tightly uniformed cops and suitably butch criminals. Multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings are contextualized with sketches, reference images, and personal photos of Tom.

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages,

A Funeral for Frozen Peas is a chapbook that unearths the raw, tender, and often unspoken corners of humanity. Each poem acts as a window into what it means to feel deeply. It does not seek to explain or resolve the complexities of the human emotion, but rather to sit with the feelings, to hold them up to the light, and acknowledge their weight. This collection reminds us that emotions—no matter how fleeting or overwhelming—deserve to be honored.

A Funeral for Frozen Peas invites readers to feel freely, no matter how uncomfortable. The collection does not shy away from vulnerability, instead, it embraces vulnerability as the thread that connects us all.

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Lavender & Cigarettes: poems of queer sex and yearning is a collection of poetry about love in its many forms through a queer lens. The poems explore friendship, romance, and sex, and the intersections between them. Love is complicated, growing up is complicated, finding courage in queer identity is complicated. Honest and nostalgic, Nelson writes of these complications, of the messiness of life lived boldly and with a tender heart.

Written during Nelson’s final year of college, Lavender & Cigarettes is full of moments that feel definitive of a queer twenty-something’s experiences. Drunken kisses at a gay bar, holding hands with friends on late night walks, the gender euphoria of a cheap strap-on – it is as much an ode to heartache and sensuality as it is a celebration of platonic intimacy and self-love.

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In Monsoons, history becomes a girl. Two sisters fall in love during a war at sea: their incessant arguing rewrites the very history of lyric poetry into one tongue-tied love song. Here we do things our way: we macerate Milton’s form and let Eliot’s meter bleed out, we lace the epic verse of Gilgamesh and H.D with indie rock songs like Car Seat Headrest and Caroline Polachek.

Monsoons is excerpted from Homily, a longform epic poem that recalls Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Alice Notley’s Descent of Alette, and the book-length projects of Tommy Pico. Like the fleeting radio you’d overhear from a fast car, the pulsing fragments of Monsoons rewind and erase the history of war and girlhood.

Prose, chapbook, 36 pages, illustrated, from Bottlecap Press.

Katabasis is one heart’s erratic journey through the past to gain clarity and closure for the future. It is the descent into the darkness in order to find the light. This story tirelessly wades through the muddy waters of heartbreak, presses on the bruises of confusion, and pulls out the splinters left behind by great loss. It explores intimacy and rejection, new attempts and new failures, and the ever-changing and unpredictable direction of life.

One page we’re dancing in the kitchen with a lover while making breakfast, and the next we’re staring out the window while the garbage truck drives away with their belongings.

Prose, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

“All I have left…” begins the narrator of the title story in Figs, Lukas Tallent’s second collection of flash fiction, where characters are enthralled, trapped, dislodged, and sometimes, redeemed by their incessant want for another.

"Figs is hot and aching. Every story is pulled taut, thrumming with tension: sexual or otherwise. Its characters reach for physical reminders of their desires: discarded still warm t-shirts, lip stained coffee mugs, streaks of body wash clinging to shower walls. They’ve lost something, are hungry, even desperate, to claw it back. By the end of this collection, like them, you’ll want more.