this is my master reading list of lesbian (and more broadly queer) lit: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, anything but cartoon romance. not all of it is good.
created by ellenfs
last updated November, 2026
Notes of a Crocodile
Qiu Miaojin
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister
Anne Lister
Patience and Sarah
Isabel Miller
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Audre Lorde
Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
Adrienne Rich
Private Rites
Julia Armfield
Ladies Almanack
Djuna Barnes
Cantoras
Carolina De Robertis
HER LOVER : [a Landmark in Early Lesbian Novels]
Dora Rosetti
Women
Chloé Caldwell
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Jeanette Winterson
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
Lillian Faderman
Greasepaint
Hannah Levene
Valencia
Michelle Tea
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Malinda Lo
Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf
Orlando
The Well of Loneliness
Radclyffe Hall
Our Wives Under the Sea
Biography of X
Catherine Lacey
Chelsea Girls
Eileen Myles
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
Sappho
Perfume & Pain
Anna Dorn
Bright Young Women
Jessica Knoll
Housemates
Emma Copley Eisenberg
Pizza Girl
Jean Kyoung Frazier
Alice Sadie Celine
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Cassandra at the Wedding
Dorothy Baker
SCUM Manifesto
Valerie Solanas
Interesting Facts about Space
Emily R. Austin
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