In late 2022, Joey Lobel was frustrated.

An avid reader, Lobel, a 31-year-old butcher in Brooklyn, was struggling to find queer books that didn’t have sad endings.

“I went on a little spiral and I thought, I’m sure other people are feeling the same way,” she said.

So Lobel decided to make a queer book club page on the social networking website Meetup, hoping to build community around LGBTQ reads. She wasn’t sure if people would show up. But “worst case scenario,” she recalled thinking, “I’m sitting at a bar with a book, which is completely fine.”

But people did show up. And in the nearly four years since the Queer Book Club started, Lobel’s book club has become a staple in New York City’s LGBTQ community—with monthly meetups at the Brooklyn bar Young Ethel’s and an average of between 15 and 30 participants. The book club’s one-off events, like book swaps, are popular and see upward of 60 attendees.

As summer gets underway, Lobel spoke to Rewire News Group about the importance of LGBTQ literature, generating a top-notch list of reads for Pride Month, and building community through books.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What makes a book queer?

A book is queer if it’s written for queer people by queer people. There are so many books out there that have zero queer characters, or one passing queer character. And to me, that’s not necessarily considered a queer book. But any book written for us, with us in mind, I want to read.

Do you have an........

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