New Books in LGBTQ+ Studies

Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (U Chicago Press, 2025) traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world.Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies.

Ketil Slagstad is a research fellow at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité: Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
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In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026).

In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache, from early AIDS-activist monologues, to launching a counter city-wide “safe-sex” campaign that includes the public depiction of an affectionate gay couple, to leaving the States in a love that made them “the most beautiful boy in the world,” to becoming a Canadian queer poetry icon. Like countless fairies before them, Kirby scouts desire paths beyond mere survival for new queer voices to continue to amaze, flourish, and thrive. Or as Fairy says, “This way >>>”

Kirby is the author of She (KFB, 2025), Poetry is Queer (Palimpsest Press, 2021), This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019), featured columnist at Send My Love to Anyone and publisher at Knife | Fork | Book. kirbyfairy.ca

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Learn more about Hollay here.
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For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on
heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually
changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key
players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) examines these political and social changes,
evaluates how actors have successfully integrated LGBTQ+ needs into the
mainstream policy agenda, and provides a comprehensive guide to
understanding the policymaking processes from an LGBTQ+ perspective.
Drawing on data from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA, it
presents a systematic framework for understanding "queering public
policy" as a policy process. The final chapter offers a roadmap for
scholars interested in exploring this evolving field further. This book
will appeal to anyone interested in public policy, public
administration, and queer studies.
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Fifty years ago, tennis player Renée Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women’s draw of the 1977 US Open—marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renée eventually won her case. Though she lost in the first round of the singles tournament, she and her tennis partner made it to the finals in doubles, losing to Martina Navratilova and her partner.

Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer (HarperOne, 2026) chronicles Richards’s extraordinary life, moving from her tumultuous upbringing in Queens, New York, to her career as a successful eye surgeon; her years as a star tennis player to her role as a transgender pioneer. Now in her nineties, Renée remains a complex figure: A person who changed the sports world forever yet questions the place of trans athletes in that world today. GLAAD award-nominated sports journalist Julie Kliegman deftly probes these contradictions, drawing on intimate interviews and offering critical reflections on what is at stake for athletes, fans, and the queer community today, at a time when trans participation in sports is more hotly contested—and condemned—than ever before.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.
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Homosexuality in Central Asia: Stories of Hardship and Hope
(Barnes and Noble Press, 2026) is Ryan Michael Schweitzer's collection
of first-hand narratives from LGBTQ individuals across Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Drawing on years
of fieldwork in the region, Schweitzer gathers stories of violence,
blackmail, forced marriage, surveillance, and exile alongside quieter
accounts of love, friendship, and endurance. Rather than presenting a
single Central Asian LGBTQ experience, the book traces how legal status,
state security apparatuses, family structure, and religious revival
intersect differently in each country to shape what visibility and
safety look like for queer people in the region.

About the host

Cholpon Ramizova is a London-based creator and researcher. She holds a
Master's in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University
of London. Her thematic interests are in migration, displacement,
identity, gender and nationalism—and in the ways these intersect within
the Central Asia context.
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