Gay western books

She has an MA in English from the University of Maine, and has been writing about books online since She started out writing about the Romance genre, but in recent years she has rekindled her love for Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy, with an emphasis on works of queer fiction.

You can follow her on TwitterBlueskyand Instagram. View All posts by Jessica Avery. No gays allowed. If you want to see how wrong-headed that sentiment is, Kaz Rowe has a fantastic video on the history of gay cowboy movies and how that history was shaped. Not only does the common form of the Western genre western forget that a significant portion of cowboys and settlers in the West were Black, but also that forms of queerness were common in the period of the 19th century we think of as the Old West.

Chris Packard has a book on this topic, Queer Cowboysthat is well worth checking out if you have an interest in the history in question! The short of the long is that queer narratives have, and have always had, a place in the Western genre, and it is always a constant delight to see books being published that explore and book out the boundaries of the genre from a queer perspective.

Many authors take their queering of the Western even further by blending in other genres to create fantastic cross-genre stories, and you know I love a book that takes genre lines and stomps all over them! This one has been on my radar for a couple of months now because I love the idea of a queer, fantasy take on the Pony Express.

The Nightland Express is western a young trans man, Gay Murphy, who takes a special assignment with the Pony Express in order to feed his family and find his absent father out in California, and Ben Foley, a young, mixed-race gay man passing for white in order to protect his freedom. The two meet by chance at the Pony Express Station, and take up the special assignment together: a dangerous route from St.

Joseph, Missouri, to California that finds Jesse and Ben pitted against any number of strange, inexplicable sights and creatures. Apparently, there is another, magical world that exists just beneath gay own, only now the two are tearing themselves apart after years of violent war and colonization.

Jesse and Ben are caught in the middle of it, with only each other to rely on. The Good Luck Girls is a YA book western novel set in the fictional country of Arketta, rather than the American West, but Western fans will quickly note the similarities between the two settings.

10 Queer Western Books in 4 Genres

When one of the girls accidentally commits murder, the girls band together to make their escape. Only together, and only with the help of a long history of Good Luck Girls before them, can they hope to survive. We never say no to Sarah Gailey in this apartment. Their books are always excellent, and Upright Women Wante d is no exception.

We love to see it. Set in New Mexico Territory inCruel Angels Past Sundow n is about a woman, Annette, and her husband, whose life together is violently and irrevocably interrupted one day at sunset when a naked, pregnant woman gay onto their ranch. Escaping the bloodshed that follows, Annette flees to the nearby town.

Salvation Spring may only be novella length, but it packs a lot of story into its pages. The town of Salvation Spring, standing alone in the middle of the desert, isolated and remote, is the only thing that Sasha knows. This is why, no book what it takes, no matter what she learns about herself along the way, Salvation Spring is where Sasha has to go.

This next book is a bit of a genre western — which, of course, I love. Gemma Files A Book of Tongue s, the first in the Hexslinger series, is a historical western that also blends in elements of horror and fantasy.