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Part memoir and part “this is how I work(or at least how I think I work),” this book is fascinating and, for someone who creates things, inspiring and useful. I’ll refer repeatedly to Ito’s explanations of how he develops his initial ideas. (The phrase in quotation marks above is a paraphrase, not a direct quote.)

Lyrical and inventive, by turns (or sometimes simultaneously) witty, angry, and tender, these poems about living and aging and loving as a gay man in the US Midwest speak to everyone who has a body and feelings.

This thoughtful, sensitively written, and sensible book is especially important now, when people who don’t fit simplistic gender stereotypes are again being targeted and scapegoated. It’s a reminder that gender policing is Nazi ideology in practice.

Unapologetically queer and hopeful fiction with urgent things to say, but not didactic. Janelle Monáe is an accomplished storyteller in the medium of the concept album. In this book, she collaborates with five fiction writers to create stories set in the dystopian world of her album Dirty Computer. Dystopian fiction is often a genre of resistance and hope, and that’s the case here. The authors recognize the messiness of human nature: even in communities of peace and mutual aid, characters find fear and hate and betrayal. But these stories challenge us to imagine the world that can be, if we create it. As Mx. Tangee says in the final story, “They don’t own the future.”