Every True Pleasure

“A winning showcase of Southern queer lit.”—Publishers Weekly

“Much thanks is due to Wilton Barnhardt for compiling on our behalf the 21 stories and essays in Every True Pleasure. The collection presents varied experiences and unique struggles of LGBTQ persons, while also showing that heterosexual and LGBTQ lives are intertwined and not always so different from each other. . . . [A] most welcome addition to Southern and Queer literature.”—North Carolina Libraries

“The editor of this collection, Wilton Barnhardt, promises ‘a bunch of good things to read’ and delivers exactly that. If these writers weren’t connected by the natural fact of being members of, or sympathetic to, the LGBTQ community, they would be connected by their keenness of feeling and observation. What this book says is, ‘We are all kinds of people with all kinds of stories. In other words, we’re just like you.’”—Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama and Georgia Bottoms

“UNC Press may be the first state press to produce an LGBTQ anthology from its own state’s writers, and what a tour de force it is, featuring the storytelling talent of North Carolina’s leading authors as well as up-and-coming writers. It’s a substantive collection, perfect for a survey of gay fiction and southern fiction, not to mention queer studies—but mostly it’s a page-turning journey through the wild ride of LGBTQ lives in contemporary America.” — Lori Ostlund, author of The Bigness of the World, and Anne Raeff, author of Winter Kept Us Warm, winners of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction