A Toast to Books About Queer Bars

If you want a book that both celebrates and interrogates the impact of gay bars, Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar is a must-read. Divided into seven chapters centered on different gay bars in the U.S. and Europe that have played an important role in his life, it tells an expansive story across time and place about how gay bars have shaped queer culture and vice versa. Atherton Lin’s writing is lyrical, clever, and intimate, and it doesn’t shy away from the raunchy, bawdy, unique atmosphere of gay bars. It’s an excellent blend of personal memoir and queer history that’s sure to leave you craving a sweaty dance party under a disco ball.

The Stonewall Inn in New York City is arguably the most famous gay bar in the world due to its 1969 police raid and the subsequent riots that are recognized as the impetus of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. You can learn more about the bar and the movement in The Stonewall Reader, a collection of essays, articles, and interviews about the riots, as well as the fight for queer rights in the five years before and afterwards. It’s a robust historical account of one bar’s role in an enormous cultural shift, with special attention paid to the queer changemakers involved, some who are widely recognized today and others who have often been overlooked by the movement. I especially recommend the audiobook, where original recordings of the interviews are included in the narrative.

Queer bars are places that bring many LGBTQ+ people joy, but they’ve also been the sites of great tragedy. A devastating shooting took place at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016 when a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 more. Brandon J. Wolf hid from the violence in a bathroom that night at Pulse, and his life was forever changed. Now, Wolf is a gun safety and LGBTQ+ rights activist, public speaker, and the press secretary for Equality Florida. In this powerful memoir, Wolf shares his story of that heartbreaking night at Pulse, along with his childhood in rural Oregon, finding queer community in Orlando, and how he’s now using his voice to fight for change.

Café Lafitte in Exile is a gay bar in New Orleans, and one of the oldest continuously operating queer bars in the country. Jeffrey Palmquist, a longtime bartender at Café Lafitte in Exile, and Frank Pérez, a regular at the bar and a local queer historian, teamed up to tell the bar’s story and share the larger history of LGBTQ+ people in New Orleans and their contributions to the Big Easy’s culture. From firsthand interviews with queer New Orleaneans to the origin of the city’s epic annual queer festival Southern Decadence, it’s a testament to the beauty of the queer community and its lasting impact on one of America’s most unique places.

Some of my most important friendships started at queer bars. One of the best parts about these spaces is how they create a safe space for relationships of all kinds to form. This YA novel by two beloved queer authors, Nina LaCour and David Levithan, celebrates the magic of queer friendship. Kate and Mark have spent a year sitting next to each other in class, but they never realized that they’ve got a lot in common. For example, they’re both queer and feeling that combination of nerves and excitement about first love. When Mark and Kate run into each other at a Pride celebration at a San Francisco gay bar, they wonder why it took them so long to get to know each other. Told in alternating perspectives, we see their friendship blossom thanks to that fateful night at the bar.

Avery’s senior year in D.C. is disrupted when she and her parents move to Bardell, Georgia, to care for her dying grandmother. All Avery wants to do is get to know her grandma, avoid making waves, and get back to her friend group in D.C. But she quickly makes two new friends — one of whom she might be crushing on — and finds Bardell has a lot to teach her about her family and herself. You might be asking yourself, why is Susie recommending a contemporary YA book with seemingly nothing to do with queer bars? Well, I don’t want to spoil too much, but there’s an absolutely amazing queer bar/club/restaurant where some of the most magical and pivotal scenes take place. I’m especially fond of queer bars in rural areas, and the one in We Deserve Monuments is a great example of what they can mean for queer communities in red states.

When Katie Met Cassidy was one of the first traditionally published F/F romances waaay back in… 2018. Can you believe how much the landscape for sapphic romance has changed in the last five years? It follows Katie, a lawyer reeling from a breakup with her fiancé Paul, whose world is rocked when she falls for a butch lesbian heartbreaker at work named Cassidy. Plenty of queer readers didn’t feel seen by the representation and criticized Katie’s coming out journey. But for me, a lesbian who was the same age as Katie at the time of this book’s release, I was stunned to see a love story that looked even a little bit like mine for sale at bookstores all over the country. My main love in this book, though, was the lesbian bar at its heart, Cheers. It’s a dive bar that serves as a gathering place for a vivacious queer community, one where Camille feels at home and where Katie finds safety to explore her identity and new relationship. It’s also, like too many lesbian bars, financially struggling and barely keeping its doors open. Cheers was my favorite character in the book and definitely makes When Katie Met Cassidy worth revisiting today.

A 1920s historical mystery about a drag performer at a queer speakeasy accused of murder — need I say more? Millie is temporarily left in charge of Cloak & Dagger, her aunt’s club in the French Quarter where crowds flock to see Marion dance in a glamorous red dress. A young socialite starts asking probing questions about Marion. Not long after, her body is found outside looking much like she was shoved off the Cloak & Dagger’s balcony. Police immediately eye Marion as the lead suspect. Millie knows he couldn’t be responsible, but if she wants to prove it, she’ll need to figure out what happened herself. Cloak & Dagger makes for a transportive, glittering setting, and the book meaningfully explores the characters’ identities in and out of the club in a way queer bar regulars are sure to recognize.