In recognition of Pride Month, Princeton University Library shares media recommendations by students, staff, and faculty who visited Princeton University’s Pride Fest in April 2025.

Authors

Emily Austin

Emily Austin is the author of “We Could Be Rats,” "Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead," “Interesting Facts About Space,” and the poetry collection “Gay Girl Prayers.” She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Angela Chen

Angela Chen is a journalist and writer in New York City. Her reporting and criticism have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, Guardian, Paris Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and elsewhere. Chen is a member of the ace community and has spoken about asexuality at academic conferences and events including World Pride. 

Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni, poet, activist, mother and professor, was a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and held the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, among many other honors. She was the author of thirty books and received thirty-one honorary doctorates. Until 2022, she was the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Adam Silvera

Adam Silvera is the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of “They Both Die at the End,” T"he First to Die at the End," “The Survivor Wants to Die at the End,” "More Happy Than Not," History Is All You Left Me," the Infinity Cycle ("Infinity Son," “Infinity Reaper,” "Infinity Kings"), and co-author of “What If It’s Us and Here’s to Us.”

Books

City of Girls

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.

The Song of Achilles

Achilles, 'best of all the Greeks', is everything Patroclus is not - strong, beautiful, the child of a goddess - and by all rights their paths should never cross. Yet one day, Achilles takes the shamed prince under his wing and soon their tentative companionship gives way to a steadfast friendship. As they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something far deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel and deathly pale sea goddess with a hatred of mortals.

Maurice

Written during 1913 and 1914, Maurice deals with the then unmentionable subject of homosexuality. More unusually, it concerns a relationship that ends happily.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's “Persepolis,” it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form.

Captive Prince

When beloved warrior hero Damen's brother seizes the throne of Akielos unjustly, rightful heir Damen is sold as a pleasure slave to Prince Laurent of the enemy Vere Kingdom, and is soon caught up in court intrigue that threatens him and his new master.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

A New York Times bestseller. Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction. Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

Movies

Anora

A young stripper from Brooklyn meets and impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairy tale is threatened as his parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.

Call Me By Your Name

It's the summer of 1983, and 17-year-old Elio is spending the days with his family at their villa in Lombardy, Italy. He soon meets Oliver, who's working as an intern for Elio's father. They discover the heady beauty of awakening desire.

D.E.B.S.

Plaid-skirted schoolgirls are groomed by a secret government agency to become the newest members of the elite national-defense group, D.E.B.S.

Moonlight

A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

Love, Simon

Simon Spier keeps a huge secret from his family, his friends and all of his classmates: he's gay. When that secret is threatened, Simon must face everyone and come to terms with his identity.

Related Reading: Notable works on LGBTQIA+ Topics (2024), Notable works on LGBTQIA+ Topics (2023)