The Small Queer Press Book Club is a continuous 2026 book club at The Pond aiming to uplift queer published works from smaller -mostly indie and micro- presses focusing on diverse stories of LGBTQIA+ life and people.
The book club will run in 2-3 month cycles, each cycle focusing on a different press.
In June and July we are exploring the works from AK Press. For July we are reading “Atoms Never Touch” by Micha Cárdenas:
Jumping to alternate realities sounds great, if you're in control. But what if you're not? What if you're propelled away from the people and places you love the most in the blink of an eye? And what if these involuntary journeys happen because your neurochemistry is different, and your brain works differently?
Beautiful, compassionate, and resourceful as she is, this is Rea's problem. A latina trans woman and an academic, she is beloved by a tight circle of friends, who fully accept her without knowing the cause of her disappearances. But she is haunted by the lovers and family that she cannot trace back to, and fears she might be separated from them forever. Each time she transits into a new time and space, everything shifts—even the films and writing Rea produces readjust their molecules to match her new quantum reality. But Rea, a brilliant lay scientist, is determined to crack the code, and end her quest for lasting connections and home.
AK Press is a worker-run, collectively-managed, anarchist publishing and distribution since 1990. They publish works across all genres and ages with social justice, queer, acab, anti-government and -prison industrial complex –everything under the lens of anarchism.
Read more about them here: https://www.akpress.org/
*no reader commitment!*
- read the book, or start reading it
- show up to the discussion
- no sign ups needed
- you can go to one, or some, or all
- book club is held monthly
- 2-3 month cycles highlighting a different queer press
- the books are available at The Pond
- the books are in english, mostly fiction
There are copies of the book available at The Pond for a 10% discount!
If you want to join the bookclub remotely, or track your reading for these books, you can joining the Storygraph challenge for funsies.