The small queer press is a continuous 2025 book club at The Pond aiming to uplift queer published works from smaller -mostly indie- presses focusing on diverse stories of LGBTQIA+ life and people.
The book club will run in 2-3 month cycles, each quarter focusing on a different press.
In February through April we are exploring the works from Arsenal Pulp Press. For March we are reading "The Tiger Flu" by Larissa Lai:
In The Tiger Flu, Larissa Lai crafts a visionary tale of survival, resistance, and biotechnology in a world where parthenogenic women fight for their existence against disease and male-dominated power structures.
When Kirilow’s lover, a regenerative “starfish” vital to her community’s survival, dies from a mysterious flu, she journeys to Salt Water City in search of a replacement. There, she meets Kora, a girl torn between saving her own family and helping Kirilow’s people—until both are kidnapped by powerful men seeking to control a mind-altering cure. Blending cyberpunk, feminist dystopia, and poetic storytelling, The Tiger Flu is a bold and unsettling exploration of gender, technology, and resilience.
Arsenal Pulp Press is a book publisher in Vancouver, Canada, printing literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry; books on social issues; gender studies; LGBTQ2S+ and BIPOC literature; and books in translation. Their interest lies within literature that engages and challenges readers, and which asks probing questions about the world around us. (https://arsenalpulp.com/)
*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
- facebook events will be available
- the books are available at The Pond
- the books are in english, mostly fiction
If you want to join the bookclub remotely, or track your reading for these books by joining the Storygraph challenge for funsies.