Celebrating Pride Month with Books! by Jeff Adams & Will Knauss

[Note from Frolic: We’re so excited to have Jeff Adams and Will Knauss on the site today! They’re sharing news about some of the upcoming Pride content on the Frolic Podcast Network. Take it away, guys!]

Happy Pride Month!

This year Pride Month looks different around the world as parades and other gatherings to celebrate have either been postponed or cancelled due to Covid-19. 

in the interest of spreading a little bit of that feel-good rainbow joy, this year the Big Gay Fiction Podcast is creating a digital Pride-themed literary festival full of authors, narrators and other special guests. It’s our most ambitious month of programming ever as we present 21 episodes of the podcast, made up of five regular Monday episodes, one Book Club episode and 15 bonuses. 

We think we’ve put together a stellar lineup for the month and are excited to share it with you. Here’s what to expect in our regular episodes:

June 1: Author Philip William Stover talks about his new novel The Hideaway Inn. This book is one of debut novels in the new Carina Adores line of LGBTQ romances. We love Philip’s book and are excited for this new line of romances.

June 8: Author Alex Sanchez and illustrator Jul Maroh discuss the new DC Comics graphic novel You Brought Me the Ocean. This beautiful story is a coming of age/coming out story for the young man who becomes Aqualad.

June 15: Daryl Banner, an author who writes m/m romance as well as fantasy and dystopian, talks about two of his latest: Lover’s Flood and Connor (part of the second season of his Toys & Boys stories)

June 22: Jay from Joyfully Jay Reviews & Lisa from The Novel Approach Reviews return to our show to share some of their recent favorites but also to talk about books that are meaningful for them in Pride month.

June 29: Podcaster and author Lauren Shippen talks about The Bright Sessions universe, including the first spin-off novel The Infinite Noise.

June 30: Our June Book Club episode debuts, featuring Heartache and Hoofbeats by Maz Maddox. It’s the first time we’ve done shifter romance in Book Club and we’re loving it.

Our bonus episodes for the month are bite-sized. For these we asked authors and narrators to tell us about one of their books and to read an excerpt. Our lineup of authors includes Adriana Herrera, TJ Klune, Jay Northcote, Rick R. Reed, Julia Talbot, BA Tortuga, Silvia Violet, Max Walker and Julian Winters. Narrators Kirt Graves and Joel Leslie will each be with us twice to share an audiobook with us.

We’re also welcoming friends in our extended podcast family to share LGBTQ+ books that are important to them. We’ll hear from Slade James from GayRomance.show: The MM Author Podcast, Markie and Jess from Top to BOTM Podcast and Sarah Wendell from Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. 

Each of our guests through the month will also share what Pride means to them. As you might imagine, there are some powerful and moving moments in these segments.

We kicked off our bonus episodes on June 3 with TJ Klune. He had the world premiere first listen of the audiobook for his young adult novel The Extraordinaires, which releases on July 14. It’s an incredible six minutes that you should go check out if you haven’t heard it already. We can’t thank TJ, Tor Teen and Macmillan Audio enough for letting us present this preview.

Finding new ways to celebrate Pride during these unique and difficult times is undoubtedly a challenge, but it is one that we can undertake with passion, creativity, and an open heart. This year, whether you are celebrating with friends, or by yourself, we hope that you’ll consider Big Gay Fiction Podcast as part of your year-round Pride family.

You’ll find all of our Pride month programming wherever you get your podcasts or you can go to BigGayFictionPodcast.com/pride2020.

More Pride from the Frolic Podcast Network

We wanted to share details from some of our friends in the Frolic Podcast Network who are also having Pride episodes.

Tea & Strumpets Podcast, a Regency romance review show hosted by Zoë and Kelsey, celebrates all month long as they do a deep-dive discussion of two books and have two author interviews:

June 4: Discussion of the f/f romance The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite 

June 11: Interview with author Cat Sebastian

June 18: Discussion of the f/f romance Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

June 25: Interview with author Olivia Waite

Boobies & Noobies celebrates Pride on June 12 as host Kelly Reynolds and her “noobie” romance reading guest dissect and discuss Scandalous Passions, an f/f/m ménage historical romance by Nicola Davidson. All month long, Boobies & Noobies will also share some of their favorite queer romance recs!

No matter how you celebrate Pride month, we hope you have a safe, healthy and happy one… and that you’re able to grow you TBR pile with some queer books from the shows of the Frolic Podcast Network.