publications
The Library publishes both hand-assembled zines and professionally printed books, including our biannual zines The Vineyard and x/y: a junk drawer of trans voices, as well as various themed projects throughout the year. Books are published as special projects between zine releases. Submissions are currently open for our anthology, Be Gay, Do Time: On Queerness and Incarceration.
In terms of what we publish, the Library seeks stories, prose, poetry, essays, and art that dare to look and dream beyond the humdrum expectations of our current bleak reality. Our goal is to publish work that helps to craft a radical vision of a more vibrant world, whatever that may look like to you.
As a matter of principle, we only charge for physical books and actual real life merchandise to account for labor, printing cost ect and also hopefully getting to the point where we are making more money than we're losing doing this. There's no reason you should have to pay a fee to access a digital file of a book (or a movie, or an audiobook, ect.) ever, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a gormless huckster who would sell their own mother for a nickel. We are a library, and that means that nothing we publish will ever be behind a paywall again.
Stories, their depth and their breadth and their magickal ability to heal and help, belong to the People. Stories unite us, and a people united can not be divided. A free marketplace of ideas can not exist within the shackles of an actual marketplace driven by profit and greed.
Interested in submitting? Check out our guidelines and open calls HERE.
Trans Rites: An Anthology of Genderfucked Horror
The Library is thrilled (and chilled) to present our first anthology, Trans Rites: An Anthology of Genderfucked Horror, out out now in print from our store or on Amazon and available to read for free online here. This collection, edited by v.f. thompson and Fritz Dries, features a bazaar of bizarre tales of transition and transformation, beastliness and becoming. To embody transness is to change shape, to become something else. The theorist Judith Butler refers to the construction of gender as a process of ritual and naturalization. Hear our screams, our howls, our primal gibbering, our moonlight dances and our bleeding guts.
Featuring stories by Lennox Rex, Thea Maeve, Alicia Hilton, Ju Collins, Mave Goren, Michelle Jacklyn Miller, Madeleine Varley, E. B. Novetti, R.S. Saha, Mildred Faintly, C.C. Rayne, with poetry by Dillon Rae Oliver and cover art by Levi L.
Harvest Dogs by Fritz Dries
There are memories planted out there, under the soil, churning and howling...
The Library is thrilled to present our second chapbook, the third collection from Ontario-based poet and laborer Fritz Dries. Tracing a life down into the dirt, into the root system of a crumbling agricultural dynasty, Harvest Dogs is a deep-throated growl of grief and growth, of heredity and working class heroism, of hot animal want.
Harvest Dogs is out now currently available to read free here on the site, and in print in our store and on Amazon.
Go on. Throw yourself to the dogs. They're in the field, waiting.
x/y: a junk drawer of trans voices
x/y originated in 2018, and ran for a total of eight issues before going on hiatus, with a special issue released in February 2020 at MBLGTACC. Now, the project has been resurrected under the banner of The Dionysian Public Library, fully rebooted and revitalized in a new biannual form and starting from a new Issue #1. x/y is a platform for trans and gender-nonconforming artists to share their writing and artwork, with each issue based around a specific theme. Issues are released at the end of March and September.
issue #2, knowledge & mystery, is available to read online now, featuring the work of Callie Jennings, Bob McNeil, Cosmic Gardener, Mildred Faintly, Mave Goren, Aiko Magen, Jack Kehoe, Autumn Barkley, & Kelsey Kessler. The print version will be available soon.
The Vineyard
The Vineyard is our biannual unthemed zine, published in January and July, featuring a selection of writing and poetry fermented under the proper conditions and poured into a glass for your enjoyment. Issue #2 is available now, featuring work from Zach Murphy, jacklyn henty, CLS Sandoval, John Brantingham, and Thomas Elson.
Read issue #1 and issue #2 online for free, purchase a print copy here, or subscribe to all of our publications at our Patreon.
Submissions are currently *closed* but will reopen in December for publication in January.
shimmer by v.f. thompson
We are incredibly proud to present our first book, shimmer, v.f. thompson's debut poetry collection. A meditation on change, transition, what it means to both be and become, thompson draws inspiration from psychedelic and anarchist philosophy, speculative fiction, and the natural world to weave a rich tapestry of imagery and emotion. Covering her year-and-a-half in a house that changed her mind and broke her spirit, it chronicles her journey from who she was to who she will become.
