Love, In Theory; Bumbling Into Body Hair; Fire in the Belly

IE.J. Levy’s artful short story collection Love, In Theory (University of Georgia Press) looks to the complicated emotional lives of academics for inspiration, though you don’t need to be a man of letters to appreciate these complex and incisive examinations of desire. With shifting perspectives and a wide array of characters, Levy’s award-winning debut will surely give readers something of themselves reflected in its pages.

Fans of comic memoirs will find plenty to love—and laugh about—in Everett Maroon’s story of gender transition, Bumbling into Body Hair (Booktrope Publishing). As tender as it is witty, Bumbling lets Maroon expose his physical and emotional pratfalls with tremendous grace, and his story of self-discovery and self-acceptance is one to which anybody can relate.

If you’re interested in art or the gay history of the East Village, you won’t want to miss Cynthia Carr’s Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz (Bloomsbury USA), an accomplished biography of the iconic gay artist, who died in 1992. Its title is inspired by the video piece A Fire in My Belly, which was at the center of the 2010 controversy at the National Portrait Gallery, when conservatives demand it be removed due to its “objectionable content.”