Thank you to all of the writers, researchers, scholars, and historians who provided these great works for us to learn and enjoy !

If you have any books to recommend that we can add to our bookstore, please let us know.
Write us at info@dragkinghistory.com

Two Augusts in a Row in a Row

by Shelley Marlow

Two Augusts In A Row In A Row, Shelley Marlow’s new novel and the seventh book in Publication Studio’s Fellow Travelers Series, is a love letter between generations of queer women. Set in New York City in 2001, we follow Phillip–a gender subversive drag king in search of grace and magic–through rich, sad, humorous language that is singularly Shelley Marlow’s.

Published by Publication Studio on June 14, 2015

The Club

by Eve Merriam
Directed by Tommy Tune

The Club, called “a musical diversion” and billed as feminist social satire. Eve Merriam wrote the book and lyrics for a highly successful 1976 Tommy Tune-directed off-Broadway production that ran 19 months and won an Obie Award. Members of a stuffy, all male club, circa 1905, tap dance and sing fourteen songs of the era, all indicative of male smugness and superiority. Four men, dressed to the nines, hang out together at their upper-class men-only club. They drink, play pool, smoke cigars and exchange comments about their wives and mistresses. Sometimes they come up with hoary, pre-Henny Youngman jokes about men and women. They also rehearse a show which they plan to present publically. It includes parts where the men dress as women plus an extremely long melodrama. But, the audience will discover that the top hats, white ties and tails are actually being worn by women. In this inventive conception, they impeccably personify men of a century ago, with the typical male attitudes toward women circa 1900. The production features nearly 90 minutes of nonstop singing and dancing. A wickedly, delicious musical!

Published by Samuel French Inc., 1977

 

Confessions of a Teenage Drag King

by Markus Harwood-Jones

Full of colourful, authentic characters and set in Toronto, Confessions of a Teenage Drag King highlights diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, and identity. Seventeen-year-old Lauren tries to navigate the tricky waters of teen romance that brings high school to the drag show and back, all while Lauren must keep up their two personas — Ren, a drag king, and Lauri, a typical student — and come to terms with their feelings both for mixed-race student Clover and for their own identity as an LGBTQ+ teen. Confessions of a Teenage Drag King is a realistic but light-hearted exploration of gender and identity, making it a fun and topical read for today’s teen readers.

Published by Lorimer Children & Teens, January 01, 2021

 

Dick for a Day

by Fiona Giles

Not since Kafka’s Gregor Samsa awoke to discover that he’d turned into a cockroach has literature addressed such a traumatic transformation. In order to compile Dick for a Day, scholar and feminist Fiona Giles approached hundreds of well-known writers, poets, artists, actresses, and academics and asked them to express what they might feel if they abruptly found themselves genitally altered.

From Terry McMillan to Jennifer Blowdryer, from Patricia Cornwell to Linda Sexton Gray, we find unexpected answers: hygienic, erotic, metaphysical, and even spiritual. By turns playful and sociologically profound, Dick for a Day is a milestone in sophisticated humor and feminist literature.

This book was inspired by Diane Torr’s Drag King Workshop.

Published by Villard, 1997

 

Drag King Dreams

by Leslie Feinberg

A veteran of the women’s and gay movement of the past 30 years, Max’s mid-life crisis hits in the midst of the post-9/11 world. Max is lonely and uncertain about her future — fearful, in fact, of America’s future with its War on Terror and War in Iraq — with only a core group of friends to turn to for reassurance. Max is shaken from her crisis, however, by the news that her friend Vickie, a transvestite, has been found murdered on her way home late one night. As the community of cross-dressers, drag queens, lesbian and gay men, and “genderqueers” of all kinds stand up together in the face of this tragedy, Max taps into the activist spirit she thought had long disappeared and for the first time in years discovers hope for her future.

Published by Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006

 

The Gods of Tango

by Carolina De Robertis

STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER

From the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Invisible Mountain and Perla—a lyrical, riveting story of a young woman whose passion for the early sounds of tango becomes a force of profound and unexpected change.

Arriving in Buenos Aires in 1913, with only a suitcase and her father’s cherished violin to her name, seventeen-year-old Leda is shocked to find that the husband she has traveled across an ocean to reach is dead. Unable to return home, alone, and on the brink of destitution, she finds herself seduced by the tango, the dance that underscores every aspect of life in her new city. Knowing that she can never play in public as a woman, Leda disguises herself as a young man to join a troupe of musicians. In the illicit, scandalous world of brothels and cabarets, the line between Leda and her disguise begins to blur, and forbidden longings that she has long kept suppressed are realized for the first time. Powerfully sensual, The Gods of Tango is an erotically charged story of music, passion, and the quest for an authentic life against the odds.

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2015

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2015
An NBC Latino Selection for Ten Great Latino Books published in 2015

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

By Malinda Lo

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.

But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

Author Malinda Lo includes a male impersonator character in her book to highlight the entertainment during an era when cross-dressing was illegal.

Published by Penguin Random House, 2021

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens

By Tanya Boteju

Perpetually awkward Nima Kumara-Clark is bored with her insular community of Bridgeton, in love with her straight girlfriend, and trying to move past her mother’s unexpected departure. After a bewildering encounter at a local festival, Nima finds herself suddenly immersed in the drag scene on the other side of town.

Macho drag kings, magical queens, new love interests, and surprising allies propel Nima both painfully and hilariously closer to a self she never knew she could be—one that can confidently express and accept love. But she’ll have to learn to accept lost love to get there.

Published May 7th 2019 by Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

by Sarah Waters

Tipping the Velvet is a historical novel by Sarah Waters; it is her debut novel. Set in England during the 1890s, it tells a coming of age story about a young woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator, follows her to London, and finds various ways to support herself as she journeys through the city.

 

Under the Mink

2nd edition • by Lisa E Davis

A novel about New York City in the good old days (1949) and entertainers who worked in drag, when that got you jail time instead of a TV show.