Queer Book Culture with LittlePuss Press and Hive Mind Books
Park Slope Library is pleased to welcome Emily Zhou and Sasha Karbachinskiy of LittlePuss Press and Jules Wernersbach, co-founder of Hive Mind Books to discuss queer publishing, bookselling, and readership in Brooklyn.
LittlePuss Press is a feminist press run by trans women and Hive Mind Books is a queer independent bookstore and coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn. From their different vantage points in the publishing industry, as authors, editors, and booksellers, the panel will explore the landscape of queer books today and investigate questions like:
What makes a book queer? What makes queer publishing possible? How do authors and readers use books to discover new ways of being in and seeing community?
After the conversation, there will be opportunity for Q&A with the audience. Please RSVP in advance as space is limited.
PARTICIPANTS
Emily Zhou’s first book, Girlfriends, won the 2023 Publishing Triangle's Leslie Feinberg Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction. She is the Editor at LittlePuss Press and a fiction editor at Joyland Magazine. Her shorter writing has appeared in Literary Hub, e-flux journal, Xtra, Club Curran, and a few other places. She lives in New York.
Sasha Karbachinskiy is a Brooklyn-based musician, promoter, and educator. You can find her on stage with her two music projects Good Cry (@goodcryband_bk) and Other Girls(@othergirlsband) or cohosting the Gender Experts Party Open Mic.
Jules Wernersbach is a writer and bookseller in Brooklyn. Their debut novel, Work To Do, comes out on April 7, 2026 from University of Iowa Press. Their short fiction has been published in Bennington Review, Heavy Feather Review, and other journals. They are the author of Vegan Survival Guide to Austin and The Swimming Holes of Texas. Jules is co-founder of Hive Mind Books, a queer independent bookstore and coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They have been a bookseller for a long time and also served as literary director of the Texas Book Festival.
