Summer Fun

Winner of the 2022 Lammy Award for Transgender Fiction

From acclaimed author Jeanne Thornton, an epic, singular look at fandom, creativity, longing, and trans identity.

Gala, a young trans woman, works at a hostel in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She is obsessed with the Get Happies, the quintessential 1960s Californian band, helmed by its resident genius, B----. Gala needs to know: Why did the band stop making music? Why did they never release their rumored album, Summer Fun?

And so she writes letters to B---- that shed light not only on the Get Happies, but paint an extraordinary portrait of Gala. The parallel narratives of B---- and Gala form a dialogue about creation—of music, identity, self, culture, and counterculture.

Summer Fun is a brilliant and magical work of trans literature that marks Thornton as one of our most exciting and original novelists.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of the novel The Dream of Doctor Bantam and the collection The Black Emerald, both shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award. She is the editor, with Tara Madison Avery, of We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology, the copublisher of the independent press Instar Books, and the writer and illustrator of the webcomics Bad Mother and The Man Who Hates Fun. Her work has appeared in Wired, n+1, and The Evergreen Review.