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Books / Publications

Want to read books or zines by our staff, volunteers, writers or partners? You'll find a list of them here and a way to buy some of them from independent booksellers. You can also always check with your local library to access them for free!

Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood

  • Gretchen Sisson

A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.

Mimosa

  • Archie Bongiovanni

A graphic novel that explores queerness in a frank and funny way.

Sex Ed for the Stroller Set: How to Have Honest Conversations with Young Children

  • Karen Rayne
  • Laura Hancock

A book that gives parents practical tools to proactively teach young children about sexuality and the confidence to use these tools.

Heavy Metal Headbang

  • Melissa Meszaros

A defiant memoir like no other, confronting our celebrity-obsessed culture as well as the social challenges that come with recovering from a life-changing injury.

History Comics: The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights

  • Archie Bongiovanni
  • A. Andrews

In this graphic novel, experience the Stonewall Riots firsthand and meet iconic activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

Pussypedia: A Comprehensive Guide (with a foreword by Heather Corinna)

  • María Conejo
  • Zoe Mendelson

Written by the creators of the popular website, this rigorously fact-checked, accessible, and fully illustrated guide is essential for anyone with a pussy.

The Young Autistic Adult's Independence Handbook

  • Haley Moss

This survival guide is bursting with neurodivergent-friendly advice from autistic people themselves (and a few neurotypicals too) for young adults embarking on their own journeys of self-discovery and independence

Can We Talk about Consent?: A Book about Freedom, Choices, and Agreement

  • Justin Hancock

This book breaks down the basics of how to give and get consent in every aspect of life for readers aged 14 years and older.

#Churchtoo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing

  • Emily Joy Allison-Hearn

While patriarchy and misogyny are problems everywhere, they take on a particularly pernicious form in Christian churches where those with power have been insisting, since many decades before #MeToo, that this sexually dysfunctional environment is, in fact, exactly how God wants it to be.

What Fresh Hell Is This

  • Heather Corinna

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to menopause, Heather Corinna tells you what can happen and what you can do to take care of yourself, all the while busting pernicious myths, offering real self-care tips and running the gamut from hot flashes to hormone therapy.

Metis: Mixed Blood Stories

  • Lynn Ponton

Four generations of Métis adolescents come of age during their sixteenth year. Together their voices tell the story of one family and of a people.

A Quick & Easy Guide to Consent

  • Isabella Rotman
  • Luke Howard

A quick, easy and important educational illustrated guide to giving and receiving consent in sex, relationships, and other physical contact.

Fat (Object Lessons)

  • Hanne Blank

In Hanne Blank's Fat we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, “feeling fat” and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings.

Yes I'm Flagging: Queer Flagging 101: How to Use the Hanky Code

  • Archie Bongiovanni

Queer Flagging 101 is an introduction to what flagging is and how you can use it, plus a few resources for where you can explore the topic in a little more depth!

Rust Belt Femme

  • Raechel Anne Jolie

Fearlessly honest, wry, and tender, Jolie digs into both the pain of past traumas and the joy of teenaged discovery to craft a love letter to the brassy, big-haired women who raised her and the 90s alternative, riot grrrl culture that shaped her into who she is today: a queer femme with PTSD and a deep love of the Midwest.

Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World

  • Jaclyn Friedman
  • Jessica Valenti

What would happen if we believed women? This groundbreaking anthology offers a potent rallying cry and theory of change.

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

  • Mona Eltahawy

A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they've been trained to avoid.

Wait, What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up

  • Heather Corinna
  • Isabella Rotman
  • Luke Howard

From Heather Corinna, founder and director of Scarleteen.com, and Isabella Rotman, cartoonist and sex educator, a graphic novel guide that covers essential topics for preteens and young teens about their changing bodies and feelings. 

Friends Malia, Rico, Max, Sam and Alexis talk about all the weird...

f_ck me cover

Well, F*ck Me! It’s a Scarleteen Zine!

  • Al Washburn
  • Archie Bongiovanni

Say hello to our new zine, F*ck Me!, which, like everything else at Scarleteen, is free for anyone and everyone who wants it.

F*ck Me! is a flight of super-helpful fancy that can help you -- or your intimate companions, your platonic friends, your students, the people who come into your clinic, your...

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape

  • Jaclyn Friedman
  • Jessica Valenti
  • Heather Corinna
  • Thomas MacAulay Millar

This groundbreaking feminist classic dismantles the way we view rape in our culture and replaces it with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure.

Trans+: Love, Sex and Romance

  • Karen Rayne
  • Kathryn Gonzales

An all-inclusive, uncensored, must-have guide for teens who are living in this world, who identify as transgender, nonbinary, gender non-conforming, gender fluid, or are questioning their gender identity or how they express themselves, and for their cis-allies and advocates.

Good Sexual Citizenship: How to Create a (Sexually) Safer World

  • Ellen Friedrichs

This book is written for anyone—but especially educators, parents, fellow students, coworkers, and employers—who have helplessly looked around in the midst of some type of sexual injustice wondering, “What can I do?”

Grease Bats

  • Archie Bongiovanni

A comic that follows the daily adventures of two best friends — Andy, a trans genderqueer individual who is both tough and loving, and their BFF Scout, an all-feelings-all-the-time mistake-maker — as they navigate friendships, roommates, and romances within their community.

A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns

  • Archie Bongiovanni
  • Tristan Jimerson

A quick, easy and important educational comic guide to using gender-neutral pronouns.

Enjoy Sex: (How, When and If You Want To): A Practical and Inclusive Guide

  • Justin Hancock
  • Meg-John Barker

A truly practical, friendly guide through the confusing, and sometimes alarming, world of sex and sexuality.

Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All

  • Jaclyn Friedman

An urgent account of sexual politics, feminism, and the rules of power in America-and a potent vision for the way forward.

Girl: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You

  • Karen Rayne

A guide for teen girls covering healthy sexuality, loving relationships, gender fluidity, sexually transmitted infections (STI), consent, sexual assault, and more.

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

  • Mona Eltahawy

Eltahawy has traveled across the Middle East and North Africa, meeting with women and listening to their stories. Her book is a plea for outrage and action on their behalf, confronting a "toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend."

S.E.X

All About S.E.X.: The Scarleteen Book!

  • Heather Corinna

Considered by many to be *the* sex and relationships book for young people, this Lambda Literary Award nominee currently in its 2nd edition covers everything from STIs to sexual orientation⁠, body image⁠ to birth control, masturbation⁠ to media to misogyny, the anatomy⁠ of the clitoris⁠ to considering cohabitation.

Breaking the Hush Factor: Ten Rules for Talking with Teenagers about Sex (with a foreword by Heather Corinna)

  • Karen Rayne

A quick and approachable read, this book gives parents ten rules to help guide their talks with the youth in their life.

A Freshman Survival Guide for College Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Stuff Nobody Tells You About!

  • Haley Moss

Chatty, honest and full of really useful information, Haley's first-hand account of the college experience covers everything students with Autism Spectrum Disorders need to know.

Momstrology: The Astrotwins' Guide to Parenting Your Little One by the Stars

  • Ophira Edut
  • Tali Edut

Momstrology is the complete guide to understanding how both you and your little one are guided by the stars, and how your charts play a factor in how you relate to each other.

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

  • Hanne Blank

A sweeping social history of heterosexuality from its origins in nineteenth-century Germany to the sex-scandal headlines of today.

The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts

  • Hanne Blank

This empowering exercise guide is big on attitude, giving plus-size women the motivation and information they need to move their bodies and improve their health.

What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety

  • Jaclyn Friedman

The co-editor of Yes Means Yes gives young women the tools to decipher the modern world’s confusing, hypersexualized, sometimes dangerous landscape so they can define their own sexual identity.

Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them) (Revised)

  • Hanne Blank

A one-stop-shopping handbook on relationships, sexuality, and big sexy confidence for people of all genders, sizes, and sexual orientations who know that a fantastic love life doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the number on the bathroom scale

Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body (with Kate Harding)

  • Marianne Kirby

From the leading bloggers in the fat-acceptance movement comes an empowering guide to body image- no matter what the scales say.

The Astrotwins' Love Zodiac: The Essential Astrology Guide for Women

  • Ophira Edut
  • Tali Edut

A guide to using astrology to navigate romantic relationships.

The Boss of You: Everything a Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business

  • Emira Mears
  • Lauren Bacon

A book that provides readers with real advice and career options that will allow them to live their values and achieve their own version of work-life balance.

Virgin: The Untouched History

  • Hanne Blank

In this fascinating work, Hanne Blank shows why everything we think we know about virginity is wrong.

Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image

  • Ophira Edut

A collection of stories by those who have chosen to ignore, subvert, or redefine the dominant beauty standard in order to feel at home in their bodies.

The Romance of Risk: Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do

  • Lynn Ponton

Dr. Lynn Ponton's book takes readers inside the minds of 15 troubled adolescents to provide a compelling look at today's teenage experience.