Love Is for All of Us Poems of Tenderness and Belonging from the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends

by Crews, James; Peacock, Brad; Congdon, Lisa

• ISBN13: 9781635868951
• ISBN10: 1635868955
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-05-06
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC

Summary

This luminous and open-hearted anthology of poems from the LGBTQIA+ community proves that there is nothing more universal than love. 

Edited by James Crews with his husband, Brad Peacock, and illustrated by Lisa Congdon, these compassionate poems of connection and affirmation are a celebration of all kinds of love—romantic, family, friendship, self-love, and love for nature. The poems are gathered from a diverse group of contemporary writers, both part of and allied with the LGBTQIA+ community, with a special focus on queer, nonbinary, and transgender poets. 

Contributors include Andrea Gibson, Ellen Bass, Nikita Gill, Mark Doty, Audre Lorde, Richard Blanco, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Danez Smith, Joy Ladin, Carl Phillips, Li-Young Lee, and many others. Brief essays called “Stories of Becoming" act as touchstones throughout the book, telling the inspiring and touching stories of LGBTQIA+ people whose experiences may bring hope to others.

Author Biography

James Crews is the editor of numerous anthologies, including The Wonder of Small Things, The Path to Kindness, and How to Love the World, which has over 100,000 copies in print. He and his work have been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and in People magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, and other journals. Crews lives with his husband in the woods of southern Vermont and recently joined the New York Zen Center as a faculty member in the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship Program. He teaches mindfulness and writing throughout the United States.

Brad Peacock is a veteran, former candidate for U.S. Senate, and long-time organic farmer from Shaftsbury, Vermont, whose passion is to bring people closer to one another and the natural world. His poems have been published in several anthologies, and his op-ed pieces have appeared in newspapers across the United States. He lives with his husband on forty rocky acres that they are restoring as a habitat for pollinators and native species.

Table of Contents

Foreword: By Andrea Gibson or Richard Blanco? (TBD)

Intro from the Editors

[Not actual section titles, but the theme for each section:]
Romantic Love
Family and Chosen Family
Friendship
Self Love
Love for the Natural World