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

by James Crews (Editor), Brad Peacock (Editor), Lisa Congdon (Illustrator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635868951
Publisher:	Storey Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

James Crews is the editor of numerous anthologies, including New England Book Award winner 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 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, and lives with his husband in the woods of southern Vermont.

Brad Peacock is a veteran, writer, 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 to 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


 

Editorial Reviews

I wish my queer younger self could’ve read this chorus of light, could’ve held these words as mirrors of my own possibility. Instead, I will share this anthology of belonging with queer and trans young ones I call family, and cry tears of hope that glisten like stars they can anchor their hearts to. Within these pages we are safe. We are held. We are loved. 

—Kai Coggin, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust

Heartful poems you hold in your hands.—Richard Blanco, fifth inaugural poet of the United States

Love for All of Us is a beautiful book. More than an anthology, it is a lyrical argument for beauty, acceptance, courage and tolerance.—Michael Simms, editor of Vox Populi and author of Jubal Rising

From the Publisher