Dead Boys in Space
by Sara Youngblood Gregory
Winner of the 2023 Pamet River Prize from YesYes Books.
The question is not why my brother had to die. The question is how do I save him?
Exploring the AIDS crisis, space colonization, and earth-bound lesbianism, DEAD BOYS IN SPACE uses poetry, speculative fiction, sci-fi, and crip queer politics to ask: what if a generation of gay men didn't die of AIDS? What if their exile was actually escape? And what happened to the family they left behind?
Told from the perspective of a sister mourning her brother-one she never knew-Sara Youngblood Gregory's startling debut, DEAD BOYS IN SPACE, is a testament to anger and love, sex and sickness, grief and family.
In DEAD BOYS IN SPACE, Sara Youngblood Gregory deftly grapples with queer and feminist histories refracting them through personal experience and poetic experiments. It is a marvel to behold.
-Julie R. Enszer, author of Pinko Commie Dyke
Book Details
- ISBN:
- 9781946303134
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Pages:
- 100
- Authors:
- Sara Youngblood Gregory
- Publisher:
- YesYes Books
- Published Date:
- 2026-05-19
- Language:
- English
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The cover and concept of Dead Boys in Space drew me into this wonderful new speculative collection of poems by Sara Youngblood Gregory. The book imagines a world in which we didn't lose a generation of gay men to AIDS... but to a secret colony on the moon. Dead Boys in Space revisits the epidemic in the late twentieth century through the perspective of a sister mourning the loss of a brother she never knew. That moment in time rhymes with our own political landscape, as well as interest in moon-exploration following Artemis II. Highly researched, the collection weaves eulogies, interviews, memoirs, statistics and interviews into the fabric of poems that revive and provide a new take on the past. It's an engaging read, a moving tribute.
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Dead Boys in Space