Sapphic Romance 101 with Sarah In Wanderland

Are you ready to expand your reading horizons and discover the transformative power of sapphic literature? Join host Alesia and special guest Sarah in Wanderland as they unravel the complexities of lesbophobia, celebrate queer representation, and explore the transformative power of diverse love stories. 

Sarah has dedicated their platform and voice to dismantling the shame and guilt that can often be associated with reading romance, and to promoting queer romance. After deconstructing from religious purity culture several years ago, they have been on a mission to take the taboo out of finding pleasure in self-exploration and kink, and to find the power that comes from freedom of expression and fulfilled desire.

In this episode, we're discussing:

• Understanding Lesbophobia: Learn how lesbophobia intersects with homophobia and misogyny, and why inclusive language matters
• Diverse Representation Matters: Discover why reading sapphic romances from authors of various backgrounds is crucial
• Must-Read Authors: Explore recommendations from Kaylin Baron, Jazz Hammonds, Heather Nicks, and more
• Reading Challenge: Join Sarah's 2025 Sapphic Reading Challenge and expand your literary world
• Therapeutic Power of Reading: Understand how queer literature can be a healing and transformative experience

Challenge yourself to read at least one sapphic romance book this month. Every book you read is an opportunity to understand, empathize, and celebrate the beautiful diversity of human love and experience.

CONNECT WITH SARAH:

Website

Instagram

Patreon

BOOKS/AUTHORS MENTIONED: 

The Lesbrary

I Heart Sapphic

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron (Amazon)

We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds (Amazon)

Thirsty by Jas Hammonds (Amazon)

Seventh Star Series by Lily X (Amazon)

Heather Nix (Amazon)

Tamara Jerée (Amazon)

The Curse of the Goddess by C.C. González (Amazon)

Down South Bayou by Aricka Alexander (Amazon)

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner (Amazon)

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashely Herring Blake (Amazon)

Sapphic Reading Challenge (StoryGraph)

The Tenth Muse Anthology (Amazon)

Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

Thank you for listening to the We Read Smut Podcast! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag @WeReadSmut. Don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast.

Connect with Alesia:
Storygraph

This podcast was produced by Galati Media.
Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Personal Connections
• 4:32 Understanding Lesbophobia and Its Impact
• 9:08 Lesbophobia in the Romance Community
• 14:51 Challenging Heteronormative Reading Habits
• 20:39 Steps to Unlearn Lesbophobic Attitudes
• 24:47 Exploring Different Types of Sapphic Romances
• 32:28 Must-Read Sapphic Romance Authors
• 35:57 2025 Sapphic Reading Challenge
• 38:53 Sarah's Patreon and Therapeutic Resources
• 42:10 How to Connect with Sarah

Transcript

Alesia Galati: 0:00

Get ready for a conversation that will open your heart and challenge your assumptions. We're joined by Sarah in Wonderland to discuss the beauty of sapphic love and the importance of fighting for inclusivity in the romance space. Listener discretion is advised this podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only. Sarah, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. I remember when I didn't even know how I first found your account or what, but I remember seeing you all over the interwebs, and then we went to a bookish event, which we will not name, because they are not good anymore, but we went to one before we knew what their values were, and I was like, You're Sarah, you're also a lot taller.

Sarah In Wanderland: 0:59

I didn't realize I gave off short person energy. No,

Alesia Galati: 1:03

I so I for people to understand I'm five, five, and so I always just assume people are around my height. That's just me. Yeah, I was just like, Oh, hi, hello, Sarah. Nice to meet you. And you were just like, hi. I don't know who in the world you are. And I was just like, yeah, Sarah, sorry. I was super awkward. I'm part of we read smut. And you were like, okay, yeah, I've seen some of your stuff. So that's how we met, and then we just stayed connected from there and chatting the DMS. But we're going to be talking today about something that is near and dear to your heart and also really important to my heart. And before we get into it, I want people who might feel triggered or activated by some of these things that we're talking about sit with it. We're going to get through it together. It's okay. Sarah's a therapist, so Sarah's gonna help us through all of this. It's not gonna be difficult. It might feel a little difficult in the moment, a little sticky, but we're gonna get through to the other side before we get into it. Tell me a bit about your adult reading journey. So

Sarah In Wanderland: 2:19

I was that kid whose mom was like, reaching up to the top shelf to get books at the library. Because I started reading adult science fiction when I was like 10, Isaac, Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and I stayed in the science fiction paranormal I liked. I don't think I've ever read a my age books as a teenager, I now read YA, but I I've been reading adult paranormal romance since I was like 13 or 14, and never wanted to read school, assigned work, but I always wanted to disappear into paranormal science fiction worlds. And then in my probably late 20s, I found that the spicy contemporary books that I was reading there were spicy paranormal and spicy fantasy and science fiction, and so that was very exciting. So I've been reading I'm 40, so I've been reading for 30 plus years like I was reading children's books in elementary school, but always adult, and then I added ya into my reading as an adult, probably about six years ago.

Alesia Galati: 3:34

Nice, before we hit record, I was talking about how I don't really tend to read YA, but I think I might need to dabble a bit. I want to say the last YA book, and this was not a queer one at all. Was that I read was probably something like Twilight or Hunger Games, like the very predominant ones, and I was like 19. That was the last time that I read some of those. But there are so many good ones, especially from authors that I already know and love that have adult, romance, contemporary stuff, that I could easily see myself enjoying their stories as well. I'm thinking I know Rebecca Weatherspoon has one, and Galati hibert, yep, has one, and so something like that, where it's I already know I like this author. It's so dabbling in that might be a good idea, an option for me. I

Sarah In Wanderland: 4:32

also think in terms of ya, especially queer ya, there's so much healing that can be done for queer adults.

Alesia Galati: 4:43

So I love it, yes, and that's what I love about all of this, is that reading is not just. And obviously we talk about romance a lot here, but reading, it is such a therapeutic way to process some things to real. Things, find our values, find what's important to us, especially if we didn't have anyone to raise us up, to show us what our values are, or instill good values in us, then it can be really difficult as adults, trying to figure out, What in the world am I doing? And I know even as a parent, I'm constantly like, Am I doing any of this right at all? Hopefully I'm still one of our I hope so. But topic at hand today is going to be talking about the power of sapphic romance, really getting into why it is important that we are reading sapphic romances, and so we're going to jump right into the sticky bits. What is lesbophobia And how does it manifest in the romance community? So

Sarah In Wanderland: 5:51

lesbophobia is generally understood as the intersection of homophobia and misogyny, and like we know about all oppression, it exists on an axis. So lesbophobia, I think it's very important to understand that lesbophobia is not exclusive to women who only experience attraction towards other women. If you look at the words functionality and how the behaviors the word describes are often manifested, there's value in considering the impact of other femme loving femmes, which includes bisexuals, pansexuals, transgender women. But ultimately, if you think about this idea that men fear what they can't have, and that's a very generalized idea, but lesbophobia, if you think of lesbophobia as a man acting out violence towards a woman because she doesn't want him, there's an ownership there, and ultimately, our discussions in acknowledging the Violence Against non heterosexual women should always be inclusive. So thinking about that concept of lesbophobia being like, I'm afraid you're a lesbian and I cannot possess you, that can be said of a bisexual woman. Again, we know there's no actual ownership in that. But the Violence Against non heterosexual women should always be inclusive, and I don't think an expansion on our understanding of lesbophobia would automatically discount or trivialize the experiences that lesbians as individuals experience. Nor am I suggesting that bisexuals and gay individuals have identical struggles. I'm not even saying the use of the word lesbophobia. Using the word lesbophobia to explicitly talk about negative attitudes towards lesbians is an incomplete use of the word. A lot of people have used homophobic misogyny to talk about it. But what it boils down to is that there's a lot of people who feel erased when people use the word lesbophobia. Bisexuals feel erased. Pansexuals feel erased because bisexual women and pansexual women are often overlooked in the LGBTQ spaces and targeted outside of that space. So isolation from the discussion of homophobic oppression doesn't help if we think about lesbophobia as the intersection of homophobia and misogyny, as opposed to the dislike or disgust of lesbians, it becomes an inclusive term, and I think that's often what's missing, the nuance and the understanding that comes from, like, the history of the experience of women and femme attraction towards other women and femmes. So going back to that, like, men acting out hatred towards lesbians or women who are sexually available to them is disgusting. You're using

Alesia Galati: 9:09

bunny ears here for people who can't see you, right? Yeah, quote,

Sarah In Wanderland: 9:12

quote. It's disgustingly misogynistic across the board, but it's definitely like further proof that we do need to revamp how we talk about homophobic misogyny, because we need to ensure that bisexual and pansexual individuals feel included in lesbo phobia. I have so many big feelings about this, because there are so many fights in online communities, and so many people feel left out when the term lesbophobia is used, that they forget that all oppression exists on an access and so trying to understand what that access is and how we bisexuals, how lesbians, how transgender women who. To experience a multitude of types of attraction, how pansexuals, how we all fit in that axis. And so I think taking away that fear of and boiling it down to homophobia and misogyny is a better way to understand it that is really long. No, I

Alesia Galati: 10:18

love it because I think that it explains it. And someone who is bisexual, I get it that's not even going into this whole like, there's the hyper sexualization of bisexual women that, oh, if a man is married to a bisexual then he needs to be worried about her cheating on him with everyone and, like, no, that's that is not how that works at all. That the how a healthy relationship works. And so I agree. I think that seeing it in that light as more of an intersection between misogyny and homophobia makes a lot of sense, and also is more inclusive in making sure that we're incorporating all of that now. How does that show up in the romance readers and author space?

Sarah In Wanderland: 11:08

This is a high horse, a soapbox that I like to get on. We see a lot of representation of I hesitate to even call them achillian romances, because there's a very specific subset of cis women, cis white women, really writing men, loving men romances, which typically is, if that's all they're writing, it it becomes a fetishization. And so we see all of these women running to this genre of romance and claiming that they read inclusively, and claiming that they read queer while not reading any other identities within the spectrum of the queer community. So I see lesbophobia showing up in comments like, I just don't relate to that, because I'm straight and I'm attracted to men, and so I can read that, but you can read about like a Minotaur and a human woman. You're not attracted to Minotaurs. Also, they don't exist. But you can read that, but you can't read a sapphic romance. I've even heard I am not into that, and they won't read stories that have secondary or tertiary characters with sapphic identities. And then I also see it, like I said, in comment sections, when I call out lesbophobia, I see a lot of bisexual women coming into the comment section with a misunderstanding of what lesbophobia is, and then I experience lesbophobia from them. And so that's why i I want to emphasize the importance of understanding that bisexuals. When I say bisexual, I also mean pansexual, but it's very like a very long history of bisexuals being erased from the sapphic community. Bisexuals women tend to accidentally engage in either microaggressions or outright lesbophobia when they're trying to say, hey, what about me? And I want to provide education, but I also am a human and again, I go back to this is where the nuance is lost, and so it's hard again. Not all this is a reminder. Not all bisexual wound do this, but it is happened to me, I would say dozens of times when I've called out something that's been lesbophobic threads, is the platform that I do that most on, and so I see it showing up in those two ways, in women and femmes. I'm just gonna say women, cis women refusing to read sapphic romance because it's not their identity. And then I see it in some individuals who identify as bisexual, interest and misunderstanding. And I will also say, Are you reading romance to masturbate, or are you reading romance for a love story, because we experience love the same way that the straights do. We just have different body parts than you do, or we have different gender identities and expressions than you do, or we have different communities and different like social rituals than maybe the straight people do. But if you're solely reading romance simply to get aroused and then masturbate, sure, okay, I could buy it. But I don't think that's the sole reason that you're reading romance,

Alesia Galati: 14:51

yeah, especially if you're reading some of the popular fantasy books, romanticy books, right? Like with two pages. Pages of sexy time, and then the rest is all storytelling. 100,

Sarah In Wanderland: 15:05

yeah, pages

Alesia Galati: 15:08

of war. So I don't read those. I don't need that. But it's true. I mean, you mentioned Achillion. What do Would you consider a Killian? Because I know I've seen that word tossed around. I've not personally looked it up to see what it means. I have maybe a very basic understanding. I'm guessing it's like the war of Troy kind of thing, yeah, but what is the basis of that? Oh,

Sarah In Wanderland: 15:35

gosh, you know what? I had a whole post about it, and now I can't off the top of my head. Remember, I did it during pride month last year. Okay, here we go. Okay. Achillian romance. The term stems from the Greek hero Achilles. Achilles is said to have a romantic relationship with petroclus, Patroclus, I don't want to say that, and it is quoted in Homer's Iliad, the man I loved beyond all others. And so like Sappho, who was a bisexual, not a lesbian, to a lot of people's misunderstanding, we derive women, loving women, femmes, loving femmes. And so that's where the term Achill, which is newer, is derived from, is petroquis and Achilles, but it encompasses men and mask. Loving men and masks. And the reason why I wouldn't, in a literal sense, those books that I talked about are achillian books, but I hesitate to put a book or an author into a category that listening to gay men listening to queer masks say that this is harmful. And I'm not saying that every single cis woman or every single femme who writes men loving men books is fetishizing them, because I could give you a dozen examples of women or femmes who have written books that are not but gay men get excluded from this conversation so often because we live the Internet is a microcosm. And so we see this statistic of queer and trans people exacerbated because they are identified as 1% of the world. And so the what if? What if they're exploring their identity? And I have an author friend who I've met and gotten to know, who realized that she was trans while writing, and I think that's incredible, but to say that every single woman who is writing a man, loving man story is going to realize that they're trans, just mathematically and statistically doesn't add up. And the content, it's always something very taboo, Step Brothers, Father, Son, uncle, son, and it's very just not rooted in something that is realistic. So listening to those men, just like I want people to listen to me when I talk about lesbophobia and I talk about sapphic romance, these men and masks want to be listened to as well.

Alesia Galati: 18:10

Yeah, is there anyone in particular, maybe top of mind that you could think of that has these conversations? Because I know for myself I have a really hard time reading mm books, not because I don't enjoy them, but because of this. Of is it just a white woman who's a cis heterosexual woman who is just behind her keyboard, typing away and fetishizing these men, and I want to make sure that I'm not promoting or talking about those books. And so I do tend to, when I am promoting books, I tend to go with trans and queer authors who are writing it, and so that's my default. But is there anyone that you know of that's like top of mind, that is someone good to follow for ethical recommendations?

Sarah In Wanderland: 18:59

No, because I only read and it's just a personal choice. I rarely read M, M books written by women, so I don't but I could ask a couple of Oh, Rob, what's his name? Rod? That's not true. I follow him. His name is Rod, and his handle is Rod. Lujano, l, u, j, A, N, O, and he has wonderful recommendations. And there's another guy, I can't remember what his handle is right now. I can picture his face. No

Alesia Galati: 19:33

worries. No one is fine. Thank you so much. Yeah, because that's something that like I when I'm reading, mm, I try to make sure that the author is either a man or trans, usually trans masculine, or someone in the queer community who writes, maybe a variety of different pairings. And so I know they're not using as a fetish, fetishization. There's a word and some. Making sure that I I'm not participating in any of that, because I've seen the accounts from men who read a lot of mm romance and are like, this is not okay. And so I think that it's important that one will I want to have an episode on this. We're not going to talk about all of that today, but I think that it is an important aspect that we're talking about it now. What are some things that we can do to challenge these lesbophobic attitudes within ourselves first? Right? We're not talking about getting on the internet and bashing people. That might be something you want to do eventually, once you work on yourself first, but when working on ourselves, what are some things that we can do, some behaviors that we could shift?

Sarah In Wanderland: 20:41

So this is the work. So we exist in a society that's curated by heteronormativity, catering to hetero and hetero, presenting relationships so similar to the inherent biases embedded in news and media and literature regarding white supremacy, we see these commonalities with heteronormativity. So it starts the same way that anti racist work starts with reading memoirs and educational texts and exposure to lived experiences outside of our own, and learning the real history of the 2s LGBTQ plus community. So I highly recommend starting with like icons and pioneers in the field. Audra Lord, who is a towering figure in the LGBTQ feminist movement. She's a poet and an essayist, Roxanne Gay, who is currently like a current activist, feminist writer, cultural critic and professor. It's also important to remember the pioneers in our community who aren't necessarily authors, but people like Barbara Smith, who was a pioneer of intersectional feminism and LGBTQ plus advocacy, so finding books and remembering the importance of listening to intersectional voices, because combating lesbophobia starts with understanding that the 2s LGBTQ movement was pioneered by trans women of color, and so understanding our community's history and then going into very specific like, clearly, my foundation is black women and femmes in The community, I honestly can't even think of a white woman off the top of my head who is an icon in our community, besides, like some musicians, like brandy Carlisle, like Melissa Etheridge, the Indigo Girls, I can think of musicians, but the work starts by educating yourself. And as you do that, you start to recognize and I just I'm equating it to because I didn't have to do as much work here as I did with my anti racism journey. And so as you're starting to do that learning, you're recognizing what you need to unlearn and how those inherent biases show up. And once you recognize how curated and how much the world is catered to heteronormative people, you'll start to be like because you're automatically assuming the gender identity of someone. You're automatically assuming it's a she or it's a he, or that a couple is a man and a woman that even ideas of like, Oh, my spouse stays home. Oh, she does does she or does he or do they?

Alesia Galati: 23:24

Yeah, I have a spouse who stays home, and he loves being a stay at home dad and homeschooling our kids, and you would not catch me doing that at all, because I'm not interested in it, and I get no fulfillment from it, but he does, even that conversation being a mom has been pretty wild with trying to explain to people that I don't want to be a stay at home parent. Oh, you might change your mind. Nope, no, thank you. I love my kids. I also need space from them, and I need to be able to go to a job. Thank you very much. And then people see him, they're like, Oh, he's such a good dad and so much praise for him. And I'm like, yes, he's It's well deserved. And that's other stay at home mom next door deserves just as much praise, right? Being a parent is hard enough without all this stereotypical stuff added to it all right. So now that we have gone through the sticky bits, let's have some fun. And I want to go through what are some different types of sapphic romances that people can start to explore. And I'm sure you're going to say, if you like contemporary, you can find stuff in contemporary. If you like fantasy, you can find ones in fantasy. But what are some kind of things that we can do in finding these different types of sapphic romances?

Sarah In Wanderland: 24:48

So first of all, I think it's really interesting, because people are looking for tropes, maybe when they're looking for books, and so some of the tropes are labeled differently in sapphic romance. So if you're looking. For a grumpy sunshine, you're looking for an ice queen. That's what it's called in sapphic romance. And so there are some specific besides my own page, and I have hundreds and hundreds of sapphic recommendations on my Instagram, Sarah and Wonderland, the lesbary is one really great website, and I heart sapphic is another really great website. And on I Heart sapphic, you can put in a trope or a sub genre of romance. There's a ton of options, of things that you can put in, and then I'll give you all the suggestions that they have in their database. There's also Facebook groups, and so these are the places that when I'm looking for a specific like I just really want to read a dark sapphic romance right now I am in a dark sapphic romance Facebook group, and so I'll go there, and I'll scroll through to find the recommendations. It is much harder to find sapphic recommendations, because sapphic books are the least read, they are the least promoted, they are the least reviewed, they are the least marketed by PR companies, and that I have big feelings on, because sapphic books make way less money than hetero presenting MF books, then MF books, and then mm books, and then we have FFM in here. So that's so understanding that I wish some of the PR companies that are the indie PR companies would offer discounted rates to sapphic authors, because their books deserve just as much air time as everybody else is. But people are so disinclined to read sapphic books, they exist anything that you can think actually, recently, somebody asked me for a sapphic rugby romance, and I said, I actually don't have one, but I know there's one coming out by JS Jasper, but somebody on threads was like, I need this vibe in a sapphic romance. And I was like, Oh, I've got that. Just give me two seconds. It was like an ice skating I was like, Nicole pyland has an ice skating sapphic romance. So if you want it, it likely exists, but you have to hunt for it.

Alesia Galati: 27:19

Yeah, and that's where I think a lot of us readers tend to fall short, is that we are either not following the creators who are curating, quite frankly, because we're curating a lot of this content, or they're not interested in trying to find or like research or do the work. And I think that once we've done that initial work that we talked about at the beginning, then it's easier to say, oh, I want a book with this kind of vibe. Let me pause and think about that before I jump to my MF, normative relationship. Let me see if there's a sapphic one, or let me see if there's something else or something queer that I can read that still has the vibe that I'm looking for, and that's I think, once we step back and realize that it opens up a world of options to us, and stories that I think are really impactful. I mean, most of the books that I read in the last year are almost exclusively bipoc authors. I think my percentage so it wasn't exclusively, but my percentage was like 75 or something like that last year, and then 80% of that was black authors, because I realized that I hadn't been reading as many black authors as I had wanted to. So there goes the pendulum of over correcting and then trying to find that kind of middle All right, let's add in some Latinx authors. Let's add in some Asian authors. Let's add in a bit more variety here. But once I started reading those, I did not miss the popular books. I did not miss the books that everybody else was talking about, and I was having a blast reading the books that I wanted to read. Absolutely it's so worth it. And I think that if we are following people, it'll help a lot. Now, what are some of those? And we both have some fun ideas here, but what are some of those must read sapphic romance authors that you're like, everybody needs to read them.

Sarah In Wanderland: 29:28

Okay? I'm gonna start with my yas. I actually just sent home this poison heart and this wicked fate with my niece, which is a sapphic duology by Kaylin Baron. Cinderella, is dead. There's a Sleeping Beauty one. She has a new one coming out, and all of her books are sapphic, and all of her books are gonna give you, oh, you're not supposed to die at the end, or I'm not supposed to die at the end. That one's a sapphic ya. Horror, the thing I love the most about reading sapphic ya and you. You will rarely find me reading white saphi A is that this author's job is not to teach me anything. This author's sole job is to write whatever story is in their head. And yet, I learned so much about somebody else's lived experience, like I was reading this one during this election, and I had to stop because I had so much anxiety, because it's about women getting their power taken away from them, and then jazz Hammonds also. So we deserve monuments and thirsty. This is jazz Hammonds debut. We deserve monuments and thirsty, the level of anxiety, because this one is messy lesbians, both ya also, and this one has an underlying story about racism in the Deep South, and as somebody who lives in the south and sees that in my community, and the intersection that our FMC experiences, both homophobia and racism, the and that misogynoir is really impactful and powerful. And I always find that I walk away from reading these YA books just like being a better advocate and knowing how to better support the community in which I am attempting to be an ally towards. And so those are two I think go to ya sapph authors, and then I don't have the lily X book. She writes sapphic Omega verse. And her North Star Series, I think, has eight books in it, but she has, she has a solid back list, and we love a sapphic Omega verse. A sapphic Omega verse is something that you did not know, that you needed. And then across multiple genres, Heather Nicks. Heather writes dark romance. Heather writes monster romance. Heather writes like sweeping, epic, sapphic fantasies. And Heather writes lacy books. And then, in terms of fantasy, I would be remiss if I did not mention my favorite fantasy from 2024 the fall that saved us by Tamara Gerais. They also have a wolf steps in blood, which came out last year. And they have, this is a duology, and they have a book coming out later this year, and lastly, but definitely not least, and really not lastly, but this is all I'm going to do. The Curse of the Goddess is book one from CC Gonzales. This was my top fantasy from last year. I dream of Valda and Maris. The dream of them.

Alesia Galati: 32:29

I love that. Now those are some good recommendations, and I don't think I've read any of those, so now I have some to add to my TBR for sure. And then I've got some recommendations as well from my bookshelves, I would say some of these are on my TBR. Let's go ahead and do the ones that I've read, first down south Bayou by Erica Alexander. The second book just came out. This one is spicy and sweet and don't mess with my girl. I just love it so much. And then I like Meryl wills nurse books. This one is an age gap best friend's mom, which is good. And then I know they have another one that is a soccer romance as well. They

Sarah In Wanderland: 33:21

have one coming out in a cup. I think it might be in March, my best friend's honeymoon, or something like that. All right.

Alesia Galati: 33:30

I'm down for it. I love it. Delilah green doesn't care. By Ashley herring Blake loves this one, and the series is good, but that I believe this one's a by awakening, if I'm remembering correctly, single mom, yep, so good, and just that, like opposites attract. And then the other one that I read that was not on my TBR back to me by Katie Duggan. And this one, it has the diabetes, fat and ADHD rep. And I just, I love everything about this one, and it's got the spicy bits too. And, yeah, it's just such a fantastic one. And then one's on my TBR out drawn by Deanna Gray. I know you've read that one, right?

Sarah In Wanderland: 34:19

Yes. And I got the special edition book box from Rainbow crate so I could have it

Alesia Galati: 34:24

nice. I love that. And then I've got stars like wings by Chelsea Jay Leone. This one is a duet. And so I'm someone that kind of has to wait for the whole series, oh yeah, because

Sarah In Wanderland: 34:37

this definitely ends on a WHAT THE FUCK moment. Yeah,

Alesia Galati: 34:41

so I want to wait to read this one. And this one is, this is a thick girl. I this one, so this one's a big one, so I'm gonna wait for the second one. And then finally, the love and sports ball by Mika James, and this one's on my TBR as well. But. But yeah, I am. I love reading sapphic romance. I love reading making sure that I'm reading diversely across the board, that it's all different types of folks that are sapphic. And so I think that it is such a missed opportunity for anyone who is not reading it, there is something for everyone. Like you said you were looking for something that was dark. There's something for sure. All right, we mentioned some places to make sure that we're looking and trying to find some sapphic romances. If we're not sure where to begin, you are also doing a challenge for 2025 and if you're listening to this later, just go back to the Instagram highlights, or you might be running it again next year. But go check that out. It is a sapphic Reading Challenge. Tell us a bit about what that is and what people can expect from it.

Sarah In Wanderland: 35:58

So the sapphic Reading Challenge is 12 initial prompts. And then I think there's 13 or 15 bonus prompts. I can't remember how many, because I cannot be expected to choose an appropriate number of books to put on a challenge, because I read so much. I think I read 450 books last year, so I thought one book a month is a great start. And then there are bonus prompts. You can find it on story graph. And there's a heavy emphasis on reading intersectionally. So sapphic books by East Asian, South Asian, SWANA, Pacific Islander, indigenous black Latinx authors. And then there's like age gap or poetry or an anthology. And if you're looking for an anthology to read on June 3, my slash hour Anthology for charity, this 10th Muse, a sapphic anthology comes out. It is 12 authors, some of them are writing their first sapphic story, but they are all authors within the LGBTQ plus community. It's a volume one, and the money goes to the national queer and trans therapists of color network. As a therapist myself and as somebody whose values and morals align with making sure that underserved, underrepresented, historically marginalized individuals get access to services. This charity is truly remarkable and life changing for so many people. It connects Qt bipoc individuals with Qt bipoc therapists that have the same identity as them and provides funding for them to get access to services. That

Alesia Galati: 37:40

is awesome. And I love that you're doing this anthology. Because when you first mentioned it to me, I was like, I don't think I have seen a sapphic anthology,

Sarah In Wanderland: 37:52

and I have not either, to be honest, it was born out of, where are they? Like, why do we keep getting anthologies about other things and not sapphic anthologies, and I've seen a few since I announced ours. I've seen others pop up, so I'm excited to they're not charity anthologies, but I'm excited to read those, get my hands on those, and I'm just incredibly excited for ours. I finished all the stories because I'm editing it, and they're all incredible.

Alesia Galati: 38:23

Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah, isn't there like, an mm, one that comes out every quarter? Yeah? For sure. Now you also have a Patreon. I want to make sure that we plug that because you put your heart and soul into the content that you create, and so you now have a Patreon where you give even more in depth content. Can you tell us a bit about what kind of resources we can expect from there, what type of content we can expect? Yeah,

Sarah In Wanderland: 38:54

so one of the things that I'm really passionate about, like I just said, is making sure that individuals have access to services, and I understand how expensive it can be to see a therapist regularly, so one thing that I wanted to be able to provide was access to resources at a wildly discounted price, for $7 a month, I post two or three times A week, and every month we alternate between exploring identity and how trauma might impact that exploration and exploring pleasure and kink and intimacy, and dismantling shame around sex and embracing the joy of intimacy and how trauma impacts all of that. And then there's resources like how to deal with the stuff that comes up as you're maybe reading or as you're unpacking something. And then I also have a book club, so depending on the theme for the month, the book club pick revolves around the theme of the month. So this month we're doing. Church girl, because the theme this month is dismantling, oh my gosh, that's so good, so good. The theme is dismantling shame around pleasure and like diving into that. And the reason why I started the Patreon was because I wrote a book that I'm publishing the next couple of months that is a cognitive behavioral therapy guide to exploring your sexual orientation, gender and identity. And I think now in the current political climate, more than ever, as queer and trans, black, indigenous people of color identities are being diminished and erased by the United States government, we need spaces where we can be our full self and show up with other people who live and love like we do, that's curated by somebody who has the knowledge, the expertise, the skills, the tools to provide support, education. And then there's also a, this is sounds nuts, but it does not. There's a $50 tier which gets you access to a one on one. I say coaching, because ethically, I can't provide services across state lines. So it's coaching, but it's coaching by a licensed clinical social worker. It's coaching by somebody who has an MSW, by somebody who's worked in the field for 15 plus years in mental health and six as a mental health clinician. It's a drastically discounted price, and then there's, like, lots of interactions between myself and the people that I hate the word coaching, because there's a lot of hacks out there, but this is a great way to provide people with affordable services. And so you get sneak peeks of the things on my Instagram, but we really dive much deeper into the conversations on Patreon, and it's a like, there are a lot of essays. I'm a researcher. I'm a social worker by nature, and so I write a lot. And then there's, like, calls to action and prompts, which is very similar to the format of the book. Love

Alesia Galati: 41:57

that, and yay for your book coming out. We'll make sure that we have links for that stuff, all the things that we've mentioned in the books that we've mentioned, for sure, but if someone's like, I definitely want to connect with you. Tell me where to find you. Where can people find you and hang out with you? Yeah.

Sarah In Wanderland: 42:11

So my instagram handle is Sarah in Wonderland. The Patreon, oh my gosh, I think it's called Wonderland reads, which is what my web. You can find it on my website, which is Wonderland, reads.com there is a link to the Patreon there as well as there is a drop down for life saving links on my Patreon to make sure that people know where they can get domestic violence help, like mental health crises. Help, intimate partner violence help. There's a bunch of links to websites that will help you navigate systems in your own state. And there's also a link to the pre order for the 10th Muse on my website. Literally everything is this shirt is on my website. Love it.

Alesia Galati: 42:56

Yes. Go check out the website. Get all the links that you need. And like I said, we'll make sure we have all of those linked on the show notes as well to each of those things. So if you're just on your app or on YouTube, looking at the description, you can see each of those ones listed out. We'll make sure that we have all those available to you. Sarah, thank you so much for being on I appreciate you. Thank you for helping us through these sticky bits, as well as giving us some fantastic options and resources for going forward in this work.

Sarah In Wanderland: 43:30

Thanks. I enjoyed our conversation. You.