These were books that were formative experiences that people stayed up late to read or talk about with their friends in cafes because we didn’t have cellphones or email. This was a suddenly exciting and radical time in literature and people read widely and were delighted to find that there were hybrid works of genre, hybrid works of memoir and fiction and nonfiction, that we were beginning to see things like science fiction and graphics creep into mainstream fiction, and also that polemic and politics were finally invading the space that was held by a very small group of people. Radical queer stories were being told for the first time! Independent publishing prospered — at the margins, for a while, at least! The idea of multiple voices, either as literary conceit or as model for society, finally entered the mainstream and the marketplace. — Choire Sicha