The 25th anniversary edition of Michelle Tea’s classic coming-of-age story, now with a foreword by Maggie Nelson, award-winning author of The Argonauts.

Fleeing Tucson and her troublesome on-and-off ex-girlfriend, Michelle lands in queer San Francisco’s riotous underbelly, stumbling through her early twenties in a haze of nightlife, drug adventures, scams and a string of hookups, break-ups and make-ups. As butches and dykes spin in and out of her orbit, she considers the force and casual cruelty of their desires and her own. Heady, beer-sticky and brimming with life, Valencia is a sharply observed and piercingly funny chronicle of a year lived close to the bone.

‘Hilarious, euphoric, perspicacious and punk – the book that showed so many of us how writing can be real’ – Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar

‘One of the few truly life changing books I’ve encountered’ – Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, Baby