Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a queer writer who is passionate about getting good awareness of gender, sexuality, relationships and mental health out there into the world. I create comics, zines, blog posts, and self-help style books to try to reach as wide an audience as possible, bringing together the work of activists, scholars, therapists, and creators - and drawing on a diverse range of knowledge and experiences - in the hope of helping us all understand ourselves and our world better.


I wrote

Sexuality: A Graphic Guide

By Meg-John Barker , Jules Scheele (illustrator),

Book cover of Sexuality: A Graphic Guide

What is my book about?

Sex and sexuality can seem like a house of horrors, full of monsters and potential pitfalls. We often live with…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Let's Talk about It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human

Meg-John Barker Why I love this book

Most of the people I’ve spoken to received terrible sex and relationship education. This is the comic book to rectify that. Buy it for young people so that they have a better experience than you did, and buy it for yourself to make up for what you went through back then.

Let’s Talk About It is an awesome inclusive, accessible graphic book, and beautifully illustrated throughout. Erika and Matthew do a great job of covering the questions young people really want answered, through dialogues between a beautifully drawn cast of characters who are navigating their own way through this complex, confusing territory. 

The guidance given is warm, friendly, realistic, and clear, likely to alleviate much of the fear and shame we all have around these topics.

By Erika Moen , Matthew Nolan ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Let's Talk about It as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Is what I'm feeling normal? Is what my body is doing normal? Am I normal? How do I know what are the right choices to make? How do I know how to behave? How do I fix it when I make a mistake?

Let's talk about it.

Growing up is complicated.

How do you find the answers to all the questions you have about yourself, about your identity, and about your body? Let's Talk About It provides a comprehensive, thoughtful, well-researched graphic novel guide to everything you need to know.

Covering relationships, friendships, gender, sexuality, anatomy, body image, safe sex,…


Book cover of The Courage to Be Me: A Story of Courage, Self-Compassion and Hope After Sexual Abuse

Meg-John Barker Why I love this book

Post #metoo there’s a lot more awareness around sexual abuse and assault, but still few books to help readers to understand why it impacts them the way it does. 

In The Courage to Be Me, cartooning psychologist Nina Burrowes presents what we know from the science of sexual trauma, and tells the stories of a group who support each other around their experiences. 

Having several different stories, all illustrated by different comic artists, emphasises the diverse forms that assault and abuse can take, and the ways in which they hit us all differently. Despite the tough topics covered, this is an uplifting book which helps the reader to see their experiences reflected, and to learn some skills for how to look after themselves around what happened with the kindness they deserve.


By Nina Burrowes , Alexander Bertram-Powell (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Courage to Be Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How do you rebuild your life after sexual abuse? Join a group of women as they share their stories of courage, self-compassion and hope. Find out how meeting each other and learning about recovery helped them find the courage to be themselves. The courage to be me combines science, storytelling and illustration to send a message of hope to the millions of people who are living with the impact of rape or sexual abuse. Written by psychologist and researcher Dr Nina Burrowes


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Book cover of A Voracious Grief

A Voracious Grief by Lindsey Lamh,

My book is fantastical historical fiction about two characters who're wrestling with the monstrosity of their grief.

It takes you into London high society, where Ambrose tries to forget about how much he misses Bennett and how much he dreads becoming as cold as their Grandfather. It takes you to…

Book cover of Fun Home

Meg-John Barker Why I love this book

I’m a huge fan of queer graphic memoirs and Fun Home is my favourite one. It’s one of the most-read books on my bookshelf.

Moving between present-day and different times in her life, this stunningly illustrated book tells the story of how Bechdel comes into her own sexuality, woven together with her memories of her relationship with her father and how she came to understand his sexuality after his death. 

While this is only one person’s story, reading this book invites us to consider how our own sexualities were shaped by the place and time we grew up in, and by the adults and other children around us and how they related to their own sexualities, genders, bodies, and feelings.

By Alison Bechdel ,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Fun Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.

'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times

A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is…


Book cover of No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics

Meg-John Barker Why I love this book

No Straight Lines brings together multiple comic creators from four decades of comics by and about LGBTQ+ people. If you want to get a sense of how the queer community has developed and changed over time, and how comics have reflected - and impacted - that, then this anthology is definitely the place to go. 

From early underground gay and lesbian comics, through responses to the AIDS crisis, to more recent webcomics and trans memoirs, this book takes the reader on a historical journey and introduces them to many creators of fictional and non-fictional comics who they may well want to read more from.

By Justin Hall ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Straight Lines as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Collecting the world's greatest LGBT comics under one cover.

Queer cartooning encompasses some of the best and most interesting comics of the last four decades, with creators tackling complex issues of identity and a changing society with intelligence, humor, and imagination. This book celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all.

No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel (whose book Fun Home was named Time Magazine’s 2006 Book of the Year), Howard Cruse (whose groundbreaking Stuck Rubber Baby is now back in print), and Ralf Koenig…


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Book cover of Vanished Ocean

Vanished Ocean by Dorrik Stow,

World-renowned geologist, Dorrik Stow, tells the story of a long-lost ocean, named Tethys Ocean after the Greek goddess of the sea. Tethys lasted for 250 million years of Earth's history, straddling the equatorial world and playing host to the changing life and events that have shaped the planet we inhabit…

Book cover of How to Be Ace: A Memoir of Growing Up Asexual

Meg-John Barker Why I love this book

There are very few books - let alone graphic books - out there covering asexuality. This comic strikes a great balance between informing the reader about asexuality, and challenging many of the myths that still persist around it, as well as telling Rebecca’s own story of coming to understand her ace experience.

How to be ace is a great, accessible, engaging read for anyone on the ace or aro spectrum themselves. It’s also a very helpful book for everyone to get a better sense of the diversity of a/sexual experience.

By Rebecca Burgess ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How to Be Ace as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

PRISM AWARDS FINALIST 2021
GREAT GRAPHIC NOVELS FOR TEENS - YOUNG ADULT LIBRARY SERVICES ASSOCIATION (YALSA) 2022

"When I was in school, everyone got to a certain age where they became interested in talking about only one thing: boys, girls and sex. Me though? I was only interested in comics."

Growing up, Rebecca assumes sex is just a scary new thing they will 'grow into' as they get older, but when they leave school, start working and do grow up, they start to wonder why they don't want to have sex with other people.

In this brave, hilarious and empowering…


Explore my book 😀

Sexuality: A Graphic Guide

By Meg-John Barker , Jules Scheele (illustrator),

Book cover of Sexuality: A Graphic Guide

What is my book about?

Sex and sexuality can seem like a house of horrors, full of monsters and potential pitfalls. We often live with fear, shame, and frustration when it comes to our own sexuality, and with judgement when it comes to others’. Sex advice manuals, debates over sex work, and stories of sexual “dysfunction” only add to our anxiety. With compassion, humour, erudition, and a touch of the erotic, Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele shine a light through the darkness and unmask the monsters.

Book cover of Let's Talk about It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human
Book cover of The Courage to Be Me: A Story of Courage, Self-Compassion and Hope After Sexual Abuse
Book cover of Fun Home

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