The Winter Knight
“Authentic portrayals of queer, trans, and disabled characters along with a delightful mash-up of modern Vancouver, college life, and Arthurian legends become an immersive story of trying to be in control of your own path, no matter your past.”
― Library Journal starred review
“Weaving endearing queer coming-of-age threads throughout the mythically grounded mystery, this satisfying re-imagining delivers.”
― Publisher’s Weekly review
“Old friends wear new faces in this lively, funny, heartbreaking tour of a modern city peopled by stories. The Winter Knight will take you kindly by the hand, and leave you believing in courage, compassion, and a world we might be able to see, if we just turn our heads at the right moment. A worthy reimagining.”
― Kate Heartfield, author of The Embroidered Book
I Hate Parties
“I want to leave / and also stay, writes Jes Battis, but I found myself only wanting to stay, to nestle deeper into these pages with their glitzy Olympic figure skating and Days of Our Lives devil possessions, where Middle English meets Drag Race, and Homeric epithets abound on TikTok. I Hate Parties is as wildly entertaining as it is deeply felt. I wish this book had existed when I was a small town queer.”
― Kayla Czaga, author of Midway
“I Hate Parties is a beautiful and necessary depiction of queer, autistic love in all its awkward, transcendent glory. It’s a rich tapestry that includes everything from nineties figure skaters…to Greek mythology, intertwined with the apprehension of first crushes, Scruff dates and raucous parties. Battis shows us how love can bloom between the cracks of anxiety and existential dread. They take us on a deeply moving journey that offers both heartbreak and comfort at every turn.”
― Courtney Bates-Hardy, author of Anatomical Venus
“I Hate Parties is one of the most relatable poetry collections that I have read in a long time. Clever, thoughtful, heartbreaking, and touching, the poems piece together vivid descriptions of nostalgic haunts and pop culture. Poems that transport through space and time, probing the complexities of social norms that can become a trap to fit into.”
― Daniel Zomparelli, author of Jump Scare and founder of poetry is dead
“Battis evokes a nostalgia for the eighties, for Rainbow Brite, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and explores the personal significance of Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes while circumnavigating their queer adolescence through small towns, missed connections, and standing in doorway after doorway. Each poem is that mysterious wallflower we’ve all been at one time or another.”
― Matthew Walsh, author of Terrarium
Thinking Queerly
“Offers a heady witch’s brew of reflections on contemporary medievalism, young adult literature, queer theory, and neurodiversity…it simply bursts with ideas and insight.”
― David Clark, University of West London
“The book is written in an uncommonly accessible, even conversational style, that is utterly enthralling, and yet Battis’s work still shows impressive scholarly rigour and scope.”
― Marisa Mills, University of Southern Mississippi
“Battis teases out the connection between characters such as Harry Potter and Sabrina (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and foundational medieval stories such as those of Merlin and Morgan le Fay, providing a comprehensive overview that is accessible for academics, educators, and lovers of magic.”
― Denise Roy-Loar, Mount Allison University
“Battis offers a different and more diverse way of looking at medieval and medievally-inspired writing. In so doing, they offer queer and neuro-divergent folks a glimpse of unexpected inclusiveness.”
― Lisa Timpf, Interstellar Flight Magazine
Mastering the Game of Thrones
“The collection of essays analyzing our favorite series is a great example of how deep you can go exploring your top shows…and the credits, fan art, language, screen angles, texts, and much much more.”
― Valerie Estelle Frankel
“Battis and Johnson have assembled a volume that stands on its own both as rigorous criticism and as an accessible way for rabid fans to lose themselves in Westeros all over again…recommended.”
― Library Journal
Prize of Night
“Well-crafted, imaginative and inventive, Prize of Night also boasts a fresh plot, memorable characters and nonstop action.”
― RT Book Reviews
Pile of Bones
“If you like Game of Thrones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or D&D, you will love this book. If you’re a grad student, or have ever been a grad student, you will love this book. If you’ve ever secretly wished that you could cross into a magical world, you will love this book.”
― GoodReads
Night Child
Shortlisted for Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic
“Occult Special Investigator Tess Corday is a terrifically appealing heroine— determined, charming, vulnerable and very human in a world of vampires, necromancers and other supernatural menace. Night Child takes what is becoming a hackneyed genre—romantic supernatural investigator—and injects it with a kind of manic, crazy, campy fun: a little bit Buffy, a little bit CSI and even a little bit hardboiled.”
– Sunburst Award Jury
“Night Child is an adult crime / fantasy / vampire novel that approaches all three genres from a completely new angle…Battis plays to his strengths; good characterisation; a passion for the dark; and a wonderful seam of dry, sometimes bitchy humour running throughout the tale.”
– Fantasy Book Reviews
Homofiles: Theory, Sexuality, and Graduate Studies
“In essays filled with personal insight and theoretical rigor, Homofiles introduces us to a new generation of queer graduate students. This book proves once again how much LGBT studies has to say not just about the unequal power relations endemic in academia, but the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and embodiment we grapple with daily.”
― Sarah E. Chinn, director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the Graduate Center at CUNY
“Provocative, original, and moving. With this new book, Battis has assembled the next generation of scholars who are troubling the soul of queer studies.”
― Kevin Kumashiro, author of The Seduction of Common Sense: How the Right has Framed the Debate on America’s Schools
Jes Battis 