Manuel Betancourt‘s debut book, The Male Gazed, somehow didn’t cross my path until well after it came out. The book, which takes a critical eye toward pop culture and queer desire, originally came out in 2023 and is now available in paperback. After reading and discovering his book, I invited him to the First Taste Reading Series to read and discuss his book.
His second book, Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies, is out now. Publishers’ Weekly calls it “steamy and cerebral” while Kirkus says Betancourt is a “witty, intuitive observer of human behavior.” I 100% agree with both of those statements. While Debutiful is dedicated to debut books, but is also focusing on emerging and early career writers because when someone is a damn good writer, we don’t care when you discover them, as long as you do discover them.
Below the author answered our My Reading Life questionnaire, for you to learn about the books he was obsessed with, what helped him through puberty, and what he’s reading next.
Continue reading “My Reading Life: Hello Stranger author Manuel Betancourt needed more books about queer desire in his teens”