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Steven Pfau is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. His first book is Say Nephew: On Boyhood, Unclehood, and Queer Mentorship (Catapult, May 26, 2026), a profound and illuminating exploration of the mythology of gay uncles and the meaning of queer bonds across generations.
On your nightstand now:
I've been savoring the first four installments of Solvej Balle's seven-part novel, On the Calculation of Volume, which has reprogrammed my brain, reminding me to slow down and pay more attention to what can happen in a single day; I can't wait for the rest of the series. Also on my nightstand are some recent favorites I've loved: The Committee of Men by James Ciano, Field Guide to Falling Ill by Jonathan Gleason, Rogue Astronaut by Mitchell Jacobs, Mega Milk by Megan Milks, All the Possible Bodies by Iain Haley Pollock, Person Under by Paige Thomas, Bad Forecast by Steffan Triplett, and Woman House by Lauren W. Westerfield. And as an astrology nerd, I'm very excited to get a copy of Follow the Signs, Courtney Ann LaFaive's biography of Linda Goodman.
Your top five authors:
James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, Anne Carson, Annie Ernaux, and Thomas Renjilian.
Favorite book when you were a child:
My two favorites were Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, both by Maurice Sendak. I think I picked up on the queer-coded sensibility of Sendak's work long before either of us came out, and I've always thought of him as one of my honorary uncles.
Book you've faked reading:
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is one of my favorite novels, but as much as I love it, I can't deny that some chapters are totally bewildering, and they make me want to toss the book across the room. I've read Moby-Dick from cover to cover a few times, so maybe this doesn't count, but sometimes I really feel like I have to fake it 'til I make it through certain passages.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I'm often singing the praises of Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal, a collection of gorgeous, instructive food writing inspired by M.F.K. Fisher. Whenever I feel like I don't have the time or space or money to make really good food, or whenever I can't figure out what to do with the limited ingredients and supplies in my kitchen, Adler encourages me to be more imaginative. Her cooking advice has also helped me become a more resourceful writer, but I admit that I'm especially grateful to Adler for teaching me how to poach an egg.
Book you've bought for the cover:
At the most recent AWP Bookfair, the cover (and title) of Jendi Reiter's collection Introvert Pervert caught my eye. I bought it right away, and I'm glad I did. It's full of kinky, transgressive, vulnerable, and often very funny poems that I'll be thinking about and rereading for a long time.
Favorite line from a book:
Amy Hempel writes some of the most startling, memorable sentences I've ever read, and it's hard to choose an all-time favorite; each one seems to contain a whole novel's worth of narrative. But today my favorite might be the opening of her story "The Harvest," from At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom: "The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me." She could've dropped the mic and ended there, but instead Hempel keeps outdoing herself and forcing you to rethink everything you thought you knew about this story.
Book that changed your life:
Ten years ago, I bought a copy of Brian Blanchfield's essay collection, Proxies, at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. As soon as I finished reading it, I knew I wanted to meet the author and learn how to do what he does in that book. I sent him a fan e-mail and asked if he would give me some feedback on a writing project I'd been thinking about, and he generously said yes. We stayed in touch, he joined the faculty of a creative writing M.F.A. program, I applied and became his student, and he taught me how to write what would become Say Nephew. Thank you, Brian, and thank you, whoever displayed that copy of Proxies in the Unnameable storefront back in April 2016!
Five books you'll never part with:
I'll never part with my three copies of The Story of Harold, a lost classic of queer fiction by Terry Andrews (the pen name of children's author George Selden, best known for the book The Cricket in Times Square). I have the first edition in hardcover, the trade paperback that Edward Gorey illustrated, and the mass-market copy that my uncle gave me--a gesture that became a sort of "inciting incident" in the writing of Say Nephew. If I can keep only two more, the fourth would be Matthew Stadler's Allan Stein, another favorite queer novel that's now out of print (and another book I write about in Say Nephew); the fifth would be my autographed and thoroughly annotated copy of Proxies. Many books are precious to me, but these are irreplaceable.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I first read Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse when I was 18, and I wish I could go back in time and newly discover the magic tricks that Woolf pulls off with prose style and point of view and narrative structure in that novel. Somehow she also made the book so multifaceted that it seems to shape-shift whenever I revisit it with fresh eyes so, in a way, every time feels like the first time.