Aesop’s Queer Library Is Back For Pride 2025

5 days ago

This is one of our favourite annual pop-ups

This post may contain affiliate links. Learn more

How are you celebrating Pride this year? Once again, Australian luxury cosmetics brand Aesop is swapping beauty products for books with the return of its Queer Library for the fifth year running. From 3 to 6 July 2025, the Soho store will be fit to burst with literary explorations and representations of LGBTQ+ culture, followed by a reading room in Brighton from 31 July to 3 August. Here’s everything you need to know.

How To Visit Aesop’s Queer Library In 2025

Queer storytelling is transformative, and this is the foundational belief underpinning Aesop’s popular annual Queer Library, filling the Soho store (41 Lexington St, Carnaby, London W1F 9AJ) with a selection of books written by and about queer people, inviting visitors to select a complimentary title from the shelves to keep (while stocks last), with no purchase necessary.

This year, the focus is on trans and non-binary voices, with London’s Gay’s The Word bookstore (a cornerstone for the queer community since 1979) once again curating a diverse reading list for the library, spanning genres and generations but most of all elevating marginalised trans and non-binary voices. Gay’s The Word has provided some of Aesop Queer Library’s books, with additional titles purchased at a discount rate from Penguin and a variety of other published.

The hero title for 2025 is Marsha by activist, artist and writer Tourmaline, the very first biography of revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, published earlier this year. ‘Marsha’s life reminds us that the work of liberation isn’t just about protest,’ Tourmaline says. ‘It’s also about sparkle, about softness, about staying alive and helping others stay alive, too.’ In partnership with HarperCollins and xigxag, visitors to the Aesop Queer Library will also access a complimentary audiobook of Marsha.

As well as perusing the shelves, visitors will be invited to play Aesop’s interactive card game based on the brand’s fable, ‘The North Wind and the Sun’, a tale about the value of gentle persuasion over force. Using cards imprinted with a word from the fable, visitors will be invited to draw their own response to the words, revealing their own take on the story.

After the Queer Library has closed, Aesop Brighton (North Laine Bazaar, 104-105 Gloucester Rd, Brighton BN1 4AP) will host the return of its special reading corner from 31 July to 3 August, allowing queer joy to extend out of London and into the UK’s queer capital. Expect a designated space with a smaller selection of titles from the London list, with visitors once again invited to select a book from the shelves to keep, free of charge.

Alongside the return of the beloved annual Library, the Aesop Foundation will continue its support for All Out (a global movement fighting for LGBT+ rights around the world), which began in 2022.

What’s On The Aesop Queer Library Reading List?

Aesop has published its annual Queer Library reading list, curated by the team at Gay’s The Word. The LGBTQIA+ titles you’ll find at the pop-up (and to get reading ASAP) are: