{"product_id":"spawning-season-an-experiment-in-queer-parenthood","title":"Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Osmundson's 2022 essay collection \u003ci\u003eVirology \u003c\/i\u003eestablished the NYU professor as a voice of his generation...In \u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e, Osmundson looks at queer parenthood and the natural world.\u003cbr\u003e\" --Kate Tuttle, \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"An utterly unique contribution to the often predictable genre of infertility and parenting lit... \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season \u003c\/i\u003eis, among other things, a deeply personal exploration of 'situational infertility, ' the voluntary or involuntary lack of children due to external factors...It's rare to read a well-researched nonfiction narrative that blends fascinating specialized knowledge with sharp political critique and a moving, gripping personal story.\" --Briallen Hopper, \n\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"I tore through this book in one sitting, falling in love with the sentences, the way that the book unfolded, how it could have also easily been a food memoir, and the way in which he explicates the science of it all.\" --Emily Maloney, \n\u003ci\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Evocative...a reflection on family building, yes, but also a broader look at the interconnected systems of family, gender, race\/ethnicity, and the environment; at the role and limits of biology in queer parenthood; and at what it means to nourish, nurture, hope, and grieve. Thoroughly original, thought-provoking, and entertaining, it is a highly recommended look at queer parenthood with a wide-one might say 'fish-eye'-lens.\" --Dana Rudolph, \n\u003ci\u003eBay Windows\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Biophysicist Osmundson blends memoir and science writing in this moving meditation on queer family, the climate crisis, and 21st-century child-rearing.\" -- \n\u003ci\u003eThe Millions 'Great Spring Book Preview'\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"In this intriguing combination of memoir and nature writing, microbiology professor Joseph Osmundson reflects on modern queer parenthood and finds unlikely reflections of his own journey in the animal world. He draws thought-provoking parallels between the lifecycle of salmon and the agreement he made with a lesbian couple he'd known since college to co-parent. With deep considerations of the ethics of having children during a climate crisis, humanity's role in the natural world, and breaking societal expectations of family structures, it's an emotional and introspective personal story.\" --Susie Dumond, \n\u003ci\u003eBook Riot\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"What a singular and deeply moving book. In \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e, Joseph Osmundson has birthed a profound meditation on family and food, longing and loss, hope and grief, humans and salmon. In his story, we find a multitude of beautiful, complicated ways of imagining the future-and then working to build one.\" --Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of NYTimes bestseller AN IMMENSE WORLD \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"With \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e, Joseph Osmundson offers us an intimate look at the way queer theory becomes written on the body and moves through the world. \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e is a book that only a queer scientist could write, and a powerful exploration of the relationships between queer men and queer women, between white queers and queers of color. A powerful rejoinder to old notions about fatherhood, emotion, and masculinity, \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e is a reminder that queer theory calls on us to not just transform society but also ourselves.\" --Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of THE DISORDERED COSMOS \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Beautiful nature writing, beautiful food writing, and above all, intimate, revealing, and heart-wrenching writing about complicated and deeply human longing for queer parenthood, and about the risk and loss inherent in putting our faith in reproductive futurity.\" --Krys Malcolm Belc, \n\u003ci\u003eauthor of THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Beautiful and deeply moving. Joseph Osmundson guides us through a topography where pleasure, kinship, gender, and procreative longing take new forms, and challenges us to expand the limits of human expression. He shows us queerness as the ultimate nurturing force, a place where cooking becomes an affirmation of chosen family, an act of love on a colossal scale.\" -- \n\u003ci\u003eJohn Birdsall, James Beard Award-winning author of THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH and WHAT IS QUEER FOOD?\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"An aching and imaginative memoir about the many ways to have and lose a child. In \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e, Joseph Osmundson unearths the confluence of his dream of becoming a queer parent alongside the odyssey of a spawning salmon. The grief that unspools in both stories will resonate with anyone who has wanted a child amid the threats of climate change and capitalism. Yet Osmundson also conjures new possibilities for the ways we nurture and nourish each other, and as such, has written a book brimming with as much hope as exists in the single glowing orb of a salmon egg.\" -- \n\u003ci\u003eSabrina Imbler, author of HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Good god, this book. A thunderclap of emotion. I am rearranged. Osmundson's best work of nonfiction yet.\" --Lulu Miller, author of WHY FISH DON'T EXIST \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"I am a Joseph Osmundson stan, and I have no idea how Osmundson made \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e. It is delicate, probing, surprisingly fun, and geniusly patient when I most needed to believe books could save parts of us. Parenting stories do not look, end or begin as we believe, and Osmundson will have you stomping for joy at acceptance of our shared paradox.\" --Kiese Laymon, author of HEAVY \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Biophysicist Osmundson ( \n\u003ci\u003eVirology\u003c\/i\u003e) blends memoir and science writing in this moving meditation on queer family, the climate crisis, and 21st-century child rearing...His reflections teem with the curiosity of someone who's devoted their professional life to asking questions. The result is at once edifying and affecting.\" -- \n\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eJoseph Osmundson\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor of microbiology at New York University and the author of \n\u003ci\u003eVirology\u003c\/i\u003e. His work has been published in leading biological journals including Cell and PNAS and in the \n\u003ci\u003eNew York Times, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \n\u003ci\u003eAtlantic, TIME\u003c\/i\u003e, the \n\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere. He lives and works in New York City.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Osmundson's 2022 essay collection \u003ci\u003eVirology \u003c\/i\u003eestablished the NYU professor as a voice of his generation...In \u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e, Osmundson looks at queer parenthood and the natural world\" -\u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A singular and deeply moving book. Osmundson has birthed a profound meditation on family and food, longing and loss, hope and grief, humans and salmon. In his story, we find a multitude of beautiful, complicated ways of imagining the future-and then working to build one.\" -Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winner and \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eAn Immense World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of National Book Critics Circle Award and Lambda Literary Award finalist VIROLOGY comes an intimate chronicle of queer family-making.\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSince grade school, Joseph Osmundson dreamed of being pregnant. As he grew into the queer scientist he is today, the economic precarity of academia and the warming planet led to his decision not to reproduce. That is, until a lesbian couple he had known since college came to him with a proposition: would Joe be a bio-dad and would he co-parent alongside them? \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSoon everything was falling into place. But when the two partners communicated their need for a child to reflect their own racial backgrounds, Joe's whiteness exposed fault lines in their parenting journey. \n\u003ci\u003eSpawning Season\u003c\/i\u003e is a genre-bending memoir that treats the scientific as integral to the personal and that builds an entire species of the grief we carry in our bodies. In exploratory prose that builds on the work of Donna Haraway and José Esteban Muñoz, Osmundson considers the ethics of child-rearing in the 21st century, the brutal wonder of caregiving, and the joys and intricacies of building family beyond biology. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/span\u003e 03\/16\/2026 (EAN 9781639737833, Hardcover) - *Starred Review\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e 06\/15\/2026 (EAN 9781639737833, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Bloomsbury Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496042266902,"sku":"9781639737833","price":33.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9781639737833.jpg?v=1783051599","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/spawning-season-an-experiment-in-queer-parenthood","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}