Category Is Books

About

Category Is Books is an independent queer bookshop on Allison Street in Govanhill, on Glasgow's southside and a good way from the Merchant City bars. It opened in 2018 in a shopfront the owners renovated themselves, and it is one of only two LGBTQ+ bookshops in Scotland.

The stock is new and secondhand queer books, magazines, graphic novels, comics, zines, badges and stickers. The shop runs a pay it forward scheme: anyone without the money can take a book using a solidarity code, funded by customers who have added to the pot.

It is also one of the few queer spaces in the city that does not run on alcohol, and it hosts everything from yoga to tarot readings to a trans friendly pop up barbershop. The shop states its aim as making a space for the LGBTQIA+ community to learn about and share in queer books, art, history and activism.