We are thrilled to announce that MCD will be publishing a new edition of Joe Westmoreland’s 2001 novel Tramps Like Us, a lost classic of gay literature and an absolute treasure of a book, in 2025! Based on Joe’s life and set between 1974 and 1986, bouncing between New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco, and everywhere in between, it follows a young gay man traveling the country as he meets and loses friends and lovers, and comes into himself and his sexuality in the years between Gay Liberation and the AIDS epidemic. It’s hilarious, vulnerable, sexy, and completely unforgettable. As the original copy aptly described it, “Tramps Like Us is about the search for home, for a better life, (and) feeling like a refugee in one’s own country. It’s about creating a family from a group of misfits.” The photo above features a young Joe on the right, with a fellow misfit from the novel.

Our edition will feature a new afterword from Joe, and an introduction from one of the book’s biggest fans, Eileen Myles! When Tramps Like Us was first published, Eileen said

Tramps Like Us charts an incredible moment in the 20th century . . . So much of that land is gone, yet this writer speaks like a sweet and unworldly citizen of a place you’d like to know.

Eileen isn’t alone in their admiration. As Hilton Als wrote about Tramps

The voice is so original, so controlled that it cannot be quoted from . . . I think it is an achievement, in the major category.

The brilliant Kevin Killian was a fan, as well. He raved

(Westmoreland’s) simple sentences are each one a little marvel of sophistication and purity . . . Westmoreland’s picture of a bygone, enchanted, troubling San Francisco and indeed the whole U.S.A. will live forever.

Tramps Like Us arrives in 2025.