Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood

Name: Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood
ISBN: 9781639737833

by Joseph Osmundson

National Book · 2026 · Longlist

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Bloomsbury PublishingMay 26, 2026Biography & Memoir Science & Nature208 pagesISBN 9781639737833

Award History

Award	Year	Status	Citation
National Book Award for Nonfiction	2026	Longlist

About This Book

A blend of memoir and science writing. When Osmundson's best friend and her partner ask him to be the biological father and co-parent of their child, he accepts, then grapples with climate change, political upheaval, and what it means to build a family beyond biology and across racial divides. Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

About the Author

Joseph OsmundsonAmerican

Joseph Osmundson (born 1983) is an American scientist, writer, and queer health advocate known for his essays exploring viruses, queerness, race, and geography, with notable works including Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between (2022, W.W. Norton, finalist for Lambda Literary Award and National Book Critics Circle Award), Capsid: A Love Song (2016, winner of POZ Award for best HIV writing and Lambda Literary Award finalist), and INSIDE/OUT (2018). A Clinical Associate Professor of Biology at NYU with a PhD from Rockefeller University, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and he was named to the TIME Next 100 list in 2022 for mpox vaccine efforts. Read more →