The buzz: Author Augusten Burroughs has partnered with Katalyst Films to develop TV projects, including a Showtime comedy based on his memoir Dry. Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are separately adapting another Burroughs book, Sellevision, for NBC.
Actor Peter Paige will direct an adaptation of Neil Miller's nonfiction book Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s, about the mass panic in Sioux City, Iowa following the 1955 killing of an eight year old boy when authorities arrested twenty middle class gay men completely unconnected to the crime.
Novelist Michael Nava is running for San Francisco Superior Court Judge. You can support his campaign by going to www.navaforjudge.com/ and joining his Facebook page, Michael Nava for Judge.
This month Rebel Satori press is releasing Advocate Days & Other Stories by Mark Thompson, the former Advocate editor and journalist. Thompson is also the author of the popular Gay Soul.
Rebel Satori press is also releasing this month the vampiric novel DeVante's Coven, by SM Johnson, a novel by L.A. Fields titled Maladaption, and Love Hard, a collection of short fiction by D. Travers Scott.
This month Lethe Press is releasing the 5th edition of Loving Someone Gay by Don Clark, Ph.D. Lethe has also recently released Velvet Mafia editor Sean Meriwether’s debut collection of fiction, The Silent Hustler, and Tom Cardamone’s collection of gay speculative fiction, Pumpkin Teeth.
Flux will publish Brent Hartinger's novel Shadowwalkers, about a gay teenager who escapes his isolation on an island in Puget Sound by experimenting with astral projection, which leads him into a spiritual realm of mystery and danger.
This month Starbooks Press is releasing Horny Devils, a new collection of erotic horror stories by Daniel W. Kelly, and Can’t Get Enough, a 20th anniversary collection of erotica by John Patrick, edited by Eric Summers.
Gallaudet University Press has brought out Raymond Luczak’s ninth book, Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience and Rebel Satori Press will publish the author’s deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands. The book won first place in the Project: QueerLit 2006 Contest and was a co-first place grant from the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation for Full-Length Fiction. More details on the author can be found at http://www.raymondluczak.com/.
In January 2010 Harper Perennial will publish Myrlin Hermes’s novel The Lunatic, The Lover, and the Poet. Hermes won the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation novel competition in 2006 for the novel about a gay Hamlet. An excerpt and video trailer is available on the author’s Web site. http://www.myrlinahermes.com/.
Citadel will publish Kiri Blakeley’s memoir Hard Wired: What My Gay Fiancé Taught Me About Sex, Love, and Life, about the aftermath of her decade-long romance ending with the revelation that her fiancé was gay.
Alyson will publish Scott Sherman's next two mystery novels in his Kevin Connor series.
Next spring, Cleis will publish College Boys, a collection of erotica edited by Shane Allison.
Donatello Press has published a memoir by playwright and activist Glenn Hopkins titled Slim Volume.
Readings this month: Various authors at The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, November 7 in Atlanta at the Decatur Library; Raymond Luczak at Bluestockings in Manhattan, November 8; Sarah Schulman at Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan, November 16; Edward Field with Dutch instrumentalist Ack Van Rooyen, November 20 at the Westbeth Community Room in Manhattan.
Kudos: Among the nominations for the National Book Awards was Carl Phillips for his tenth poetry collection, Speak Low. Gore Vida will be awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.
Brotherhood, a Danish movie about a gay love affair between two members of a neo-Nazi group, won top honors at the Rome Film Festival.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton inaugurated a monument to poet Walt Whitman in Moscow. The monument is located in the gardens of the Moscow State University, where last May the mayor ordered the arrest of 32 gay and lesbian activists from Russia and Belarus who were attempting to stage a Slavic Gay Pride.
Open Calls: Bona Fide Books seeks submissions for Queer in the Last Frontier, a collection of essays about gay and lesbian life in Alaska. Deadline: February 5, 2010; maximum 5,000 words. For more information and guidelines, go to http://www.bonafidebooks.com/.
Burrow Publishing is seeking submissions for an erotica anthology (gay and bisexual) Men of Color Erotica to be released in 2010. Stories should prominently feature men of color. The deadline for submissions is December 15. For additional information and requirements, please visit http://www.burrowpublishing.com/.
Steve Berman is reading gay male themed essays and fiction published in the 2009 calendar year for Best Gay Stories 2010. Submissions and recommendations can be sent to sberman8@yahoo.com.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Thursday, October 01, 2009
October Publishing Notes
The buzz: In 2011, Barrett Books will publish Chaz Bono's memoir Coming Clean: The Truth About Becoming a Man, chronicling the physical, emotional, and relational aspects of his decision to transition from a female to male, told in a day by day account of the process, exploring the 12-month period that will be the bulk of his transformation from his decision to take male hormones and how they affect him, to surgical procedures, through the end result, and also covering his father's death and his foray into prescription drug addiction.
Next fall Flux will re-issue John Donovan’s 1969 YA novel I’ll Get There: It Better Be Worth the Trip, widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality. The book centers on a 13-year-boy whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy.
In 2010, Hansen will publish John DiLeo's Tennessee Williams and Company: The Essential Screen Actors, looking at eleven screen actors in Tennessee Williams' films and explores their artistic connections, some of them flat-out failures, between these screen actors and their Tennessee Williams roles.
Alyson will publish a new installment of Neil Plakcy’s Hawaiian detective series featuring a gay police detective, titled Mahu Blood.
Rebel Satori Press has released The Elijah Tree, a novel by Cynthea Masson, about a young boy who is birthed in the fire of a mystical vision.
Cleis will publish Christopher Pierce's Biker Boys: Gay Erotica Stories in July 2010. Next summer Cleis will also publish Elizabeth Ozar's The Big Gay Breakup Book, a guide to getting over him or her and moving on to a highly successful relationship, offering her own thoughtful and insightful to one of the hardest of life's passages - the end of a relationship.
Seal Press will publish Tina Fakhrid-Deen’s Colage’s The LGBTQ Family Handbook, a resource for kids of gay, lesbian, trans, and queer parents -- full of invaluable questions and answers from kids living in all varieties of alternative family situations.
Simon Pulse will publish Brian Farrey's Chasers, about two teens who join a group called 'chasers' which promises them in-depth lessons about gay history and a place where they'll be accepted; but when the group's lessons morph into violent encounters and dangerous sexual pursuits, the young men must decide if their lives are really worth it.
In June 2010, Simon Spotlight will publish Tim Gunn's Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life's Little Instructions for Making It Work, applying old-world values to modern situations, from the lost art of etiquette to practical advice, showing how to navigate life and unflappably rise to any occasion, to Patrick Price at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, for publication in June 2010, by Peter Steinberg at The Steinberg Agency (world).
Lethe Press has released its second annual edition of Wilde Stories: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction featuring stories by Sven Davisson, Alex Jeffers, and Lee Thomas. Lethe has also released the nonfiction book Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay & Lesbian Ghosts, a guidebook by Ken Summers of gay and lesbian ghosts and haunted gay places.
Wayne Courtois will be signing copies of Report from Winter on October 3 at 1:00 pm at Barnes & Noble, at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Lester Srong and David Waggoner will be signing copies of their book XY on XY on October 6 at 8 pm at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 26 Wooster Street, in Manhattan.
Paul Bens and Ann Somerville will read at A Different Light in San Francisco on October 30 at 7:30pm.
The newest issue of Icarus, the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, has been released and features work by authors Jeff Mann, Lee Thomas, Alex Jeffers, and Chad Helder.
Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse was runner up for Best Bookstore on Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta list.
Fire & Ink III: Cotillion, a festival for LGBTQ writers of African descent, will happen Oct. 8-11, 2009 in Austin, TX at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th St. in downtown Austin, with additional Cotillion events at the Blanton Museum and the Historic Victory Grill, among others. A complete listing of presenters can be found at http://2009.fireandink.org/.
The 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 13th through 16th in New Orleans. Among the authors slated to attend are Ann Bannon, Michael Nava, and Tim Miller.
Christopher Rice has resigned as President of the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Katherine Forrest has stepped into the role on an interim basis. Alyson publisher Don Weise has also joined the Board of Trustees of the literary organization. Tony Valenzuela has been appointed as interim Executive Director, replacing outgoing Charles Flowers, while the Foundation continues its search for candidates for the position. Richard Labonté is the administrator for the Lambda Literary awards. The organization’s revised mission statement and awards guidelines have been posted to the Web site.
The Publishing Triangle has published their award guidelines for books published in 2009 at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp.
A staged reading of The Age of Innocence, a musical co-created by Walter Holland and Ted Kociolak, will be held at the York Theater in Manhattan on October 20th at 7:30PM. For details and reservations visit. http://www.yorktheatre.org/New%20Pages/Readings.html.
The theater department at the University of Wyoming at Laramie will stage a reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later on Oct. 12, an epilogue to the Tetonic Theater Project play, joining more than 120 theaters across the nation and overseas that will have readings on the same day.
The new season line up for the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs includes Candy and Dorothy by David Johnston, Dudes by Dan Clancy, Two Married Men by Arch Brown, Mensky’s Burlyesque conceived by Larry Lazzaro, and A Perfect Relationship by Doric Wilson. More details at: http://www.thornytheater.com/
As part of its 2010-11 season dedicated to the work of Tony Kushner, Manhattan’s Signature Theater Company will mount the first New York revival of Angels in America.
Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, returns to Broadway next spring with Dame Edna: It’s All About Me.
Nicole Kidman will star in a film adaptation of David Ebershoff’s novel, The Danish Girl, about painter Einar Wegener, the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Leopardrama Limited has optioned the film rights of Richard McCann's Mother of Sorrows.
Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are partnering to adapt Augusten Burrough’s novel Sellevision for NBC.
Kudos: On the shortlist for the Booker prize is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire received the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Topp Twins, a film about the New Zealand lesbian sister singing-comedy duo of the same name, received the audience award for best documentary.
Colin Firth took the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of a gay professor in A Single Man, the new film from Tom Ford based on the Christopher Isherwood novel. A Single Man also won the Queer Golden Lion, an award independent of the official festival, for films with gay themes or content.
Among the inductees to the new Canadian Queer Hall of Fame was Janine Fuller, Little Sister’s bookstore manager and author.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is looking for fiction and memoir for Beautiful Boys: New Gay Fiction, to be published by Cleis Press in Fall 2010. Deadline is February 1, 2010. Payment: $50-$75 plus two contributor copies. Word length: 6,000 maximum. Submissions can be sent to: cleisbeautifulboys@gmail.com, in .doc or .rtf format. Include real name/address/50-word bio.
Labonté is also seeking submissions Best Gay Erotica 2011 to be guest judged by Kevin Killian. Deadline is April 1, 2010. Payment $50-$75, plus two contributor copies. Queries and submissions to: mailto:bge2010@gmail.com.
Labonté is also seeking fiction for Best Gay Romance 2011. Deadline is May 1, 2010. Payment is $50 to $75 plus two contributor copies. Include real name/ address/ 50-word bio, to bgr2011@gmail.com.
Gayfest NYC is accepting submissions for the Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City next year. Deadline is October 31, 2009. For more details visit: Gayfest.com.
Next fall Flux will re-issue John Donovan’s 1969 YA novel I’ll Get There: It Better Be Worth the Trip, widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality. The book centers on a 13-year-boy whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy.
In 2010, Hansen will publish John DiLeo's Tennessee Williams and Company: The Essential Screen Actors, looking at eleven screen actors in Tennessee Williams' films and explores their artistic connections, some of them flat-out failures, between these screen actors and their Tennessee Williams roles.
Alyson will publish a new installment of Neil Plakcy’s Hawaiian detective series featuring a gay police detective, titled Mahu Blood.
Rebel Satori Press has released The Elijah Tree, a novel by Cynthea Masson, about a young boy who is birthed in the fire of a mystical vision.
Cleis will publish Christopher Pierce's Biker Boys: Gay Erotica Stories in July 2010. Next summer Cleis will also publish Elizabeth Ozar's The Big Gay Breakup Book, a guide to getting over him or her and moving on to a highly successful relationship, offering her own thoughtful and insightful to one of the hardest of life's passages - the end of a relationship.
Seal Press will publish Tina Fakhrid-Deen’s Colage’s The LGBTQ Family Handbook, a resource for kids of gay, lesbian, trans, and queer parents -- full of invaluable questions and answers from kids living in all varieties of alternative family situations.
Simon Pulse will publish Brian Farrey's Chasers, about two teens who join a group called 'chasers' which promises them in-depth lessons about gay history and a place where they'll be accepted; but when the group's lessons morph into violent encounters and dangerous sexual pursuits, the young men must decide if their lives are really worth it.
In June 2010, Simon Spotlight will publish Tim Gunn's Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life's Little Instructions for Making It Work, applying old-world values to modern situations, from the lost art of etiquette to practical advice, showing how to navigate life and unflappably rise to any occasion, to Patrick Price at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, for publication in June 2010, by Peter Steinberg at The Steinberg Agency (world).
Lethe Press has released its second annual edition of Wilde Stories: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction featuring stories by Sven Davisson, Alex Jeffers, and Lee Thomas. Lethe has also released the nonfiction book Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay & Lesbian Ghosts, a guidebook by Ken Summers of gay and lesbian ghosts and haunted gay places.
Wayne Courtois will be signing copies of Report from Winter on October 3 at 1:00 pm at Barnes & Noble, at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Lester Srong and David Waggoner will be signing copies of their book XY on XY on October 6 at 8 pm at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 26 Wooster Street, in Manhattan.
Paul Bens and Ann Somerville will read at A Different Light in San Francisco on October 30 at 7:30pm.
The newest issue of Icarus, the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, has been released and features work by authors Jeff Mann, Lee Thomas, Alex Jeffers, and Chad Helder.
Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse was runner up for Best Bookstore on Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta list.
Fire & Ink III: Cotillion, a festival for LGBTQ writers of African descent, will happen Oct. 8-11, 2009 in Austin, TX at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th St. in downtown Austin, with additional Cotillion events at the Blanton Museum and the Historic Victory Grill, among others. A complete listing of presenters can be found at http://2009.fireandink.org/.
The 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 13th through 16th in New Orleans. Among the authors slated to attend are Ann Bannon, Michael Nava, and Tim Miller.
Christopher Rice has resigned as President of the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Katherine Forrest has stepped into the role on an interim basis. Alyson publisher Don Weise has also joined the Board of Trustees of the literary organization. Tony Valenzuela has been appointed as interim Executive Director, replacing outgoing Charles Flowers, while the Foundation continues its search for candidates for the position. Richard Labonté is the administrator for the Lambda Literary awards. The organization’s revised mission statement and awards guidelines have been posted to the Web site.
The Publishing Triangle has published their award guidelines for books published in 2009 at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp.
A staged reading of The Age of Innocence, a musical co-created by Walter Holland and Ted Kociolak, will be held at the York Theater in Manhattan on October 20th at 7:30PM. For details and reservations visit. http://www.yorktheatre.org/New%20Pages/Readings.html.
The theater department at the University of Wyoming at Laramie will stage a reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later on Oct. 12, an epilogue to the Tetonic Theater Project play, joining more than 120 theaters across the nation and overseas that will have readings on the same day.
The new season line up for the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs includes Candy and Dorothy by David Johnston, Dudes by Dan Clancy, Two Married Men by Arch Brown, Mensky’s Burlyesque conceived by Larry Lazzaro, and A Perfect Relationship by Doric Wilson. More details at: http://www.thornytheater.com/
As part of its 2010-11 season dedicated to the work of Tony Kushner, Manhattan’s Signature Theater Company will mount the first New York revival of Angels in America.
Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, returns to Broadway next spring with Dame Edna: It’s All About Me.
Nicole Kidman will star in a film adaptation of David Ebershoff’s novel, The Danish Girl, about painter Einar Wegener, the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Leopardrama Limited has optioned the film rights of Richard McCann's Mother of Sorrows.
Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are partnering to adapt Augusten Burrough’s novel Sellevision for NBC.
Kudos: On the shortlist for the Booker prize is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire received the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Topp Twins, a film about the New Zealand lesbian sister singing-comedy duo of the same name, received the audience award for best documentary.
Colin Firth took the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of a gay professor in A Single Man, the new film from Tom Ford based on the Christopher Isherwood novel. A Single Man also won the Queer Golden Lion, an award independent of the official festival, for films with gay themes or content.
Among the inductees to the new Canadian Queer Hall of Fame was Janine Fuller, Little Sister’s bookstore manager and author.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is looking for fiction and memoir for Beautiful Boys: New Gay Fiction, to be published by Cleis Press in Fall 2010. Deadline is February 1, 2010. Payment: $50-$75 plus two contributor copies. Word length: 6,000 maximum. Submissions can be sent to: cleisbeautifulboys@gmail.com, in .doc or .rtf format. Include real name/address/50-word bio.
Labonté is also seeking submissions Best Gay Erotica 2011 to be guest judged by Kevin Killian. Deadline is April 1, 2010. Payment $50-$75, plus two contributor copies. Queries and submissions to: mailto:bge2010@gmail.com.
Labonté is also seeking fiction for Best Gay Romance 2011. Deadline is May 1, 2010. Payment is $50 to $75 plus two contributor copies. Include real name/ address/ 50-word bio, to bgr2011@gmail.com.
Gayfest NYC is accepting submissions for the Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City next year. Deadline is October 31, 2009. For more details visit: Gayfest.com.
Monday, August 31, 2009
September Publishing Notes
The buzz: The schedule for the 2009 Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, November 3-8, 2009, has been posted at http://www.atlqueerlitfest.com/. Events include readings by Andrew Beierle, Catherine Lundoff, Collin Kelley, Franklin Abbott, Stacyann Chin, and Manil Suri, workshops with Regie Cabico, Kit Yan, Marty McConnell, and Ami Mattison, and an exhibition of photographs and ephemera featured in the book Gay and Lesbian Atlanta with comments by co-author Wesley Chenault. The AQLF's partnership with the Decatur Book Festival takes place over Labor Day Weekend, September 4-6, in Decatur, GA. Featured authors includes Sharon Sanders, Franklin Abbott, Z Egloff, Shawn Stuart Ruff, Collin Kelley, Megan Volpert, Amy King, C. Dale Young, James Allen Hall, Radclyffe, Kim Baldwin and J.M. Redmann.
The Lambda Literary Foundation will hold a Read-a-Thon Set November 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia to benefit both the Foundation and the bookstore. LGBT authors will read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes total for each author.
Charles Flowers, the Executive Director of The Lambda Literary Foundation will leave his position in the fall.
Broward County in Florida is proposing to balance its budget by slashing 30% of its cultural grants, a move that could impair Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall Library & Archives. The Stonewall Library & Archives houses over 18,000 LGBT-related books and audio-visual materials, as well as 5,000 historical LGBT items, many focusing on the history of gays in the South.
A West Bend, Illinois couple has asked that certain books be moved to a restricted section of the West Bend Community Memorial Library community library and that the Library Board balance its collection of books about homosexuality with books that affirm traditional “heterosexual perspectives.” A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays recently issued a statement condemning the library for continuing to neglect books by ex-gay authors. On June 2, members of the West Bend Library Board voted unanimously not to move or restrict any of the books. Meanwhile, the terms of four Library Board members were not renewed. Four men subsequently filed a lawsuit, stating certain books caused them pain, and called for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned.
Greenwood Press has issued a two-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
The Outer Alliance, a new organization, has been set up in support of LGBT advocacy in the Sci Fi/Fantasy community. More details can be found at http://outeralliance.wordpress.com/.
Kensington will publish Michael Salvatore's Between Boyfriends in June 2010.
Country Valley Press has just published a limited edition hand-sewn chapbook by Jeffery Beam of a long poem entitled, An Invocation.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Michael Cunningham is working on his latest novel, his first in four years, titled Olympia. Olympia follows an art dealer who is drawn increasingly toward his wife’s younger brother, who reminds him of the couple’s younger years.
In October, Belhue Press will publish The Manly Art of Seduction by Perry Brass.
This fall, Rebel Satori Press will publish D. Travers Scott new story collection, Love Hard.
In 2010 It Books will publish RuPaul's Workin’ It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style!, a style guide and confidence manifesto.
Queerty noted that there are reportedly two finished scripts of Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris’s first novel -- one which focuses on the college years and the other on the New York City years of characters Raymond, Nicole and Basil. The late author was in Los Angeles meeting with producers shortly before he died. Several of Harris’s friends — including Eric Jerome Dickey and Kimberla Lawson Roby — will meet with local book clubs in his place this fall.
Mike Nichols will direct Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.
Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly in talks with Universal Pictures to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice’s popular trilogy of novels The Vampire Chronicles.
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cages Aux Folles is headed to Broadway and will open in a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater on April 18, 2010.
Kudos: Among with recipients of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honor writers of exceptional talent, was Chris Adrian who received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for his short story collection A Better Angel. Among the writers receiving 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships were Chris Adrian and Stacey D’Erasmo.
Open Calls: Candace Walsh and Laura Andre are seeking submissions for And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men For Women to be published by Seal Press in 2010. Deadline is December 1, 2009. More details can be found at andthenitshifted@gmail.com and http://sites.google.com/site/andthenitshifted
Applications are now being accepted for the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award awarded annually at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. The awards, in their fourth year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each will be made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Authors may nominate themselves or another candidate by midnight October 31, 2009. For more details visit: http://www.sasfest.org/.
Also of Note: Copies of The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of my gay-themed ghost stories, published by Lethe Press, is now available through your favorite bookseller.
The gorgeous cover painting was done by Richard Taddei, a painter I have long admired. If you want to see more of Richard’s work, you can find him online at http://www.richardtaddei.com/.
Vince Liaguno, co-editor of the Stoker-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, has posted his generous review on line at Dark Scribe Magazine, which he edits and publishes. Read it at: http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/
And I am also doing a reading on October 29th in Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore with two other talented writers (and friends) who have new books coming out -- Tom Cardamone, author of Pumpkin Teeth: Stories, and Sean Meriwether, author of The Silent Hustler. Here’s the details on the event.
Tricks and Treats: Gays, Ghosts, and Goblins
Thursday, October 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Admission is free and all book sales proceeds benefit people living with HIV.
The Lambda Literary Foundation will hold a Read-a-Thon Set November 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia to benefit both the Foundation and the bookstore. LGBT authors will read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes total for each author.
Charles Flowers, the Executive Director of The Lambda Literary Foundation will leave his position in the fall.
Broward County in Florida is proposing to balance its budget by slashing 30% of its cultural grants, a move that could impair Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall Library & Archives. The Stonewall Library & Archives houses over 18,000 LGBT-related books and audio-visual materials, as well as 5,000 historical LGBT items, many focusing on the history of gays in the South.
A West Bend, Illinois couple has asked that certain books be moved to a restricted section of the West Bend Community Memorial Library community library and that the Library Board balance its collection of books about homosexuality with books that affirm traditional “heterosexual perspectives.” A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays recently issued a statement condemning the library for continuing to neglect books by ex-gay authors. On June 2, members of the West Bend Library Board voted unanimously not to move or restrict any of the books. Meanwhile, the terms of four Library Board members were not renewed. Four men subsequently filed a lawsuit, stating certain books caused them pain, and called for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned.
Greenwood Press has issued a two-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
The Outer Alliance, a new organization, has been set up in support of LGBT advocacy in the Sci Fi/Fantasy community. More details can be found at http://outeralliance.wordpress.com/.
Kensington will publish Michael Salvatore's Between Boyfriends in June 2010.
Country Valley Press has just published a limited edition hand-sewn chapbook by Jeffery Beam of a long poem entitled, An Invocation.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Michael Cunningham is working on his latest novel, his first in four years, titled Olympia. Olympia follows an art dealer who is drawn increasingly toward his wife’s younger brother, who reminds him of the couple’s younger years.
In October, Belhue Press will publish The Manly Art of Seduction by Perry Brass.
This fall, Rebel Satori Press will publish D. Travers Scott new story collection, Love Hard.
In 2010 It Books will publish RuPaul's Workin’ It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style!, a style guide and confidence manifesto.
Queerty noted that there are reportedly two finished scripts of Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris’s first novel -- one which focuses on the college years and the other on the New York City years of characters Raymond, Nicole and Basil. The late author was in Los Angeles meeting with producers shortly before he died. Several of Harris’s friends — including Eric Jerome Dickey and Kimberla Lawson Roby — will meet with local book clubs in his place this fall.
Mike Nichols will direct Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.
Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly in talks with Universal Pictures to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice’s popular trilogy of novels The Vampire Chronicles.
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cages Aux Folles is headed to Broadway and will open in a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater on April 18, 2010.
Kudos: Among with recipients of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honor writers of exceptional talent, was Chris Adrian who received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for his short story collection A Better Angel. Among the writers receiving 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships were Chris Adrian and Stacey D’Erasmo.
Open Calls: Candace Walsh and Laura Andre are seeking submissions for And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men For Women to be published by Seal Press in 2010. Deadline is December 1, 2009. More details can be found at andthenitshifted@gmail.com and http://sites.google.com/site/andthenitshifted
Applications are now being accepted for the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award awarded annually at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. The awards, in their fourth year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each will be made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Authors may nominate themselves or another candidate by midnight October 31, 2009. For more details visit: http://www.sasfest.org/.
Also of Note: Copies of The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of my gay-themed ghost stories, published by Lethe Press, is now available through your favorite bookseller.
The gorgeous cover painting was done by Richard Taddei, a painter I have long admired. If you want to see more of Richard’s work, you can find him online at http://www.richardtaddei.com/.
Vince Liaguno, co-editor of the Stoker-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, has posted his generous review on line at Dark Scribe Magazine, which he edits and publishes. Read it at: http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/
And I am also doing a reading on October 29th in Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore with two other talented writers (and friends) who have new books coming out -- Tom Cardamone, author of Pumpkin Teeth: Stories, and Sean Meriwether, author of The Silent Hustler. Here’s the details on the event.
Tricks and Treats: Gays, Ghosts, and Goblins
Thursday, October 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Admission is free and all book sales proceeds benefit people living with HIV.
Friday, July 31, 2009
August Publishing Notes
The buzz: In the Spring of 2010 Alyson will publish Paul Russell's My Unreal Life: Memoirs of Sergey Vladimirovich Nabokoff, a meticulously researched roman a clef covering the life of the "forgotten" younger brother of Vladimir Nabokov; from wealth and position in pre-revolutionary Russia, to the halls of Cambridge, salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, long-standing friendship with Cocteau (among others) and ultimate isolation in war-torn Berlin.
In 2010, Bell Bridge Books will publish Nashville therapist Bo Sebastien's light-hearted self-help book, first in a series, Girlfriend, Wake Up and Smell the Dead Roses, Advice on Men from a Gay Friend.
In 2012, Simon & Schuster will publish Daniel Mendelsohn’s Odysseys, a literal and figurative voyage in search of the meanings of the greatest of the classics, from Homer to Aristophanes and beyond.
Clarkson Potter will publish in the fall of 2011 designer and Mad Men actor Bryan Batt's home decor book that explores Bryan's favorite spaces and, through his own witty commentary and design techniques, shows readers how to create their own stylish and enchanting spaces.
In 2010 Lethe Press will re-publish Tanith Lee’s lesbian fiction, written under the nom de plume of Esther Garber. Lethe is also introducing a new series, Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction, which will reprint the finest examples of LGBT fantasy, horror, and science-fiction. Proceeds of the book sales will help the Gaylactic Network (http://www.gaylacticnetwork.org/) a national organization for gay people and their friends, to promote science fiction, fantasy and horror and other related genres. The first title in the Paragons series is Shadow Man by Melissa Scott.
This fall St Martin’s Press is publishing You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs.
This fall Amazon Encore will release Nick Nolan's Strings Attached, a coming of age, coming out story of a gay teenage boy coming to grips with his personal passage from boyhood to manhood, as he escapes a dysfunctional family in the slums to live with his overbearing great aunt and her censorious husband and is overwhelmed by the change.
StarBooks Press has released Sextime-Erotic Stories of Time Travel, edited by Christopher Pierce, with stories by Martin Delacroix, Owen Keehnen, Jeff Mann, and others.
Bench Press has released Equal to the Earth, a new collection of poems by Jee Leong Koh.
The Vatican paid some respect to Oscar Wilde. The Guardian reported that L'Osservatore Romano ran a glowing review of a new book by Italian author Paolo Gulisano, The Portrait of Oscar Wilde.
Page Six and other media outlets covered the controversy surrounding the Arabic translation of Michael Luongo’s travel guide, Gay Travels in the Muslim World, reading “Pervert Travels in the Muslim World” across the cover.
Jerry Wheeler and Bill Holden have started a new gay book review blog called Out in Print, at www.outinprint.wordpress.com.
Author Mel Keegan has set up the GLBT Bookshelf at http://bookworld.editme.com/, a new community of writers, artists, publishers, reviewers and readers. Registration is free.
An unsound wall must be taken down and rebuilt from the ground up at Giovanni’s Room, the independent LGBT bookstore in Philadelphia. The cost of this renovation is estimated to be about $50,000. The store will remain open during the construction.
David Groff was among the three senior associates who recently joined Rob Weisbach Creative Management .
In July, the glossy New York City nightlife magazine HX was sold and the New York Blade suspended publication.
A Florida judge ruled that the will of Gabrielle Kerouac, the mother of Jack Kerouac who inherited the writer’s estate in 1969, was a forgery. Gabrielle had passed the literary estate to Kerouac's third wife, Stella, now also deceased, who gave everything to her siblings in 1990. The suit was brought by the author’s nephew Paul Blake Jr., who took over the original action filed by Kerouac's estranged (and now deceased) daughter in 1994.
HBO has optioned Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex, with Pulitzer-winning playwright Donald Margulies adapting.
The Levy Leder Company has optioned the film rights to Brent Hartinger's Geography Club, about a group of gay teenagers who start a secret gay-straight alliance and give it the most boring name they can think of in hopes that no one else will join.
Kudos: Among the Booker Prize Longlist are Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, Love and Summer by William Trevor, and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Open Calls: The Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival’s First Annual Short Fiction Contest is soliciting original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and7,000 words with GLBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.” The contest is open to authors at all stages of their careers and to stories in all genres. The entry fee is $10 per story with a 3 story limit per author. One grand prize of $250 and two second place prizes of $50 will be awarded. In addition, the top stories will be published in an anthology from Queer Mojo, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press. There will also be a book release party held during the eighth annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 13-16, 2010. The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts is January 2, 2010. Send 2 copies of each story with a completed entry form. Submissions should be in standard manuscript format. Your name and contact information should not appear on the manuscript. Entry forms are available at: www.sasfest.com.
Editor Jerry Wheeler is seeking submissions for Tented: Gay Erotic Tales from Under the Big Top, to be published by Lethe Press in 2010. Stories should be between 3500-7000 words and payment is one cent a word. Deadline is December 15, 2009. Submissions should be sent to pfloydian191@hotmail.com as Word doc attachments with “Tented” in the subject line.
Richard Labonté is seeking stories for Muscle Men, to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is Oct. 1, 2009; publication date is Spring, 2010; payment is $50-$75, depending on length, plus two copies; submissions in .doc or .rtf format to cleismuscles@gmail.com.
StarBooks Press has its current submissions requests posted at http://www.starbookspress.com/call.php. Among the forthcoming books are Men at Noon, Monsters At Midnight - Erotic Stories of Shapeshifters, Demon Lovers and Creatures of the Night!; Homo Thugs - Erotic tales of Gangstas', pimps, and thugs!; Video Boys; Rock and Roll Over and Teammates.
Passages: E. Lynn Harris died July 23, 2009 in Beverly Hills of heart disease while on a book tour for his most recent novel. He was 54. Harris's novels depicted the experiences of African-American gay men and include Invisible Life, If This World Were Mine, Abide With Me, Not a Day Goes By, Any Way the Wind Blows, I Say a Little Prayer, and Basketball Jones. He was also the author of a memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted. Harris also founded the E. Lynn Harris Better Days Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides support to aspiring writers and artists.
In 2010, Bell Bridge Books will publish Nashville therapist Bo Sebastien's light-hearted self-help book, first in a series, Girlfriend, Wake Up and Smell the Dead Roses, Advice on Men from a Gay Friend.
In 2012, Simon & Schuster will publish Daniel Mendelsohn’s Odysseys, a literal and figurative voyage in search of the meanings of the greatest of the classics, from Homer to Aristophanes and beyond.
Clarkson Potter will publish in the fall of 2011 designer and Mad Men actor Bryan Batt's home decor book that explores Bryan's favorite spaces and, through his own witty commentary and design techniques, shows readers how to create their own stylish and enchanting spaces.
In 2010 Lethe Press will re-publish Tanith Lee’s lesbian fiction, written under the nom de plume of Esther Garber. Lethe is also introducing a new series, Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction, which will reprint the finest examples of LGBT fantasy, horror, and science-fiction. Proceeds of the book sales will help the Gaylactic Network (http://www.gaylacticnetwork.org/) a national organization for gay people and their friends, to promote science fiction, fantasy and horror and other related genres. The first title in the Paragons series is Shadow Man by Melissa Scott.
This fall St Martin’s Press is publishing You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs.
This fall Amazon Encore will release Nick Nolan's Strings Attached, a coming of age, coming out story of a gay teenage boy coming to grips with his personal passage from boyhood to manhood, as he escapes a dysfunctional family in the slums to live with his overbearing great aunt and her censorious husband and is overwhelmed by the change.
StarBooks Press has released Sextime-Erotic Stories of Time Travel, edited by Christopher Pierce, with stories by Martin Delacroix, Owen Keehnen, Jeff Mann, and others.
Bench Press has released Equal to the Earth, a new collection of poems by Jee Leong Koh.
The Vatican paid some respect to Oscar Wilde. The Guardian reported that L'Osservatore Romano ran a glowing review of a new book by Italian author Paolo Gulisano, The Portrait of Oscar Wilde.
Page Six and other media outlets covered the controversy surrounding the Arabic translation of Michael Luongo’s travel guide, Gay Travels in the Muslim World, reading “Pervert Travels in the Muslim World” across the cover.
Jerry Wheeler and Bill Holden have started a new gay book review blog called Out in Print, at www.outinprint.wordpress.com.
Author Mel Keegan has set up the GLBT Bookshelf at http://bookworld.editme.com/, a new community of writers, artists, publishers, reviewers and readers. Registration is free.
An unsound wall must be taken down and rebuilt from the ground up at Giovanni’s Room, the independent LGBT bookstore in Philadelphia. The cost of this renovation is estimated to be about $50,000. The store will remain open during the construction.
David Groff was among the three senior associates who recently joined Rob Weisbach Creative Management .
In July, the glossy New York City nightlife magazine HX was sold and the New York Blade suspended publication.
A Florida judge ruled that the will of Gabrielle Kerouac, the mother of Jack Kerouac who inherited the writer’s estate in 1969, was a forgery. Gabrielle had passed the literary estate to Kerouac's third wife, Stella, now also deceased, who gave everything to her siblings in 1990. The suit was brought by the author’s nephew Paul Blake Jr., who took over the original action filed by Kerouac's estranged (and now deceased) daughter in 1994.
HBO has optioned Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex, with Pulitzer-winning playwright Donald Margulies adapting.
The Levy Leder Company has optioned the film rights to Brent Hartinger's Geography Club, about a group of gay teenagers who start a secret gay-straight alliance and give it the most boring name they can think of in hopes that no one else will join.
Kudos: Among the Booker Prize Longlist are Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, Love and Summer by William Trevor, and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Open Calls: The Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival’s First Annual Short Fiction Contest is soliciting original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and7,000 words with GLBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.” The contest is open to authors at all stages of their careers and to stories in all genres. The entry fee is $10 per story with a 3 story limit per author. One grand prize of $250 and two second place prizes of $50 will be awarded. In addition, the top stories will be published in an anthology from Queer Mojo, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press. There will also be a book release party held during the eighth annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 13-16, 2010. The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts is January 2, 2010. Send 2 copies of each story with a completed entry form. Submissions should be in standard manuscript format. Your name and contact information should not appear on the manuscript. Entry forms are available at: www.sasfest.com.
Editor Jerry Wheeler is seeking submissions for Tented: Gay Erotic Tales from Under the Big Top, to be published by Lethe Press in 2010. Stories should be between 3500-7000 words and payment is one cent a word. Deadline is December 15, 2009. Submissions should be sent to pfloydian191@hotmail.com as Word doc attachments with “Tented” in the subject line.
Richard Labonté is seeking stories for Muscle Men, to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is Oct. 1, 2009; publication date is Spring, 2010; payment is $50-$75, depending on length, plus two copies; submissions in .doc or .rtf format to cleismuscles@gmail.com.
StarBooks Press has its current submissions requests posted at http://www.starbookspress.com/call.php. Among the forthcoming books are Men at Noon, Monsters At Midnight - Erotic Stories of Shapeshifters, Demon Lovers and Creatures of the Night!; Homo Thugs - Erotic tales of Gangstas', pimps, and thugs!; Video Boys; Rock and Roll Over and Teammates.
Passages: E. Lynn Harris died July 23, 2009 in Beverly Hills of heart disease while on a book tour for his most recent novel. He was 54. Harris's novels depicted the experiences of African-American gay men and include Invisible Life, If This World Were Mine, Abide With Me, Not a Day Goes By, Any Way the Wind Blows, I Say a Little Prayer, and Basketball Jones. He was also the author of a memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted. Harris also founded the E. Lynn Harris Better Days Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides support to aspiring writers and artists.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
July Publishing Notes
The buzz: Screen Gems has acquired the rights to Beautiful Girl by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham, a story that "concerns a shy but brainy high school girl who returns for senior year after having slimmed down six dress sizes. She finds herself flirting with the handsome English lit teacher, but the mutual crush turns deadly when the teacher's obsession with the student compels him to exact maniacal revenge on everyone who was cruel to her."
Keith Orr, co-owner of the Common Language Bookstore, the GLBTQ bookstore in Ann Arbor, sent an email to customers saying that the store was not making enough sales to support itself and needed help from customers and the community. Orr and his partner Martin Contreras have been subsidizing the store with the personal savings and with money from another business they own the aut Bar.
Writer Patrick Gale will be reading from his 2009 novel The Whole Day Through and answering questions from the audience at the Dutch Bookshop Vrolijk, Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam: July 11th at 5 p.m. More details at www.vrolijk.nu/homo-boek/book-patrick-gale-whole-day-through.html.
Alyson will publish Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right in the Spring of 2010.
Alyson will also publish Ryan Field's An Officer and His Gentleman, a gay erotic romance about a small-town aspiring chef and his military lover, and EM Lynley's Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells, a gay erotic romance about a New York reporter who travels to Texas to cover the story of a real-life "runaway bride," only to fall in love with the groom and discover the bride's shocking secret.
Here Networks has completed a merger with PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Holdings include the Advocate magazine, Here Studios and Here Films. Other assets include a television company and online properties Gay.com and Planetout.com.
Kudos: Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, an anthology of queer horror tales edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology from the Horror Writers of America.
Jade Donigan of Ponderay, ID, Hannah Kapp-Klote of Lawrence, KS, and Calen Winn of Vashon, WA, are the Queer Foundation Scholors for 2009-2010. Each student received a $1,000 scholarship for study at the college of their choice.
Nicola Griffith and Scott Cranin have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Open Calls: Todd Gregory is accepting submissions for an anthology of erotic gay vampire tales titled Blood Sacraments, to be published by Bold Strokes Books in October 2010. Deadline is October 1, 2009. Submissions must be mailed to: Todd Gregory, c/o Greg Herren, 5500 Prytania Street #215, New Orleans, LA 70115. Questions can be emailed to gregwrites@gmail.com.
Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both print and web versions. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations. For more details visit: http://www.maryliterary.blogspot.com/
The Queer Foundation Scholar, an electronic newsletter published in March and August, is looking for essays from undergraduate or graduate students. Photographs and graphic art are also welcome if they are part of a creative work. If accepted, authors of submissions will receive $100 paid toward tuition and fees at their college or university. Submissions may be sent to the editor at any time to rverzasconi@msn.com.
“The Man in the Mirror” in Icarus: My ghost story, “The Man in the Mirror,” is in the first issue of Icarus, a new gay speculative fiction magazine, edited by Steve Berman, which also featuring work by Jeff Mann, Joel Lane, and Tom Cardamone. Icarus is a full-color quarterly, devoted to tales of gay fantasy, horror, science-fiction, and “everything else weird that falls through the cracks.” Craig Gidney is the assistant editor, Toby Johnson is the graphic designer, and Steve Berman and Lethe Press are the publishing forces behind the new magazine.
The single issue price of Icarus is $13 plus postage at http://lethepress.magcloud.com/. To order a year's subscription (4 issues), send $50 via Paypal to lethepress@aol.com. Subscription price includes free shipping and subscribers will receive a gratis copy of the latest edition of Wilde Stories, Lethe’s annual anthology of the year's best gay speculative fiction, with their 2nd issue of Icarus. Electronic editions of Icarus are also available. Contact lethepress@aol.com for more information.
Keith Orr, co-owner of the Common Language Bookstore, the GLBTQ bookstore in Ann Arbor, sent an email to customers saying that the store was not making enough sales to support itself and needed help from customers and the community. Orr and his partner Martin Contreras have been subsidizing the store with the personal savings and with money from another business they own the aut Bar.
Writer Patrick Gale will be reading from his 2009 novel The Whole Day Through and answering questions from the audience at the Dutch Bookshop Vrolijk, Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam: July 11th at 5 p.m. More details at www.vrolijk.nu/homo-boek/book-patrick-gale-whole-day-through.html.
Alyson will publish Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right in the Spring of 2010.
Alyson will also publish Ryan Field's An Officer and His Gentleman, a gay erotic romance about a small-town aspiring chef and his military lover, and EM Lynley's Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells, a gay erotic romance about a New York reporter who travels to Texas to cover the story of a real-life "runaway bride," only to fall in love with the groom and discover the bride's shocking secret.
Here Networks has completed a merger with PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Holdings include the Advocate magazine, Here Studios and Here Films. Other assets include a television company and online properties Gay.com and Planetout.com.
Kudos: Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, an anthology of queer horror tales edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology from the Horror Writers of America.
Jade Donigan of Ponderay, ID, Hannah Kapp-Klote of Lawrence, KS, and Calen Winn of Vashon, WA, are the Queer Foundation Scholors for 2009-2010. Each student received a $1,000 scholarship for study at the college of their choice.
Nicola Griffith and Scott Cranin have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Open Calls: Todd Gregory is accepting submissions for an anthology of erotic gay vampire tales titled Blood Sacraments, to be published by Bold Strokes Books in October 2010. Deadline is October 1, 2009. Submissions must be mailed to: Todd Gregory, c/o Greg Herren, 5500 Prytania Street #215, New Orleans, LA 70115. Questions can be emailed to gregwrites@gmail.com.
Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both print and web versions. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations. For more details visit: http://www.maryliterary.blogspot.com/
The Queer Foundation Scholar, an electronic newsletter published in March and August, is looking for essays from undergraduate or graduate students. Photographs and graphic art are also welcome if they are part of a creative work. If accepted, authors of submissions will receive $100 paid toward tuition and fees at their college or university. Submissions may be sent to the editor at any time to rverzasconi@msn.com.
“The Man in the Mirror” in Icarus: My ghost story, “The Man in the Mirror,” is in the first issue of Icarus, a new gay speculative fiction magazine, edited by Steve Berman, which also featuring work by Jeff Mann, Joel Lane, and Tom Cardamone. Icarus is a full-color quarterly, devoted to tales of gay fantasy, horror, science-fiction, and “everything else weird that falls through the cracks.” Craig Gidney is the assistant editor, Toby Johnson is the graphic designer, and Steve Berman and Lethe Press are the publishing forces behind the new magazine.
The single issue price of Icarus is $13 plus postage at http://lethepress.magcloud.com/. To order a year's subscription (4 issues), send $50 via Paypal to lethepress@aol.com. Subscription price includes free shipping and subscribers will receive a gratis copy of the latest edition of Wilde Stories, Lethe’s annual anthology of the year's best gay speculative fiction, with their 2nd issue of Icarus. Electronic editions of Icarus are also available. Contact lethepress@aol.com for more information.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
June Publishing Notes
City Lights is releasing this month Smash the Church, Smash the State!, an anthology of gay activist writings edited by Tommi Avicolli Meccca.
Also this month, Queer Mojo Press is releasing Trebor Healey’s collection of short fiction, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories.
Perry Brass, Robert W. Cabell, and Doric Wilson will read at Rebels and Rhinestones, Thursday, June 11, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library, 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan. The event is hosted by Francine Trevens and sponsored by the Greater New York Independent Publishers Association (GNYIPA), and co-sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing. There is a requested donation of $8.
Doric Wilson, John Finch, Steven Hauck, Robert W. Cabell, Perry Brass, Heidi Russell, and others are scheduled for Stonewall + 40, Thursday, June 18 at 6 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway in Manhattan. The event is free and open to the public.
The fourth issue of Ganymede, a gay literary and art journal, is now available. Highlights include a rare reprint of Oscar Wilde’s story, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” fiction by Bruce Nugent, Ryan Doyle, Jeffries Schwartz, new work by seven poets, Ian Duncan’s essay on porn star Matthew Rush, and portfolios on magic realism painter George Tooker and seven photographers. Details and sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Mavety Media Group has shuttered all of their gay magazines—including Mandate, Torso, Honcho, Inches, and Playguy. Among this blogger’s first published work was short fiction that appeared in Mandate in the 1980s.
Twelve Press will publish Christopher Bram's Eminent Outlaws, a group biography about gay American writers who changed the culture.
In the Spring of 2010, Harmony will publish Bryan Batt's She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother, about what it was like being raised by an eccentric but very loving Mom in 1970s New Orleans.
Thom Bierdz, actor, artist, and author of the memoir Forgiving Troy, returns to The Young and the Restless in a hush-hush story line twenty years after his last appearance on the top-rated soap.
BBC2 announced that it will adapt Sarah Waters' fourth novel, The Night Watch, into a ninety-minute film.
This month Square One is releasing a paperback edition of Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life by Elliot Tiber with Tom Monte to coincide with the movie version directed by Ang Lee.
David Brendan Hope’s play The Beautiful Johanna will be part of the North Carolina Stage's Catalyst Series downtown in January 2010. His play The Loves of Mr. Lincoln, about the President’s relationship with Joshua Speed, will have a reading June 5 in New York at the BGT Theater.
Nathan Manske has launched a website, http://www.imfromdriftwood.com/, which is a compilation of "true stories by gay people from all over," with a goal to link gays and lesbians, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle award winners are: In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain by Andrea Weiss (Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction); Drifting Toward Love by Kai Wright (Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction); Interpretive Work by Elizabeth Bradfield (Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry); Boy with Flowers by Ely Shipley (Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry); Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg (Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction); The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction). Martin Duberman was honored with the 2009 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Carole DeSanti won the Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award.
The Lambda Literary Awards were announced May 28, 2009. A complete list of the winners can be found on the Foundation Web site at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.
Sarah Schulman has been named the 2009 winner of the Kessler Award, given to a scholar who has, over a number of years, produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBT Studies.
Carol Ann Duffy became Britain’s first lesbian Poet Laureate.
Jim Duggins, Michael Thomas Ford, G. Winston James, Radclyffe, and Jess Wells were inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at the annual literary festival in New Orleans. Michael Lowenthal and Elana Dykewomon received the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize.
Open Calls: Windy City Times is accepting poetry and prose submissions for their 6th Annual Pride Literary Supplement, edited by Kathie Bergquist and Owen Keehnen. This year’s theme is Stonewall 40: Looking Out. Prose has a 300 word limit, 3 poems submission is the maxium allowed. Word documents should be e-mailed to WCTPride@gmail.com. Deadline is June 10, 2009.
Ganymede, a literary/art print journal by and for gay men published quarterly as a paperback book in New York is seeking gay male writers of short stories, essays, poetry, reviews. Details, tables of contents, readable sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/. Submission guidelines: http://ganymedesubmissions.blogspot.com/.
Tincture, an imprint of Lethe Press for work by LGBT writers of color, is seeking submissions for a 2010 Gay Latino Fiction Anthology. Deadline: November 1, 2009. Unpublished short stories or novel excerpts of up to 7500 words. Submissions can be sent to LatinoLethePress@gmail.com.
Aesthetica magazine, a UK-based international arts and culture publication, is seeking poetry, fiction, artwork and photography for their Annual Creative Works Competition.
For full details visit: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm. Deadline is August 31, 2009.
Passages: Rodger McFarlane died May 15, 2009 in New Mexico. He was 54. McFarlane committed suicide while traveling to New Mexico. He was a former executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis and executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. McFarlane also authored The Complete Bedside Companion: No-Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill, and most recently penned the afterward for Larry Kramer’s The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. In 1993, he coproduced the Pulitzer Prize–nominated production of Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, the sequel to The Normal Heart.
Also this month, Queer Mojo Press is releasing Trebor Healey’s collection of short fiction, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories.
Perry Brass, Robert W. Cabell, and Doric Wilson will read at Rebels and Rhinestones, Thursday, June 11, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library, 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan. The event is hosted by Francine Trevens and sponsored by the Greater New York Independent Publishers Association (GNYIPA), and co-sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing. There is a requested donation of $8.
Doric Wilson, John Finch, Steven Hauck, Robert W. Cabell, Perry Brass, Heidi Russell, and others are scheduled for Stonewall + 40, Thursday, June 18 at 6 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway in Manhattan. The event is free and open to the public.
The fourth issue of Ganymede, a gay literary and art journal, is now available. Highlights include a rare reprint of Oscar Wilde’s story, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” fiction by Bruce Nugent, Ryan Doyle, Jeffries Schwartz, new work by seven poets, Ian Duncan’s essay on porn star Matthew Rush, and portfolios on magic realism painter George Tooker and seven photographers. Details and sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Mavety Media Group has shuttered all of their gay magazines—including Mandate, Torso, Honcho, Inches, and Playguy. Among this blogger’s first published work was short fiction that appeared in Mandate in the 1980s.
Twelve Press will publish Christopher Bram's Eminent Outlaws, a group biography about gay American writers who changed the culture.
In the Spring of 2010, Harmony will publish Bryan Batt's She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother, about what it was like being raised by an eccentric but very loving Mom in 1970s New Orleans.
Thom Bierdz, actor, artist, and author of the memoir Forgiving Troy, returns to The Young and the Restless in a hush-hush story line twenty years after his last appearance on the top-rated soap.
BBC2 announced that it will adapt Sarah Waters' fourth novel, The Night Watch, into a ninety-minute film.
This month Square One is releasing a paperback edition of Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life by Elliot Tiber with Tom Monte to coincide with the movie version directed by Ang Lee.
David Brendan Hope’s play The Beautiful Johanna will be part of the North Carolina Stage's Catalyst Series downtown in January 2010. His play The Loves of Mr. Lincoln, about the President’s relationship with Joshua Speed, will have a reading June 5 in New York at the BGT Theater.
Nathan Manske has launched a website, http://www.imfromdriftwood.com/, which is a compilation of "true stories by gay people from all over," with a goal to link gays and lesbians, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle award winners are: In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain by Andrea Weiss (Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction); Drifting Toward Love by Kai Wright (Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction); Interpretive Work by Elizabeth Bradfield (Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry); Boy with Flowers by Ely Shipley (Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry); Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg (Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction); The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction). Martin Duberman was honored with the 2009 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Carole DeSanti won the Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award.
The Lambda Literary Awards were announced May 28, 2009. A complete list of the winners can be found on the Foundation Web site at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.
Sarah Schulman has been named the 2009 winner of the Kessler Award, given to a scholar who has, over a number of years, produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBT Studies.
Carol Ann Duffy became Britain’s first lesbian Poet Laureate.
Jim Duggins, Michael Thomas Ford, G. Winston James, Radclyffe, and Jess Wells were inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at the annual literary festival in New Orleans. Michael Lowenthal and Elana Dykewomon received the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize.
Open Calls: Windy City Times is accepting poetry and prose submissions for their 6th Annual Pride Literary Supplement, edited by Kathie Bergquist and Owen Keehnen. This year’s theme is Stonewall 40: Looking Out. Prose has a 300 word limit, 3 poems submission is the maxium allowed. Word documents should be e-mailed to WCTPride@gmail.com. Deadline is June 10, 2009.
Ganymede, a literary/art print journal by and for gay men published quarterly as a paperback book in New York is seeking gay male writers of short stories, essays, poetry, reviews. Details, tables of contents, readable sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/. Submission guidelines: http://ganymedesubmissions.blogspot.com/.
Tincture, an imprint of Lethe Press for work by LGBT writers of color, is seeking submissions for a 2010 Gay Latino Fiction Anthology. Deadline: November 1, 2009. Unpublished short stories or novel excerpts of up to 7500 words. Submissions can be sent to LatinoLethePress@gmail.com.
Aesthetica magazine, a UK-based international arts and culture publication, is seeking poetry, fiction, artwork and photography for their Annual Creative Works Competition.
For full details visit: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm. Deadline is August 31, 2009.
Passages: Rodger McFarlane died May 15, 2009 in New Mexico. He was 54. McFarlane committed suicide while traveling to New Mexico. He was a former executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis and executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. McFarlane also authored The Complete Bedside Companion: No-Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill, and most recently penned the afterward for Larry Kramer’s The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. In 1993, he coproduced the Pulitzer Prize–nominated production of Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, the sequel to The Normal Heart.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
May Publishing Notes
The buzz: In 2010, Seal Press will publish Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman's nonfiction anthology Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation.
This fall, Dark Scribe Press will publish Lee Thomas's short story collection In the Closet, Under the Bed.
Rebel Satori Press will publish Shane Allison’s debut volume of poetry this fall, tentatively titled Twenties. Other new titles include Shy by Kevin Killian, U by Rob Stephenson, Love Hard by D. Travers Scott, Chick Band by Rakelle Valencia, Against by Riley MacLeod, DeVante's Coven by S.M. Johnson, Pop-Up Book of Death by Chad Helder, and our bodies are beauty inducers by jj hastain.
Alyson will publish Scott Kenan's memoir, Seeking the Kindness of Strangers: My Days with Tennessee Williams, about working with the playwright during six months in 1981.
Shelf Awareness reported that David Levithan was promoted to VP and Editorial Director of Scholastic Trade Publishing. Levithan is the author of Boy Meets Boy and co-wrote Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.
Andrew Beierle is launching AuthorEyes, an expanded manuscript review and author promotion resource to his current marketing communications and web-design services.
Lethe Press will be releasing in early summer of this year the first issue of Icarus, a gay speculative fiction magazine. The inaugural issue will contain an essay by Jeff Mann, fiction by Joel Lane and Jameson Currier, reviews of recent publications, and pieces on the Gaylactic Network, a national fandom organization for gay men.
Nominees for the Lambda Literary Awards will read May 5 at the LGBT Center in New York, May 12 at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, May 14 at the Gerber/Hart Library in Chicago, and May 16 at the Saints & Sinners Festival in New Orleans. For more details visit the Foundation’s Web site.
In a recent survey conducted by OnePoll.com, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird finished ahead of the Bible as the most inspirational book.
The most challenged book for the third year in a row according to the American Library Association was And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, based on the two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who for six years formed a couple, which the ALA said "was cited for being anti-family, pro-gay and anti-religion."
Stonewall Library and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, FL, the nation's largest independent circulating library of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender materials, will be opening a new facility in the downtown ArtServe library building. The Stonewall Library and Archives is a museum, gallery, and cultural center for locals, tourists, researchers, and scholars. The library was founded in 1973 by a group of local college students who were exchanging books.
In Singapore, director Glen Goei staged an all male cast dressed as men of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest which prompted a media advisory of “16 years and above” on all its publicity material, with the notice, “Re-interpretation, all-male cast.”
Liberace: The Man, the Music, and the Memories is coming this fall to Broadway, starring Wayland Pickard as glittery pianist.
John Cameron Mitchell will direct Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, which David Lindsay-Abaire adapted from his stage play.
Jimmy, by Marie Brassard, about a gay hairdresser born inside the dream of another man, will be presented May 27 through June 14 at Performance Space 122 in the East Village.
The new musical version of Vanities, Jack Heifner’s long-running off-Broadway play, will begin previews off Broadway at Second Stage Theater on June 30.
In Palm Springs, California, The Thorny Theater’s summer productions include Blowing Whistles by Matthew Dodd, Forever After by Doric Wilson, and Chiaroscuro by Kenneth N. Kurtz.
The Advocate reported that TLA Releasing plans to sell or license its library of over 200 gay, horror, and international titles for DVD, TV, and video on demand. The company is also looking for a sales organization or to enter into a strategic partnership to release the films they have already produced or acquired.
And also on Easter Weekend in April, 2009, Amazon.com experienced a “glitch” which deranked GLBT titles from its inventory. Bloggers and Tweeters responded in fury and most mainstream newspapers and Web sites picked up the story. The American Booksellers Association also offered suggested guidelines to booksellers for appropriate responses to the issues raised from the Amazon delistings.
Kudos: Sam J. Miller received the Bronx Writers’ Center Literary Fellowship.
Larry Kramer was honored by Yale University’s Gay and Lesbian Association with the group’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. The author took the opportunity to criticize Yale for what he called a “conspiracy of silence” on gay history.
Among the recipients of the 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships were Susan Griffin, Stacey D'Erasmo, and Chris Adrian.
Band of Thebes noted that Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jilliam Tamaki (cousins), about a girl’s intense and brief affair with one of her teachers at an all girls high school, was a nominee for the Eisner Award for best graphic books in four categories: Best Teen Publication, Best Writer, Best New Graphic Album, and Best Penciler/Inker.
Band of Thebes also reported that Greek-Australian Christos Tsiolkas was shortlisted for Australia's top literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, for his novel The Slap.
The Indian Clerk, by David Leavitt, was among the finalists for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Leslie Feinberg, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White are this year's recipients of the Pioneer Award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation at their annual Awards Ceremony on May 28, 2009 in New York City.
Open Calls: Windy City Times is accepting poetry and prose submissions for their 6th Annual Pride Literary Supplement, edited by Kathie Bergquist and Owen Keehnen. This year’s theme is Stonewall 40: Looking Out. Prose has a 300 word limit, 3 poems submission is the maxium allowed. Word documents should be e-mailed to WCTPride@gmail.com. Deadline is June 10, 2009.
The UK literary magazine Chroma is seeking submissions for a special issue on Utopias, guest edited by Sophie Mayer. Deadline is June 14, 2009. More info can be found at http://chromajournal.co.uk/
Velvet Mafia is seeking provocative fiction, poetry, and erotica to celebrate its Eighth Anniversary. All work should incorporate something “eight.” E-mail submissions to: editor@velvetmafia.com
Editor Steve Soucy is seeking submissions for the anthology Art from Art, a collection of short fiction featuring stories that are connected to or inspired by a work of art. Deadline is July 31, 2009. Submissions with a brief bio via should be emailed to shsoucy@modernistpress.com.
Editor Tracy Nectoux is seeking submissions for an anthology of personal accounts by librarians and library workers relating experiences of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer at work titled Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians. The volume will be published by Library Juice Press as part of the series Gender and Sexuality in Librarianship. Deadline for summaries is May 31, 2009. Submit a brief summary (3 paragraphs maximum) and a short author’s statement or URLs where appropriate to tnectoux@illinois.edu. Deadline for manuscripts is December 31, 2009.
Passages: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a prominent theorist who is often cited as one of the founders of queer theory, died April 12, 2009. She was 58. Sedgwick authored several books on gender and sexual orientation, including Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire; Epistemology of the Closet; and Tendencies.
This fall, Dark Scribe Press will publish Lee Thomas's short story collection In the Closet, Under the Bed.
Rebel Satori Press will publish Shane Allison’s debut volume of poetry this fall, tentatively titled Twenties. Other new titles include Shy by Kevin Killian, U by Rob Stephenson, Love Hard by D. Travers Scott, Chick Band by Rakelle Valencia, Against by Riley MacLeod, DeVante's Coven by S.M. Johnson, Pop-Up Book of Death by Chad Helder, and our bodies are beauty inducers by jj hastain.
Alyson will publish Scott Kenan's memoir, Seeking the Kindness of Strangers: My Days with Tennessee Williams, about working with the playwright during six months in 1981.
Shelf Awareness reported that David Levithan was promoted to VP and Editorial Director of Scholastic Trade Publishing. Levithan is the author of Boy Meets Boy and co-wrote Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.
Andrew Beierle is launching AuthorEyes, an expanded manuscript review and author promotion resource to his current marketing communications and web-design services.
Lethe Press will be releasing in early summer of this year the first issue of Icarus, a gay speculative fiction magazine. The inaugural issue will contain an essay by Jeff Mann, fiction by Joel Lane and Jameson Currier, reviews of recent publications, and pieces on the Gaylactic Network, a national fandom organization for gay men.
Nominees for the Lambda Literary Awards will read May 5 at the LGBT Center in New York, May 12 at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, May 14 at the Gerber/Hart Library in Chicago, and May 16 at the Saints & Sinners Festival in New Orleans. For more details visit the Foundation’s Web site.
In a recent survey conducted by OnePoll.com, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird finished ahead of the Bible as the most inspirational book.
The most challenged book for the third year in a row according to the American Library Association was And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, based on the two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who for six years formed a couple, which the ALA said "was cited for being anti-family, pro-gay and anti-religion."
Stonewall Library and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, FL, the nation's largest independent circulating library of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender materials, will be opening a new facility in the downtown ArtServe library building. The Stonewall Library and Archives is a museum, gallery, and cultural center for locals, tourists, researchers, and scholars. The library was founded in 1973 by a group of local college students who were exchanging books.
In Singapore, director Glen Goei staged an all male cast dressed as men of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest which prompted a media advisory of “16 years and above” on all its publicity material, with the notice, “Re-interpretation, all-male cast.”
Liberace: The Man, the Music, and the Memories is coming this fall to Broadway, starring Wayland Pickard as glittery pianist.
John Cameron Mitchell will direct Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, which David Lindsay-Abaire adapted from his stage play.
Jimmy, by Marie Brassard, about a gay hairdresser born inside the dream of another man, will be presented May 27 through June 14 at Performance Space 122 in the East Village.
The new musical version of Vanities, Jack Heifner’s long-running off-Broadway play, will begin previews off Broadway at Second Stage Theater on June 30.
In Palm Springs, California, The Thorny Theater’s summer productions include Blowing Whistles by Matthew Dodd, Forever After by Doric Wilson, and Chiaroscuro by Kenneth N. Kurtz.
The Advocate reported that TLA Releasing plans to sell or license its library of over 200 gay, horror, and international titles for DVD, TV, and video on demand. The company is also looking for a sales organization or to enter into a strategic partnership to release the films they have already produced or acquired.
And also on Easter Weekend in April, 2009, Amazon.com experienced a “glitch” which deranked GLBT titles from its inventory. Bloggers and Tweeters responded in fury and most mainstream newspapers and Web sites picked up the story. The American Booksellers Association also offered suggested guidelines to booksellers for appropriate responses to the issues raised from the Amazon delistings.
Kudos: Sam J. Miller received the Bronx Writers’ Center Literary Fellowship.
Larry Kramer was honored by Yale University’s Gay and Lesbian Association with the group’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. The author took the opportunity to criticize Yale for what he called a “conspiracy of silence” on gay history.
Among the recipients of the 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships were Susan Griffin, Stacey D'Erasmo, and Chris Adrian.
Band of Thebes noted that Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jilliam Tamaki (cousins), about a girl’s intense and brief affair with one of her teachers at an all girls high school, was a nominee for the Eisner Award for best graphic books in four categories: Best Teen Publication, Best Writer, Best New Graphic Album, and Best Penciler/Inker.
Band of Thebes also reported that Greek-Australian Christos Tsiolkas was shortlisted for Australia's top literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, for his novel The Slap.
The Indian Clerk, by David Leavitt, was among the finalists for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Leslie Feinberg, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White are this year's recipients of the Pioneer Award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation at their annual Awards Ceremony on May 28, 2009 in New York City.
Open Calls: Windy City Times is accepting poetry and prose submissions for their 6th Annual Pride Literary Supplement, edited by Kathie Bergquist and Owen Keehnen. This year’s theme is Stonewall 40: Looking Out. Prose has a 300 word limit, 3 poems submission is the maxium allowed. Word documents should be e-mailed to WCTPride@gmail.com. Deadline is June 10, 2009.
The UK literary magazine Chroma is seeking submissions for a special issue on Utopias, guest edited by Sophie Mayer. Deadline is June 14, 2009. More info can be found at http://chromajournal.co.uk/
Velvet Mafia is seeking provocative fiction, poetry, and erotica to celebrate its Eighth Anniversary. All work should incorporate something “eight.” E-mail submissions to: editor@velvetmafia.com
Editor Steve Soucy is seeking submissions for the anthology Art from Art, a collection of short fiction featuring stories that are connected to or inspired by a work of art. Deadline is July 31, 2009. Submissions with a brief bio via should be emailed to shsoucy@modernistpress.com.
Editor Tracy Nectoux is seeking submissions for an anthology of personal accounts by librarians and library workers relating experiences of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer at work titled Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians. The volume will be published by Library Juice Press as part of the series Gender and Sexuality in Librarianship. Deadline for summaries is May 31, 2009. Submit a brief summary (3 paragraphs maximum) and a short author’s statement or URLs where appropriate to tnectoux@illinois.edu. Deadline for manuscripts is December 31, 2009.
Passages: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a prominent theorist who is often cited as one of the founders of queer theory, died April 12, 2009. She was 58. Sedgwick authored several books on gender and sexual orientation, including Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire; Epistemology of the Closet; and Tendencies.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
April Publishing Notes
The buzz: This fall Alyson will publish Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, edited by Philip Clark and David Groff. Contributors will include Thomas Avena, Tim Dlugos, Tory Dent, Essex Hemphill, Paul Monette, George Whitmore, and others.
In April, Poets Wear Prada Press will publish Jee Leong Koh’s first full-length collection Equal to the Earth. Koh blogs here.
This spring, Rebel Satori Press will published a tenth anniversary (and revised) edition of Emanuel Xavier’s novel Christ Like.
Picador will publish Wayne Koestenbaum's Humiliation, exploring the connection between our private experiences of humiliation and our current fascination with the public humiliation of others.
This fall Alyson will also publish Women of the Bite, edited by Cecilia Tan, a lesbian vampire erotica anthology, first published as an e-book by RavenousRomance.com.
The University of Chicago Press will publish Alice Kaplan's To Live in France, the stories of three women who went to live in France as students: Jacqueline Bouvier (1949-1950), Susan Sontag (1957-1958), and Angela Davis (1963-1964).
Among the new book releases with videos is the novel I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin by Stephens Gerard Malone. View it on You Tube here.
Amid growing controversy and threats of violence, Alekper Aliyev’s Artush And Zaur, a gay novel of a doomed love affair between two men during the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been removed from the shelves of Azeri bookstores, Reuters reported.
Author Lyndon Evans will be doing LGBT themed op-ed blogs for the New Times in Connecticut. Evans also blogs here.
The Bay Area Reporter weighed in on the North Beach incident involving Mark Doty while the poet was in San Francisco. The article is here. Doty also wrote about the incident on his blog.
Among the panels being planned for this year’s Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 14-17, are “Tales of the New Depression: The Realities of the Modern Market,” “Shameless: The Author’s Art of Self-Promotion,” “Making Time for Creativity,” “How to Write With a Full Time Job,” and “The Versatile Writer: Writing in Different Genres.”
PEN World Voices festival will include a panel on April 30 on gay writers Reinaldo Arenas and Blai Bonet. Panelists include Jaime Manrique, Biel Mesquida, Margalida Pons, Carles Rebassa, and Manuel Vázquez Portal. The event is free and open to the public at Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 65 Fifth Avenue.
Rob Weisbach is starting a "new generation management company," Rob Weisbach Creative Management, designed to "re-conceive the traditional literary agency as a cross-training development company--one that will work with new and established talent on all aspects of career building."
Craig Gidney has become editor of Lethe Press. Steve Berman remains as publisher. One of Gidney's top priorities is the establishment of the Tincture imprint, which will feature the work by gay people of color.
Christopher K. Navratil is now the publisher of Running Press.
This fall Arsenal Pulp Press will launch Queer Film Classics, a new series of books on LGBT cinema, edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays.
Hansen Publishing will publish Gregg Barrios's Rancho Pancho, a two-act play that explores the turbulent and passionate relationship between playwright Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez, who inspired the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, which follows the relationship from the summer of 1946 on Nantucket Island with novelist Carson McCullers to the summer of 1947 in Provincetown.
Hansen will also publish David Kaplan's Tenn at One Hundred, a retrospective collection of edited essays marking Tennessee Williams one hundredth birthday and his legacy as a premier American playwright.
Next spring, Scribner will publish Actor James Franco's collection of short stories.
Stephen Spinella and Linda Emond have joined the cast of Tony Kushner’s Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, a new work that will have its premiere at the Guthrie Theater this spring.
Ugly Betty star Michael Urie will star in The Tempermentals, a new play by Jon Marans, set to begin April 30 at the Barrow Group Studio Theater in Manhattan. The play is about the origins of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by the activist Harry Hay in 1950, when “temperamental” was a code word for homosexual.
In Grandfield, Oklahoma, a high school teacher was reportedly fired for having students produce their own short films about Matthew Shepard, after watching The Laramie Project.
Embren Entertainment will release the film The Big Gay Musical this summer. The story follows Paul and Eddie, starring in a meta-musical titled Adam and Steve Just the Way God Made 'Em.
Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, and Katie Holmes will star in a film adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novel, The Extra Man.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle has selected the finalists for their literary awards in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. A complete list is available on the organization’s Web site. Editor Carole DeSanti will receive the organization’s Leadership Award and Martin Duberman is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. The awards will be presented May 7, 2009, at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) at 7 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.
Among the finalists for the Indies Choice Book Awards from the American Booksellers Association is David Sedaris for “Most Engaging Author.”
Among the finalists for the 2009 Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers of America, are: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, and “Turtle” by Lee Thomas for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, and Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder for Superior Achievement in an Anthology.
Among the finalist’s for the Galaxy British Book Awards are: Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry for Popular Non-Fiction Award and The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff for Richard & Judy's Best Read of the Year.
105 books in 22 categories from 72 publishers are finalists for the annual Lambda Literary Awards. A full list of the finalists is available on the foundation’s Web site. The awards will be presented Thursday, May 28, 2009 at the Proshansky Auditorium at CUNY Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $75 until May 15, 2009 and $95 thereafter.
Among the finalists for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s sci-fi/fantasy awards, were stories by Lynne Jamneck (“The Oath”), and Lyn McConchie (“Waiting Tables and Time”) from the anthology Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades. Editor Catherine Lundoff relays that this is the first time that stories with LGBT content have made the final ballot.
Elana Dykewomon and Michael Lowenthal are the recipients of this year’s James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award, presented at the annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans.
The ten finalists in the Saints and Sinners Playwriting competition are: David-Matthew Barnes for Sloe Gin Fizz; Andrew Black for That Second Weekend in September; Leo Cabranes-Grant for The Whale in the Room; Joan Dunayer for Apes on Display; Michelle Embree, Hand Over Fist; Allison Fradkin for Dykechotomous; Michael Edison Hayden for Hustler's Journal; Elizabeth Orndorff for Aidan's Gift; M. Lennon Perricone for Unresolved; and Edward J. Walsh & Robert Thomas Noll for Hit or Miss.
The Book of Getting Even by Benjamin Taylor won second-place honors in fiction the 16th annual Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Awards.
Band of Thebes uncovered several LGBT stories as finalists for the National magazine Awards: Hannah Rosin's "A Boy's Life," for Feature Writing: from the Atlantic; Andrew Corsello's "Let God Love Gene Robison," for Profile Writing from GQ; three pieces by Hendrik Hertzberg including his editorial on the Proposition 8 victory for Columns and Commentary from The New Yorker: Annie Proulx's short story, "Them Old Cowboy Songs," for Fiction from The New Yorker.
Open calls: Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize for an unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a LGBTQ writer. Deadline is May 15, 2009. This year’s judge is Ruth L. Schwartz. More details can be found at http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.
Passages: Scott Symons, the Toronto-born author of the 1967 novel Place d’Armes, died February 23, 2009. He was 75. Symons was also the subject of a documentary film, God's Fool (1998), by Nik Sheehan.
James Purdy died March 13, 1994. He was 94. Purdy was the author of the novels Cabot Wright Begins, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Malcolm, and The Nephew.
In April, Poets Wear Prada Press will publish Jee Leong Koh’s first full-length collection Equal to the Earth. Koh blogs here.
This spring, Rebel Satori Press will published a tenth anniversary (and revised) edition of Emanuel Xavier’s novel Christ Like.
Picador will publish Wayne Koestenbaum's Humiliation, exploring the connection between our private experiences of humiliation and our current fascination with the public humiliation of others.
This fall Alyson will also publish Women of the Bite, edited by Cecilia Tan, a lesbian vampire erotica anthology, first published as an e-book by RavenousRomance.com.
The University of Chicago Press will publish Alice Kaplan's To Live in France, the stories of three women who went to live in France as students: Jacqueline Bouvier (1949-1950), Susan Sontag (1957-1958), and Angela Davis (1963-1964).
Among the new book releases with videos is the novel I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin by Stephens Gerard Malone. View it on You Tube here.
Amid growing controversy and threats of violence, Alekper Aliyev’s Artush And Zaur, a gay novel of a doomed love affair between two men during the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been removed from the shelves of Azeri bookstores, Reuters reported.
Author Lyndon Evans will be doing LGBT themed op-ed blogs for the New Times in Connecticut. Evans also blogs here.
The Bay Area Reporter weighed in on the North Beach incident involving Mark Doty while the poet was in San Francisco. The article is here. Doty also wrote about the incident on his blog.
Among the panels being planned for this year’s Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 14-17, are “Tales of the New Depression: The Realities of the Modern Market,” “Shameless: The Author’s Art of Self-Promotion,” “Making Time for Creativity,” “How to Write With a Full Time Job,” and “The Versatile Writer: Writing in Different Genres.”
PEN World Voices festival will include a panel on April 30 on gay writers Reinaldo Arenas and Blai Bonet. Panelists include Jaime Manrique, Biel Mesquida, Margalida Pons, Carles Rebassa, and Manuel Vázquez Portal. The event is free and open to the public at Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 65 Fifth Avenue.
Rob Weisbach is starting a "new generation management company," Rob Weisbach Creative Management, designed to "re-conceive the traditional literary agency as a cross-training development company--one that will work with new and established talent on all aspects of career building."
Craig Gidney has become editor of Lethe Press. Steve Berman remains as publisher. One of Gidney's top priorities is the establishment of the Tincture imprint, which will feature the work by gay people of color.
Christopher K. Navratil is now the publisher of Running Press.
This fall Arsenal Pulp Press will launch Queer Film Classics, a new series of books on LGBT cinema, edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays.
Hansen Publishing will publish Gregg Barrios's Rancho Pancho, a two-act play that explores the turbulent and passionate relationship between playwright Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez, who inspired the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, which follows the relationship from the summer of 1946 on Nantucket Island with novelist Carson McCullers to the summer of 1947 in Provincetown.
Hansen will also publish David Kaplan's Tenn at One Hundred, a retrospective collection of edited essays marking Tennessee Williams one hundredth birthday and his legacy as a premier American playwright.
Next spring, Scribner will publish Actor James Franco's collection of short stories.
Stephen Spinella and Linda Emond have joined the cast of Tony Kushner’s Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, a new work that will have its premiere at the Guthrie Theater this spring.
Ugly Betty star Michael Urie will star in The Tempermentals, a new play by Jon Marans, set to begin April 30 at the Barrow Group Studio Theater in Manhattan. The play is about the origins of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by the activist Harry Hay in 1950, when “temperamental” was a code word for homosexual.
In Grandfield, Oklahoma, a high school teacher was reportedly fired for having students produce their own short films about Matthew Shepard, after watching The Laramie Project.
Embren Entertainment will release the film The Big Gay Musical this summer. The story follows Paul and Eddie, starring in a meta-musical titled Adam and Steve Just the Way God Made 'Em.
Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, and Katie Holmes will star in a film adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novel, The Extra Man.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle has selected the finalists for their literary awards in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. A complete list is available on the organization’s Web site. Editor Carole DeSanti will receive the organization’s Leadership Award and Martin Duberman is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. The awards will be presented May 7, 2009, at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) at 7 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.
Among the finalists for the Indies Choice Book Awards from the American Booksellers Association is David Sedaris for “Most Engaging Author.”
Among the finalists for the 2009 Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers of America, are: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, and “Turtle” by Lee Thomas for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, and Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder for Superior Achievement in an Anthology.
Among the finalist’s for the Galaxy British Book Awards are: Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry for Popular Non-Fiction Award and The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff for Richard & Judy's Best Read of the Year.
105 books in 22 categories from 72 publishers are finalists for the annual Lambda Literary Awards. A full list of the finalists is available on the foundation’s Web site. The awards will be presented Thursday, May 28, 2009 at the Proshansky Auditorium at CUNY Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $75 until May 15, 2009 and $95 thereafter.
Among the finalists for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s sci-fi/fantasy awards, were stories by Lynne Jamneck (“The Oath”), and Lyn McConchie (“Waiting Tables and Time”) from the anthology Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades. Editor Catherine Lundoff relays that this is the first time that stories with LGBT content have made the final ballot.
Elana Dykewomon and Michael Lowenthal are the recipients of this year’s James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award, presented at the annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans.
The ten finalists in the Saints and Sinners Playwriting competition are: David-Matthew Barnes for Sloe Gin Fizz; Andrew Black for That Second Weekend in September; Leo Cabranes-Grant for The Whale in the Room; Joan Dunayer for Apes on Display; Michelle Embree, Hand Over Fist; Allison Fradkin for Dykechotomous; Michael Edison Hayden for Hustler's Journal; Elizabeth Orndorff for Aidan's Gift; M. Lennon Perricone for Unresolved; and Edward J. Walsh & Robert Thomas Noll for Hit or Miss.
The Book of Getting Even by Benjamin Taylor won second-place honors in fiction the 16th annual Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Awards.
Band of Thebes uncovered several LGBT stories as finalists for the National magazine Awards: Hannah Rosin's "A Boy's Life," for Feature Writing: from the Atlantic; Andrew Corsello's "Let God Love Gene Robison," for Profile Writing from GQ; three pieces by Hendrik Hertzberg including his editorial on the Proposition 8 victory for Columns and Commentary from The New Yorker: Annie Proulx's short story, "Them Old Cowboy Songs," for Fiction from The New Yorker.
Open calls: Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize for an unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a LGBTQ writer. Deadline is May 15, 2009. This year’s judge is Ruth L. Schwartz. More details can be found at http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.
Passages: Scott Symons, the Toronto-born author of the 1967 novel Place d’Armes, died February 23, 2009. He was 75. Symons was also the subject of a documentary film, God's Fool (1998), by Nik Sheehan.
James Purdy died March 13, 1994. He was 94. Purdy was the author of the novels Cabot Wright Begins, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Malcolm, and The Nephew.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
March Publishing Notes
The buzz: Two bookstore closings of note: Oscar Wilde Bookshop in Manhattan, the world’s oldest gay and lesbian bookstore, will close in March. A Different Light bookstore in West Hollywood, Calif., is closing this spring. The gay and lesbian store's branch in San Francisco will remain open; a branch in New York City closed in 2001.
British author Geraldine Bedell was banned from the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai because one of the characters in her new novel, The Gulf Between Us, set in the Middle East, is gay. The Gulf Between Us tells the story of a single mother trying to raise three boys in the Gulf emirate of Hawar in the summer of 2002, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Author Margaret Atwood pulled out of festival in the wake of the fair's decision to cancel the launch of Bedell's book, then decided to participate in a debate on censorship to be hosted at the festival via video link-up.
Bold Strokes Books and Casitas Laquita Resort are presenting the Third Annual Lesbian Book Festival in Palm Springs California, March 5-8, 2009, featuring over twenty authors, including Radclyffe, Jane Fletcher, Andrews & Austin, Kim Baldwin, Jennifer Fulton, and Justine Saracen. For more information visit www.boldstrokesbooks.com or www.casitaslaquita.com. The resort is located at 450 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92264.
Among those spotted at New York Comic Con was Tim Fish at the booth for Poison Press, “a teeny, tiny publishing house offering gay and gay friendly comics.” Fish’s latest work in his Cavalcade of Boys volumes is Love is the Reason.
Robert Cabell, author of the novel Hair-Raising Adventures of Jayms Blonde, filed suit in Manhattan Federal Court, accusing Adam Sandler, Happy Madison Productions, Sony and Columbia Pictures for copyright infringement for ripping off his idea for a blow-dried public avenger and turning it into the film You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Casperian Books will publish Paul G. Bens, Jr.’s first full-length novel Kelland this fall.
Vanilla Heart Publishing will publish Collin Kelley’s forthcoming novel, Conquering Venus, this summer.
This month RID Press is releasing Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life by Raymond Luczak. Luczak has included an American Sign Language clip that’s subtitled in English on his Web site: http://www.raymondluczak.com/assemblyrequired.
Out this fall from Haiduk Press: The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered. Editor Tom Cardamone has gathered essays by gay writers discussing their favorite works of forgotten gay fiction. Contributors include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Philip Gambone, Aaron Hamburger, Paul Russell, Rick Whitaker, and others. Cardamone’s collection of his dark, speculative fiction is also forthcoming later this year in Pumpkin Teeth, published by Lethe Press.
Lethe Press is also rereleasing the first two books in Lev Raphael’s Nick Hoffman mystery series. Lethe will also be reprinting Jim Tushinski's novel Van Allen's Ecstasy, which has been optioned by Guest House Films.
In October, Llewellyn will publish Christopher Penczak's The Witch’s Coin: Prosperity and Money Magick, a comprehensive manual on achieving a balanced life - pursuing your soul's purpose but not consigning yourself to living in poverty to do so - including practical tips on herbs, stones, charms and meditations for wealth alongside solid financial advice.
Harper will publish Jack Kerouac's The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel, edited by Dawn Ward, along with correspondence and commentary illuminating the author’s development as a young writer, including correspondence with his friend, the poet Sebastian Sampas. Manhattan Films has also optioned the film rights to Kerouac's The Dharma Bums.
Page Six reported that editor Neal Boulton has left Genre magazine to pursue his dream of becoming a best-selling author. Boulton recently sold his motorcycle-trekking book, Sex Across America, and is working on a memoir about being a married bisexual dad of two.
Ballantine will publish comedian Kathy Griffin's memoir. The deal was reportedly made "for more than $2 million."
My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, a solo show written and performed by Leslie Jordan, will begin previews at the Westside Theater in Manhattan on April 15. Jordan recently published a memoir with the same title.
An Evening at La Cage, the world-famous drag revue at The Riveria in Las Vegas, closed in February.
Rent, the spring musical production at the Corona del Mar high school in Newport Beach, California, was canceled after the principal disapproved of its gay characters, but after a controversy arose on the Web and in the media, the school will go ahead with the production of the musical.
Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is hoping to reinvent the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice by having an alien crash-landing disrupt the life of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Predator.
Gerald Clarke's Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, has been optioned by The Weinstein Company.
Michael Luongo will be holding an all day class on the ins and outs of travel writing, Saturday May 2, at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. To register for the class and for more information, visit: A Roadmap to Travel Writing, Smithsonian Resident Associate Program: http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=217153.
Tom Goss, a gay singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC, has posted his new music video “Till the End” on his music channel at You Tube -- www.youtube.com/tomgossmusic. Check his Web site for the release of his upcoming CD Back to Love. www.tomgossmusic.com.
Equality Forum 2009 will showcase the first-ever Richard Amsel Retrospective Exhibition, featuring artwork by one of Hollywood’s most highly-acclaimed illustrators. The exhibition runs at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, April 15 – May 14, 2009. Equality Forum 2009, the largest annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum, will be held April 27 to May 3 in Philadelphia. Amsel, a native of Philadelphia, began his career when he won a national competition at art schools to create a poster design for the movie Hello Dolly!
The first issue of Collective Fallout has been released with art by Stephen Mead, fiction by Sandra Gail-Lambert, and poetry by Lawrence Schimel and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran.
The financial investment firm that owns The Washington Blade and other gay papers has gone into federal receivership.
Los Angeles's two gay magazines, Frontiers and In, have merged into a single biweekly paper.
Lambda Literary Foundation is launching a new directory of professional literary services this month. The directory will provide a list of working professionals in the following areas: editors, literary agents, publicists, graphic designers, Web designers, writing workshops, and writers to hire. To be listed in the directory, the annual fee is $25.
Kudos: Dustin Lance Black won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Milk. Black also won the award for Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Among the fiction nominees for the Barnes & Noble annual Discover Great New Writers Awards was Benjamin Taylor for his novel The Book of Getting Even.
The American Library Association’s Rainbow List committee, a joint initiative of the ALA’s GLBT and Social Responsibilities Round Tables, has published its second annual list of recommended books for young readers from birth through age 18. The committee chose four titles for special recognition: 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray; Skim by Mariko Tamaki (text) and Jillian Tamaki (artwork); Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole; and Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon. For a full list of titles, visit the Rainbow List Web site.
Gun Brooke, Jane Fletcher, Nicola Griffith, and Lesléa Newman received the 2009 Alice B. Medal, a lifetime achievement award recognizing authors of lesbian fiction, given by the Alice B. Readers' Appreciation Awards. The 2009 Lavender Certificates, presented to authors of the best “maiden” novel of the previous year, were awarded to Del Robertson for Taming the Wolff and Gill McKnight for Falling Star and Green-eyed Monster.
Among the nominees for the 2008 Nebula Awards is Ursula K. Le Guin for her novel Powers.
Open calls: Don Kilhefner and Mark Thompson will co-edit an anthology of writing to celebrate thirty years of Radical Faeries. Submissions can include personal experiences, academic “think pieces,” or writings about the impact of the Faeries on gay culture. 2,500 word maximum is suggested. Deadline is July 1, 2009. Entries should be sent as an attached Word Document to either MarkThompson52@aol.com or donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has initiated a public art project entitled Lostmissing, a public expression of grief in order to feel hopeful again. For more details visit the blog nobodypasses.blogspot.com.
Dustin Brookshire is sponsoring Project Verse, a 10-week poetry competition with the winner announced in week 11. Judges will be Brookshire, Beth Gylys, and Dana Guthrie Martin. The winner will receive a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist, and a weeklong residency at Soul Mountain Retreat. For more details visit: http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-verse-needs-applicants.html.
Passages: Robert Anderson, the American playwright and screenwriter, died February 9, 2009 at his Manhattan home. He was 91 years old. Among his plays were Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.
British author Geraldine Bedell was banned from the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai because one of the characters in her new novel, The Gulf Between Us, set in the Middle East, is gay. The Gulf Between Us tells the story of a single mother trying to raise three boys in the Gulf emirate of Hawar in the summer of 2002, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Author Margaret Atwood pulled out of festival in the wake of the fair's decision to cancel the launch of Bedell's book, then decided to participate in a debate on censorship to be hosted at the festival via video link-up.
Bold Strokes Books and Casitas Laquita Resort are presenting the Third Annual Lesbian Book Festival in Palm Springs California, March 5-8, 2009, featuring over twenty authors, including Radclyffe, Jane Fletcher, Andrews & Austin, Kim Baldwin, Jennifer Fulton, and Justine Saracen. For more information visit www.boldstrokesbooks.com or www.casitaslaquita.com. The resort is located at 450 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92264.
Among those spotted at New York Comic Con was Tim Fish at the booth for Poison Press, “a teeny, tiny publishing house offering gay and gay friendly comics.” Fish’s latest work in his Cavalcade of Boys volumes is Love is the Reason.
Robert Cabell, author of the novel Hair-Raising Adventures of Jayms Blonde, filed suit in Manhattan Federal Court, accusing Adam Sandler, Happy Madison Productions, Sony and Columbia Pictures for copyright infringement for ripping off his idea for a blow-dried public avenger and turning it into the film You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Casperian Books will publish Paul G. Bens, Jr.’s first full-length novel Kelland this fall.
Vanilla Heart Publishing will publish Collin Kelley’s forthcoming novel, Conquering Venus, this summer.
This month RID Press is releasing Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life by Raymond Luczak. Luczak has included an American Sign Language clip that’s subtitled in English on his Web site: http://www.raymondluczak.com/assemblyrequired.
Out this fall from Haiduk Press: The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered. Editor Tom Cardamone has gathered essays by gay writers discussing their favorite works of forgotten gay fiction. Contributors include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Philip Gambone, Aaron Hamburger, Paul Russell, Rick Whitaker, and others. Cardamone’s collection of his dark, speculative fiction is also forthcoming later this year in Pumpkin Teeth, published by Lethe Press.
Lethe Press is also rereleasing the first two books in Lev Raphael’s Nick Hoffman mystery series. Lethe will also be reprinting Jim Tushinski's novel Van Allen's Ecstasy, which has been optioned by Guest House Films.
In October, Llewellyn will publish Christopher Penczak's The Witch’s Coin: Prosperity and Money Magick, a comprehensive manual on achieving a balanced life - pursuing your soul's purpose but not consigning yourself to living in poverty to do so - including practical tips on herbs, stones, charms and meditations for wealth alongside solid financial advice.
Harper will publish Jack Kerouac's The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel, edited by Dawn Ward, along with correspondence and commentary illuminating the author’s development as a young writer, including correspondence with his friend, the poet Sebastian Sampas. Manhattan Films has also optioned the film rights to Kerouac's The Dharma Bums.
Page Six reported that editor Neal Boulton has left Genre magazine to pursue his dream of becoming a best-selling author. Boulton recently sold his motorcycle-trekking book, Sex Across America, and is working on a memoir about being a married bisexual dad of two.
Ballantine will publish comedian Kathy Griffin's memoir. The deal was reportedly made "for more than $2 million."
My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, a solo show written and performed by Leslie Jordan, will begin previews at the Westside Theater in Manhattan on April 15. Jordan recently published a memoir with the same title.
An Evening at La Cage, the world-famous drag revue at The Riveria in Las Vegas, closed in February.
Rent, the spring musical production at the Corona del Mar high school in Newport Beach, California, was canceled after the principal disapproved of its gay characters, but after a controversy arose on the Web and in the media, the school will go ahead with the production of the musical.
Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is hoping to reinvent the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice by having an alien crash-landing disrupt the life of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Predator.
Gerald Clarke's Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, has been optioned by The Weinstein Company.
Michael Luongo will be holding an all day class on the ins and outs of travel writing, Saturday May 2, at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. To register for the class and for more information, visit: A Roadmap to Travel Writing, Smithsonian Resident Associate Program: http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=217153.
Tom Goss, a gay singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC, has posted his new music video “Till the End” on his music channel at You Tube -- www.youtube.com/tomgossmusic. Check his Web site for the release of his upcoming CD Back to Love. www.tomgossmusic.com.
Equality Forum 2009 will showcase the first-ever Richard Amsel Retrospective Exhibition, featuring artwork by one of Hollywood’s most highly-acclaimed illustrators. The exhibition runs at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, April 15 – May 14, 2009. Equality Forum 2009, the largest annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum, will be held April 27 to May 3 in Philadelphia. Amsel, a native of Philadelphia, began his career when he won a national competition at art schools to create a poster design for the movie Hello Dolly!
The first issue of Collective Fallout has been released with art by Stephen Mead, fiction by Sandra Gail-Lambert, and poetry by Lawrence Schimel and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran.
The financial investment firm that owns The Washington Blade and other gay papers has gone into federal receivership.
Los Angeles's two gay magazines, Frontiers and In, have merged into a single biweekly paper.
Lambda Literary Foundation is launching a new directory of professional literary services this month. The directory will provide a list of working professionals in the following areas: editors, literary agents, publicists, graphic designers, Web designers, writing workshops, and writers to hire. To be listed in the directory, the annual fee is $25.
Kudos: Dustin Lance Black won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Milk. Black also won the award for Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Among the fiction nominees for the Barnes & Noble annual Discover Great New Writers Awards was Benjamin Taylor for his novel The Book of Getting Even.
The American Library Association’s Rainbow List committee, a joint initiative of the ALA’s GLBT and Social Responsibilities Round Tables, has published its second annual list of recommended books for young readers from birth through age 18. The committee chose four titles for special recognition: 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray; Skim by Mariko Tamaki (text) and Jillian Tamaki (artwork); Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole; and Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon. For a full list of titles, visit the Rainbow List Web site.
Gun Brooke, Jane Fletcher, Nicola Griffith, and Lesléa Newman received the 2009 Alice B. Medal, a lifetime achievement award recognizing authors of lesbian fiction, given by the Alice B. Readers' Appreciation Awards. The 2009 Lavender Certificates, presented to authors of the best “maiden” novel of the previous year, were awarded to Del Robertson for Taming the Wolff and Gill McKnight for Falling Star and Green-eyed Monster.
Among the nominees for the 2008 Nebula Awards is Ursula K. Le Guin for her novel Powers.
Open calls: Don Kilhefner and Mark Thompson will co-edit an anthology of writing to celebrate thirty years of Radical Faeries. Submissions can include personal experiences, academic “think pieces,” or writings about the impact of the Faeries on gay culture. 2,500 word maximum is suggested. Deadline is July 1, 2009. Entries should be sent as an attached Word Document to either MarkThompson52@aol.com or donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has initiated a public art project entitled Lostmissing, a public expression of grief in order to feel hopeful again. For more details visit the blog nobodypasses.blogspot.com.
Dustin Brookshire is sponsoring Project Verse, a 10-week poetry competition with the winner announced in week 11. Judges will be Brookshire, Beth Gylys, and Dana Guthrie Martin. The winner will receive a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist, and a weeklong residency at Soul Mountain Retreat. For more details visit: http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-verse-needs-applicants.html.
Passages: Robert Anderson, the American playwright and screenwriter, died February 9, 2009 at his Manhattan home. He was 91 years old. Among his plays were Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
February Publishing Notes
The buzz: Next month McFarland & Company will publish Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Bille Burke by Grant Hayter-Menzies, which will include material on the actress’s alleged relationship with director Dorothy Arzner.
In April, Alyson will publish The Mariposa Club by Rigoberto Gonzalez, about four guys in their last year of high school.
Cleis will publish James Lear’s The Low Road in September.
This spring, Lethe Press will reprint So Fey:Queer Fairy Fiction, an anthology edited by Steve Berman.
St. Martin’s will publish Kevin Sessums’s I Left It On The Mountain, which picks up where his memoir Mississippi Sissy left off, exploring the author’s life once he moved to New York City; from his time at Vanity Fair to hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Beacon Press will publish David Plante’s The Pure Lover, a memoir of love and grief, tracing the life of Plante’s longtime partner Nikos and his death of brain cancer, this fall.
Performance poet Megan Volpert has published her second book of poetry, the desense of nonfense.
MLR Press has just released a new novel by Storm Grant, Gym Dandy.
New Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s The Twist: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, exploring the family as the place where straight and gay people first learn homophobic behavior, in 2010.
GLAAD’s President Neil Giuliano announced that he will step down later this year to pursue “personal interests” and complete a book about his personal and professional life.
Mark Abramson’s Beach Reading reached the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Seller’s list in January.
368 books from 161 publishers have been submitted to the 21st annual Lambda Literary Awards. The complete list is available on the Foundation’s Web site. Finalists for the awards will be announced no later than March 15, 2009. The awards will be held in New York on Thursday, May 28, 2009.
The first annual Rainbow Book Fair will take place on Saturday March 28, 2009 from 11 am to 6 pm at the LGBT Center at 208 West 13th Street, in Greenwich Village.
Mark Carmien, the owner of Pride & Joy at 20 Crafts Avenue in Northampton, MA, has put the store up for sale. Founded by Martha Nelson in 1992, Pride & Joy has served as the unofficial GLBTQ community center for the area, selling books, DVDs, jewelry, T-shirts, banners and other items.
Bisceglie’s SF Follies debuts February 6th at Actors Theatre in San Francisco.
Regent Entertainment Media, publishers of The Advocate and Out magazines and owner of the here! TV network, signed a merger agreement with PlanetOut Inc. The combined company will be known as Here Media Inc, 80% of which will be owned by the owners of Regent Entertainment Media. Regent Entertainment Media is also the parent company of Alyson Books.
The White House has posted its Gay Rights Agenda on the reactivated Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/.
Kudos: The American Library Association Honors for 2009 are: Stonewall Book Awards - Barbara Gittings Literature Award to Evan Fallenberg for Light Fell; Stonewall Book Awards - Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award to William N. Eskridge, Jr. for Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003. The Stonewall honor books in literature are: The Conversion by Joseph Olshan, A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer, and The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue. The Stonewall honor books in non-fiction are: Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad by Bob Morris, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster by Joanne Ellen Passet, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson and Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever by Joel Derfner.
Among the recent nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards was a nomination in the Criticism category for Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics and the Freedom of Poetry by the late Reginald Shepard.
GLAAD does not include literary awards, but each year the organization nominates comic books for recognition. This year’s nominees are: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames, Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb, and Joss Whedon, Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka, Secret Six by Gail Simone, and Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction.
Milk received eight Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Dustin Lance Black for Best Original Screenplay. Push, based on the novel by Sapphire, scored a triple victory at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award for drama as well as a special jury prize for acting.
Open Calls: Rebel Satori Press has launched a new imprint, Queer Mojo, and is seeking submissions for a queer male erotic anthology focusing on characters “out of the mainstream: punks, outcasts, skaters, urban anarchists and secretly rebellious farmboys.” Stories should be no longer than 7,000 words. E-mail submissions as a Word doc attachment to info@queermojo.net. Deadline is June 1, 2009.
Richard Labonté is seeking submissions for Best Gay Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 6,000 words. Deadline is May 20, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.com with BGR 2010 in the subject line.
Radclyffe is seeking submissions for Best Lesbian Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 5,000 words. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.comwith BLR 2010 in the subject line.
The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the winners of its 2009 High School Seniors English Essay Contest College scholarships in the amount of $1,000 for studies in queer theory or a related field at a US college. Deadline is February 28, 2009. More details can be found at the Web site.
Passages: Sir John Mortimer died January 16, 2009 at the age of 85 after a long illness. Mortimer, one of Britain’s most prolific writers and noted for his television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, famously defended the publishers of the London Gay News in 1976 after they were accused of blasphemy for publishing a poem that appeared to imply that Jesus was gay.
In April, Alyson will publish The Mariposa Club by Rigoberto Gonzalez, about four guys in their last year of high school.
Cleis will publish James Lear’s The Low Road in September.
This spring, Lethe Press will reprint So Fey:Queer Fairy Fiction, an anthology edited by Steve Berman.
St. Martin’s will publish Kevin Sessums’s I Left It On The Mountain, which picks up where his memoir Mississippi Sissy left off, exploring the author’s life once he moved to New York City; from his time at Vanity Fair to hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Beacon Press will publish David Plante’s The Pure Lover, a memoir of love and grief, tracing the life of Plante’s longtime partner Nikos and his death of brain cancer, this fall.
Performance poet Megan Volpert has published her second book of poetry, the desense of nonfense.
MLR Press has just released a new novel by Storm Grant, Gym Dandy.
New Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s The Twist: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, exploring the family as the place where straight and gay people first learn homophobic behavior, in 2010.
GLAAD’s President Neil Giuliano announced that he will step down later this year to pursue “personal interests” and complete a book about his personal and professional life.
Mark Abramson’s Beach Reading reached the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Seller’s list in January.
368 books from 161 publishers have been submitted to the 21st annual Lambda Literary Awards. The complete list is available on the Foundation’s Web site. Finalists for the awards will be announced no later than March 15, 2009. The awards will be held in New York on Thursday, May 28, 2009.
The first annual Rainbow Book Fair will take place on Saturday March 28, 2009 from 11 am to 6 pm at the LGBT Center at 208 West 13th Street, in Greenwich Village.
Mark Carmien, the owner of Pride & Joy at 20 Crafts Avenue in Northampton, MA, has put the store up for sale. Founded by Martha Nelson in 1992, Pride & Joy has served as the unofficial GLBTQ community center for the area, selling books, DVDs, jewelry, T-shirts, banners and other items.
Bisceglie’s SF Follies debuts February 6th at Actors Theatre in San Francisco.
Regent Entertainment Media, publishers of The Advocate and Out magazines and owner of the here! TV network, signed a merger agreement with PlanetOut Inc. The combined company will be known as Here Media Inc, 80% of which will be owned by the owners of Regent Entertainment Media. Regent Entertainment Media is also the parent company of Alyson Books.
The White House has posted its Gay Rights Agenda on the reactivated Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/.
Kudos: The American Library Association Honors for 2009 are: Stonewall Book Awards - Barbara Gittings Literature Award to Evan Fallenberg for Light Fell; Stonewall Book Awards - Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award to William N. Eskridge, Jr. for Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003. The Stonewall honor books in literature are: The Conversion by Joseph Olshan, A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer, and The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue. The Stonewall honor books in non-fiction are: Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad by Bob Morris, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster by Joanne Ellen Passet, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson and Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever by Joel Derfner.
Among the recent nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards was a nomination in the Criticism category for Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics and the Freedom of Poetry by the late Reginald Shepard.
GLAAD does not include literary awards, but each year the organization nominates comic books for recognition. This year’s nominees are: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames, Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb, and Joss Whedon, Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka, Secret Six by Gail Simone, and Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction.
Milk received eight Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Dustin Lance Black for Best Original Screenplay. Push, based on the novel by Sapphire, scored a triple victory at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award for drama as well as a special jury prize for acting.
Open Calls: Rebel Satori Press has launched a new imprint, Queer Mojo, and is seeking submissions for a queer male erotic anthology focusing on characters “out of the mainstream: punks, outcasts, skaters, urban anarchists and secretly rebellious farmboys.” Stories should be no longer than 7,000 words. E-mail submissions as a Word doc attachment to info@queermojo.net. Deadline is June 1, 2009.
Richard Labonté is seeking submissions for Best Gay Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 6,000 words. Deadline is May 20, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.com with BGR 2010 in the subject line.
Radclyffe is seeking submissions for Best Lesbian Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 5,000 words. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.comwith BLR 2010 in the subject line.
The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the winners of its 2009 High School Seniors English Essay Contest College scholarships in the amount of $1,000 for studies in queer theory or a related field at a US college. Deadline is February 28, 2009. More details can be found at the Web site.
Passages: Sir John Mortimer died January 16, 2009 at the age of 85 after a long illness. Mortimer, one of Britain’s most prolific writers and noted for his television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, famously defended the publishers of the London Gay News in 1976 after they were accused of blasphemy for publishing a poem that appeared to imply that Jesus was gay.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
January 2009 Publishing Notes
The buzz: Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish Alex Ross’s new book, Listen to This, based on his New Yorker essays, discussing basic musical concepts in a conversation about classical and pop music, in 2010, along with Wagnerism: How a Composer Shaped the Modern World.
Spiegel & Grau will publish A Place to Come Home To by Margaret Robison, Augusten Burroughs’ mother, drawing on years of her journals and diaries about her early life in southern Georgia, her marriage; raising two boys whose own memoirs would become publishing phenomena; and her descent into psychosis, followed by a massive stroke; and now a hard-won ability to speak, write, and reflect on her life.
Riverhead will publish Sarah Waters new novel, The Little Stranger, a ghost story set in 1940s Great Britain, in Hundreds Hall, a centuries-old house of declining health and fortune, in the spring of 2009.
Running Press is releasing a line of gay historical romances written for straight women. The series will launch in April with Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft. Two more titles are set for fall 2009.
Samhain Publishing (http://www.samhainpublishing.com/) has purchased Linden Bay Romance (http://lindenbayromance.com/).
Vanity Fair magazine has a blog dedicated just to gays and cars called Stick Shift, written by Brett Berk (The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting).
Publishers Weekly reported that Pat Holt, San Francisco book reviewer and publishing journalist, is back online at her popular blog Holt Uncensored after a three-year hiatus. Holt stopped the blog when her partner, the writer Terry Ryan, became seriously ill. Ryan died in 2007. At the time that Holt Uncensored went on hiatus in late 2005, Holt was posting twice a week and had 5,000 loyal readers. Holt’s intention now is to write one, or occasionally two weekly essays for her blog.
Barnes & Noble will publish There’s No Place Like Oz in 2009, a large-format illustrated book, licensed by Warner Bros. Consumer Products, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the release of the film The Wizard of Oz, with never-before-seen pictures and memorabilia that explore the creation of the movie.
A TV movie adaptation of Prayers for Bobby, based on the best-selling 1998 book, airs on Lifetime in January. Sigourney Weaver stars as Mary Griffith, whose gay son Bobby committed suicide because of her religious intolerance.
A Million Little Pieces author James Frey has decided he will write the third book of the Bible, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, in which his version of Jesus will perform gay marriages.
New Mexico-based Revision Studios will publish The Princess Diana Bible in the spring of 2009, a gay version of the Bible, in which God says it is better to be gay than straight. A preview of Genesis is available at princessdianabible.com. The film studio said it would also adapt and direct the revised Bible as a two-part mini-series, The Gay Old Testament and The Gay New Testament, once it is completed.
Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, a classic from 1969 that takes the reader to the world of Winter and its inhabitants the Gethenians, whose society is not based on gender roles, has been optioned for feature film by screenwriter/director Will Phillips.
Italian state television RAI TV cut a gay sex scene from Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, as well as a sequence showing the lead characters kissing when it aired the movie, drawing allegations of censorship from gay rights groups. RAI said in a statement the film had arrived from the distributor already cut so that it could be shown in prime time. Massimo Gramellini, a top commentator for the daily newspaper La Stampa wrote in a front-page editorial: “I would like to understand why a kiss between two gays ... should offend our sensibilities more than scenes of heterosexual sex or bloodthirsty violence.”
Showtime is developing a reality series, Way Out, documenting gay people coming out to friends and family. In each episode, a closeted individual reveals their true sexual orientation during a group meeting.
Choreographer-director Gisèle Vienne has been collaborating with Dennis Cooper to create theatrical piece based on his story, “Jerk.”
The 59E59 Theaters will present the New York premiere of Terre Haute, by Edmund White, from Jan. 13 to Feb. 15, 2009. The two-character drama is about an imagined meeting between the writer Gore Vidal and the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. The play, first seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006, was performed in various locations in England last year.
The Golden Crown Literary Society has set its 2009 event: July 23-26 at the Hilton Disney Hotel in Orlando Florida. More details at http://www.goldencrown.org/site/index.php/conference-conference/conderence-news
In response to the news that Britain is counting gays, lesbians and bisexuals in a survey by the Office for National Statistics, author Larry Kramer called for U.S. gay organizations to do the same in an email that wound up posted on Eric Leven’s Knucklecrack blog.
After 14 years of effort, the New York City AIDS Monument was dedicated in Hudson River Park in December. From 1985 to 2002, over 81,000 AIDS deaths were reported in New York City and the monument is a 42-foot long, 2-foot tall, 12-inch deep curved granite bench. An inscription on the side facing the river says, “I can sail without wind, I can row without oars, but I cannot part from my friend without tears.”
A collection of letters between Oscar Wilde and Bernulf Clegg, an Oxford University student, are to go on display at the Morgan Library and Museum. The collection’s whereabouts were unknown to scholars for half a century. The letters of Wilde and Clegg, along with some 50 handwritten pages, including nine manuscripts of Wilde’s poems and the earliest surviving letter from Wilde to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, are contained in a red leatherbound volume that was recently given to the Morgan by Lucia Moreira Salles, a Brazilian philanthropist who had owned it for more than two decades. The Morgan also owns the earliest manuscript of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Kudos: Benjamin Taylor’s novel, The Book of Getting Even, was selected as one of the favorite titles of 2008 by the editors of the Los Angeles Times. The novel is about a young gay Southerner’s attachments to a family of Eastern European intellectuals. ** David Sedaris was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for When You Are Engulfed in Flames. ** Alex Ross, author of The Rest Is Noise, a history of classical music in the 20th century, received the Guardian First Book Award. ** Sarah Schulman has been made Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University.
Dark Scribe magazine has announced the second annual Black Quill Award nominees. Among them are: Dark Genre Novel of the Year: We Disappear by Scott Heim. Full set of nominations can be found at http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/.
Personal Favorites of 2008: Favorite reads: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames, The Vitner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox, Philistines at the Hedgerow by Steven Gaines. (I re-read this and particularly loved the Alfonso Ossorio and Ted Dragon chapters. I even re-watched the movie Pollock to see how they were depicted -- that was a disappointment, they are barely in it.) Favorite movies: The Orphange, Affinity (adapted from the novel by Sarah Waters), Colma: The Musical, Once, Atonement. Favorite discovery: the gay and lesbian line of local history books published by Arcadia. I read Gay and Lesbian San Francisco by William Lipsky (and loved it) and then discovered Gay and Lesbian Atlanta by Wesley Chenault and Stacy Brankham (and could not put it down because I grew up in Atlanta).
Open Calls: Cleis will publish a new book on gay and lesbian couples to raise awareness in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 titled My Gay Marriage, a collection of personal reflections by married gays and lesbians -- regardless of whether those marriages are legally recognized. The proceeds from My Gay Marriage will go to activist organizations, such as Marriage Equality USA and Join the Impact. Brief personal essays (3000 to 5000 words) about your experience of same-sex marriage should be sent to Brenda Knight at Cleis Press at bknight@cleispress.com.
Also in the wake of Proposition 8, Kelly & Kamille of the band Karmina and the song “The Kiss” are looking for people to share their “forbidden love” stories at http://www.iwishtheworldcouldhear.com/. The sisters will select stories for a video interview and media appearances with the band. For more details write kellyandkamille@gmail.com.
The e-zine Limp Wrist is seeking an Artistic Editor. The AE is responsible for soliciting and selecting art, pictures, and short videos to be featured in LW. For more information contact me at dustinvbrookshire@gmail.com.
Passages: Australian lesbian poet Dorothy Porter has died from complications due to cancer. She was 54, and had been suffering from breast cancer for four years before her death, The Age newspaper reported. Porter was best known for The Monkey’s Mask, a crime thriller in verse about a lesbian detective. Published in 1994, the book won the Age Poetry Book of the Year.
Spiegel & Grau will publish A Place to Come Home To by Margaret Robison, Augusten Burroughs’ mother, drawing on years of her journals and diaries about her early life in southern Georgia, her marriage; raising two boys whose own memoirs would become publishing phenomena; and her descent into psychosis, followed by a massive stroke; and now a hard-won ability to speak, write, and reflect on her life.
Riverhead will publish Sarah Waters new novel, The Little Stranger, a ghost story set in 1940s Great Britain, in Hundreds Hall, a centuries-old house of declining health and fortune, in the spring of 2009.
Running Press is releasing a line of gay historical romances written for straight women. The series will launch in April with Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft. Two more titles are set for fall 2009.
Samhain Publishing (http://www.samhainpublishing.com/) has purchased Linden Bay Romance (http://lindenbayromance.com/).
Vanity Fair magazine has a blog dedicated just to gays and cars called Stick Shift, written by Brett Berk (The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting).
Publishers Weekly reported that Pat Holt, San Francisco book reviewer and publishing journalist, is back online at her popular blog Holt Uncensored after a three-year hiatus. Holt stopped the blog when her partner, the writer Terry Ryan, became seriously ill. Ryan died in 2007. At the time that Holt Uncensored went on hiatus in late 2005, Holt was posting twice a week and had 5,000 loyal readers. Holt’s intention now is to write one, or occasionally two weekly essays for her blog.
Barnes & Noble will publish There’s No Place Like Oz in 2009, a large-format illustrated book, licensed by Warner Bros. Consumer Products, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the release of the film The Wizard of Oz, with never-before-seen pictures and memorabilia that explore the creation of the movie.
A TV movie adaptation of Prayers for Bobby, based on the best-selling 1998 book, airs on Lifetime in January. Sigourney Weaver stars as Mary Griffith, whose gay son Bobby committed suicide because of her religious intolerance.
A Million Little Pieces author James Frey has decided he will write the third book of the Bible, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, in which his version of Jesus will perform gay marriages.
New Mexico-based Revision Studios will publish The Princess Diana Bible in the spring of 2009, a gay version of the Bible, in which God says it is better to be gay than straight. A preview of Genesis is available at princessdianabible.com. The film studio said it would also adapt and direct the revised Bible as a two-part mini-series, The Gay Old Testament and The Gay New Testament, once it is completed.
Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, a classic from 1969 that takes the reader to the world of Winter and its inhabitants the Gethenians, whose society is not based on gender roles, has been optioned for feature film by screenwriter/director Will Phillips.
Italian state television RAI TV cut a gay sex scene from Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, as well as a sequence showing the lead characters kissing when it aired the movie, drawing allegations of censorship from gay rights groups. RAI said in a statement the film had arrived from the distributor already cut so that it could be shown in prime time. Massimo Gramellini, a top commentator for the daily newspaper La Stampa wrote in a front-page editorial: “I would like to understand why a kiss between two gays ... should offend our sensibilities more than scenes of heterosexual sex or bloodthirsty violence.”
Showtime is developing a reality series, Way Out, documenting gay people coming out to friends and family. In each episode, a closeted individual reveals their true sexual orientation during a group meeting.
Choreographer-director Gisèle Vienne has been collaborating with Dennis Cooper to create theatrical piece based on his story, “Jerk.”
The 59E59 Theaters will present the New York premiere of Terre Haute, by Edmund White, from Jan. 13 to Feb. 15, 2009. The two-character drama is about an imagined meeting between the writer Gore Vidal and the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. The play, first seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006, was performed in various locations in England last year.
The Golden Crown Literary Society has set its 2009 event: July 23-26 at the Hilton Disney Hotel in Orlando Florida. More details at http://www.goldencrown.org/site/index.php/conference-conference/conderence-news
In response to the news that Britain is counting gays, lesbians and bisexuals in a survey by the Office for National Statistics, author Larry Kramer called for U.S. gay organizations to do the same in an email that wound up posted on Eric Leven’s Knucklecrack blog.
After 14 years of effort, the New York City AIDS Monument was dedicated in Hudson River Park in December. From 1985 to 2002, over 81,000 AIDS deaths were reported in New York City and the monument is a 42-foot long, 2-foot tall, 12-inch deep curved granite bench. An inscription on the side facing the river says, “I can sail without wind, I can row without oars, but I cannot part from my friend without tears.”
A collection of letters between Oscar Wilde and Bernulf Clegg, an Oxford University student, are to go on display at the Morgan Library and Museum. The collection’s whereabouts were unknown to scholars for half a century. The letters of Wilde and Clegg, along with some 50 handwritten pages, including nine manuscripts of Wilde’s poems and the earliest surviving letter from Wilde to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, are contained in a red leatherbound volume that was recently given to the Morgan by Lucia Moreira Salles, a Brazilian philanthropist who had owned it for more than two decades. The Morgan also owns the earliest manuscript of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Kudos: Benjamin Taylor’s novel, The Book of Getting Even, was selected as one of the favorite titles of 2008 by the editors of the Los Angeles Times. The novel is about a young gay Southerner’s attachments to a family of Eastern European intellectuals. ** David Sedaris was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for When You Are Engulfed in Flames. ** Alex Ross, author of The Rest Is Noise, a history of classical music in the 20th century, received the Guardian First Book Award. ** Sarah Schulman has been made Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University.
Dark Scribe magazine has announced the second annual Black Quill Award nominees. Among them are: Dark Genre Novel of the Year: We Disappear by Scott Heim. Full set of nominations can be found at http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/.
Personal Favorites of 2008: Favorite reads: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames, The Vitner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox, Philistines at the Hedgerow by Steven Gaines. (I re-read this and particularly loved the Alfonso Ossorio and Ted Dragon chapters. I even re-watched the movie Pollock to see how they were depicted -- that was a disappointment, they are barely in it.) Favorite movies: The Orphange, Affinity (adapted from the novel by Sarah Waters), Colma: The Musical, Once, Atonement. Favorite discovery: the gay and lesbian line of local history books published by Arcadia. I read Gay and Lesbian San Francisco by William Lipsky (and loved it) and then discovered Gay and Lesbian Atlanta by Wesley Chenault and Stacy Brankham (and could not put it down because I grew up in Atlanta).
Open Calls: Cleis will publish a new book on gay and lesbian couples to raise awareness in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 titled My Gay Marriage, a collection of personal reflections by married gays and lesbians -- regardless of whether those marriages are legally recognized. The proceeds from My Gay Marriage will go to activist organizations, such as Marriage Equality USA and Join the Impact. Brief personal essays (3000 to 5000 words) about your experience of same-sex marriage should be sent to Brenda Knight at Cleis Press at bknight@cleispress.com.
Also in the wake of Proposition 8, Kelly & Kamille of the band Karmina and the song “The Kiss” are looking for people to share their “forbidden love” stories at http://www.iwishtheworldcouldhear.com/. The sisters will select stories for a video interview and media appearances with the band. For more details write kellyandkamille@gmail.com.
The e-zine Limp Wrist is seeking an Artistic Editor. The AE is responsible for soliciting and selecting art, pictures, and short videos to be featured in LW. For more information contact me at dustinvbrookshire@gmail.com.
Passages: Australian lesbian poet Dorothy Porter has died from complications due to cancer. She was 54, and had been suffering from breast cancer for four years before her death, The Age newspaper reported. Porter was best known for The Monkey’s Mask, a crime thriller in verse about a lesbian detective. Published in 1994, the book won the Age Poetry Book of the Year.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
December Publishing Notes
The buzz: Abrams will publish Gore Vidal’s illustrated memoir in the Fall of 2009. The memoir will combine personal reflections with a social history of the twentieth century, and never-before-seen images of political and cultural icons from Vidal’s personal collection. ** World Parade Books will release Edward Field’s memoir Kabuli Days, Travels in Old Afghanistan this month.
Touchstone Fireside will publish Gyles Brandreth’s next three mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde as a sleuth aided by his real-life friend Arthur Conan Doyle. ** Sphere will publish mystery writer Val McDermid’s next two books, including a new Tony Hill for publication in 2009. ** Holt will publish Louis Bayard’s next two literary suspense novels.
In 2009, Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, edited by Amber Dawn. ** Da Capo will publish Catherine Friend’s The Last Farm Standing, a look at the state of small, sustainable farms, and how sheep may be the answer to our environmental woes.
Author Stephen McCauley is working with on a film adaptation of his novel The Easy Way Out. Filming is set to begin in March in Paris. ** Showtime announced that it is developing Perry Moore’s book Hero, the story of a young gay superhero, into a hour-long series for the network. Moore will be writing the script and will executive-produce the series along with his partner, Hunter Hill. The two are also collaborating with comic book legend Stan Lee and his Pow! Entertainment partner Gill Champion. ** Nicole Kidman will star in and produce the film version of The Danish Girl, based on the novel by David Ebershoff, about the world’s first post-op transsexual, Einar Wegener. Charlize Theron will also star. ** John Hurt will star in the film An Englishman in New York, about Quentin Crisp’s later years. ** John Boorman is attached to direct the $25 million, CG-animated pic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted from L. Frank Baum’s original novel. Unlike the MGM classic, it will not be a musical.
Jane Fonda returns to Broadway after a 46-year absence, in 33 Variations, a new play by Moisés Kaufman, scheduled to open in the winter of 2009. ** South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are working with Avenue Q co-writer Robert Lopez to on a new musical, Mormon Musical, which will star Cheyenne Jackson. ** Playwright Michael Yawney’s play, 1,000 Homosexuals, about Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign to repeal Miami-Dade County’s first gay-rights ordinance, recently opened in Miami. The play was commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts. Miami’s Camposition is producing the play. ** The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center is suing the city for shutting down its production of the popular musical revue, Naked Boys Singing. ** This month the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs is presenting Michael Holmes in Judy’s Old Fashioned Christmas Show, a comic tribute to the old Garland holiday specials.
Variety reported that due to the recent departure of City Opera Artistic Director Gerard Mortier, some upcoming opera projects will be shelved. Among them, the musical adaptation of the film Brokeback Mountain. ** The Fort Worth Opera has announced it will stage the world premiere of Before Night Falls, a new opera by Cuban American composer Jorge Martin, based on the memoir by Cuban dissident poet Reinaldo Arenas, as the centerpiece of its 2010 Opera Festival.
Don Weise has been named the new publisher of Alyson Books. ** In November poet, novelist and playwright Jewelle Gomez married Dr. Diane Abbe Sabin at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The wedding was written up in the Style section of The New York Times.
In Atlanta in November, Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta celebrated its 15th year and Charis Books & More its 34th.
The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival has set their 2009 dates: November 4 through 7, 2009. More details forthcoming at http://atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/.
Gay rights activist Cleve Jones and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black published a manifesto calling for LGBT civil disobedience and government intervention against Proposition 8 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Jones and Black have urged President-elect Barack Obama, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid to push legislation that protects LGBT people in areas of hate crimes, marriage, military service, adoption, Social Security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing, and access to health care, social services, and education. ** Louis-Georges Tin, editor of the recently published Dictionary of Homophobia and president of the International Day Against Homophobia Committee, will address the United Nations General Assembly in December to urge a world-wide end to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ** Dustin Brookshire of limpwristmag.com has started the Not In My Georgia Project in response to the rumored legislation to ban adoption by LGBT Georgians.
Kudos: Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems. ** Hudson Booksellers named When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris as its Book of the Year. ** On the IMPAC Dublin longlist for the 2009 award, which honors book-length fiction published in English during 2007, were Alan Bennett for The Uncommon Reader, David Leavitt for The Indian Clerk, Ali Smith for Girl Meets Boy, Jeanette Winterson for The Stone Gods, Andre Aciman for Call Me By Your Name, Jonathan Coe for The Rain Before It Falls, and Marianne Wiggins for The Shadow Catcher. The shortlist will be announced April 2, 2009. ** Michael Cunningham won the sixth annual Fairfax Prize given by the Fairfax County Public Library Foundation. ** Chris & Don: A Love Story was nominated for best documentary for the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Marc Andreyko was among the recent Out magazine 100. He is the author of the graphic novel, Torso, based on the true story of Eliot Ness and a serial killer in 1930s Cleveland, now in development as a Paramount film. Other works of note include co-creating and writing a modern update of the Peter Pan universe, The Lost, and work on the DC comic book series Manhunter, which features the son of the original Green Lantern, a superhero named Obsidian, in a happy and healthy gay relationship.
In November, The Black Cat, a bar in Silver Lake, California that was home to the gay rights movement in Los Angeles, was named a historic-cultural monument. The bar was the site of a police raid and subsequent protests in 1967, predating the Stonewall riots in New York City by two years. Today, the bar at Sunset Junction is known as Le Barcito, a small stucco building with a purple facade that still bears the original sign of a black and white smiling cat.
Open Calls: Editors Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel are seeking short essays and memoirs for the anthology I Like It Like That: True Tales of Gay Desire, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2009. Submissions should be between 1000-3000 words and sent to truetalesofgaydesire@gmail.com. Deadline is Feb 1, 2009. ** Labonté is also seeking short stories and erotica for Best Gay Erotica 2010. Blair Mastbaum is this year’s guest judge. Original work, or reprints of work published or scheduled to be published between July 2008 and July 2009, are eligible. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Queries and submissions to: bge2010@gmail.com in .doc format.
Passages: Irish poet James Liddy died in November, 2008. Born in Dublin in 1934, Liddy is best known for his early collections In A Blue Smoke (1964) and Blue Mountain (1968). The first volume of his memoir, The Doctor’s House: An Autobiography, was published in 2004.
Touchstone Fireside will publish Gyles Brandreth’s next three mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde as a sleuth aided by his real-life friend Arthur Conan Doyle. ** Sphere will publish mystery writer Val McDermid’s next two books, including a new Tony Hill for publication in 2009. ** Holt will publish Louis Bayard’s next two literary suspense novels.
In 2009, Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, edited by Amber Dawn. ** Da Capo will publish Catherine Friend’s The Last Farm Standing, a look at the state of small, sustainable farms, and how sheep may be the answer to our environmental woes.
Author Stephen McCauley is working with on a film adaptation of his novel The Easy Way Out. Filming is set to begin in March in Paris. ** Showtime announced that it is developing Perry Moore’s book Hero, the story of a young gay superhero, into a hour-long series for the network. Moore will be writing the script and will executive-produce the series along with his partner, Hunter Hill. The two are also collaborating with comic book legend Stan Lee and his Pow! Entertainment partner Gill Champion. ** Nicole Kidman will star in and produce the film version of The Danish Girl, based on the novel by David Ebershoff, about the world’s first post-op transsexual, Einar Wegener. Charlize Theron will also star. ** John Hurt will star in the film An Englishman in New York, about Quentin Crisp’s later years. ** John Boorman is attached to direct the $25 million, CG-animated pic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted from L. Frank Baum’s original novel. Unlike the MGM classic, it will not be a musical.
Jane Fonda returns to Broadway after a 46-year absence, in 33 Variations, a new play by Moisés Kaufman, scheduled to open in the winter of 2009. ** South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are working with Avenue Q co-writer Robert Lopez to on a new musical, Mormon Musical, which will star Cheyenne Jackson. ** Playwright Michael Yawney’s play, 1,000 Homosexuals, about Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign to repeal Miami-Dade County’s first gay-rights ordinance, recently opened in Miami. The play was commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts. Miami’s Camposition is producing the play. ** The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center is suing the city for shutting down its production of the popular musical revue, Naked Boys Singing. ** This month the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs is presenting Michael Holmes in Judy’s Old Fashioned Christmas Show, a comic tribute to the old Garland holiday specials.
Variety reported that due to the recent departure of City Opera Artistic Director Gerard Mortier, some upcoming opera projects will be shelved. Among them, the musical adaptation of the film Brokeback Mountain. ** The Fort Worth Opera has announced it will stage the world premiere of Before Night Falls, a new opera by Cuban American composer Jorge Martin, based on the memoir by Cuban dissident poet Reinaldo Arenas, as the centerpiece of its 2010 Opera Festival.
Don Weise has been named the new publisher of Alyson Books. ** In November poet, novelist and playwright Jewelle Gomez married Dr. Diane Abbe Sabin at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The wedding was written up in the Style section of The New York Times.
In Atlanta in November, Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta celebrated its 15th year and Charis Books & More its 34th.
The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival has set their 2009 dates: November 4 through 7, 2009. More details forthcoming at http://atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/.
Gay rights activist Cleve Jones and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black published a manifesto calling for LGBT civil disobedience and government intervention against Proposition 8 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Jones and Black have urged President-elect Barack Obama, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid to push legislation that protects LGBT people in areas of hate crimes, marriage, military service, adoption, Social Security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing, and access to health care, social services, and education. ** Louis-Georges Tin, editor of the recently published Dictionary of Homophobia and president of the International Day Against Homophobia Committee, will address the United Nations General Assembly in December to urge a world-wide end to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ** Dustin Brookshire of limpwristmag.com has started the Not In My Georgia Project in response to the rumored legislation to ban adoption by LGBT Georgians.
Kudos: Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems. ** Hudson Booksellers named When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris as its Book of the Year. ** On the IMPAC Dublin longlist for the 2009 award, which honors book-length fiction published in English during 2007, were Alan Bennett for The Uncommon Reader, David Leavitt for The Indian Clerk, Ali Smith for Girl Meets Boy, Jeanette Winterson for The Stone Gods, Andre Aciman for Call Me By Your Name, Jonathan Coe for The Rain Before It Falls, and Marianne Wiggins for The Shadow Catcher. The shortlist will be announced April 2, 2009. ** Michael Cunningham won the sixth annual Fairfax Prize given by the Fairfax County Public Library Foundation. ** Chris & Don: A Love Story was nominated for best documentary for the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Marc Andreyko was among the recent Out magazine 100. He is the author of the graphic novel, Torso, based on the true story of Eliot Ness and a serial killer in 1930s Cleveland, now in development as a Paramount film. Other works of note include co-creating and writing a modern update of the Peter Pan universe, The Lost, and work on the DC comic book series Manhunter, which features the son of the original Green Lantern, a superhero named Obsidian, in a happy and healthy gay relationship.
In November, The Black Cat, a bar in Silver Lake, California that was home to the gay rights movement in Los Angeles, was named a historic-cultural monument. The bar was the site of a police raid and subsequent protests in 1967, predating the Stonewall riots in New York City by two years. Today, the bar at Sunset Junction is known as Le Barcito, a small stucco building with a purple facade that still bears the original sign of a black and white smiling cat.
Open Calls: Editors Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel are seeking short essays and memoirs for the anthology I Like It Like That: True Tales of Gay Desire, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2009. Submissions should be between 1000-3000 words and sent to truetalesofgaydesire@gmail.com. Deadline is Feb 1, 2009. ** Labonté is also seeking short stories and erotica for Best Gay Erotica 2010. Blair Mastbaum is this year’s guest judge. Original work, or reprints of work published or scheduled to be published between July 2008 and July 2009, are eligible. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Queries and submissions to: bge2010@gmail.com in .doc format.
Passages: Irish poet James Liddy died in November, 2008. Born in Dublin in 1934, Liddy is best known for his early collections In A Blue Smoke (1964) and Blue Mountain (1968). The first volume of his memoir, The Doctor’s House: An Autobiography, was published in 2004.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A Bookstore Tourist
This October I took a cruise to the Mediterranean, visiting Venice, Dubrovnik, Santorini, Corfu, and Ephesus (in Turkey). The weather was gorgeous, as was the scenery, and the overall experience was very interesting and relaxing (and which was what I needed). The highlight of my trip, however, was my final day in Paris because of a stopover flight — a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon crowded with Parisians strolling arm and arm through the streets. I walked through the Marais till I found Rue Ste Croix de la Bretonnerie, where I was relieved to discover that Les Mots à la Bouche, the gay bookstore was open. I was tired from the flights and my stamina isn’t what it used to be, and I wedged my way through the aisles looking at titles, searching for books that might be familiar to me in their English editions. And there, face out on the shelves with the other works, was Les Fantômes, the French translation of my AIDS stories by Anne-Laure Hubert that French publisher Cylibris had published in late 2005. I’d seen the edition before; I have several copies and have given many as gifts to friends. But I had never seen the book in a bookstore.
It’s hard to explain this sort of thrill to someone who hasn’t had the experience of seeing their writing displayed in a bookstore. It’s immensely gratifying and awesome and exhilarating, probably like what an architect might feel standing in front of his completed building, particularly if you have spent years and years, as I do, writing a book, struggling with the plots and characters and themes and then trying to find a publisher who was willing to release it out into the world. I remember the first time I saw a book of mine in a bookstore — it was the winter of 1993, late February, and I was temping at a job on Park Avenue in Manhattan. My first collection of short stories had been accepted more than two years before by Viking, but because of a recession and a company freeze on signing contracts with new authors, the book was not slated for publication until that spring. The store was a small Barnes and Noble outlet, situated on a corner of one of the high-rising glass skyscrapers on Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. I hadn’t expected to find my book so soon in a store. I was on a lunch break, escaping my desk where I had eaten a sandwich because I was too poor to afford the neighborhood restaurants. It was a winter I could barely even afford to take the subway. I had stepped out of the cold into the bookstore, thinking I might look at a magazine or find a title I might later be able to get from the public library, before I headed back to my dismal job, where, at the time, I was typing up the license plates of cars and trucks that had been abandoned and were sitting in a lot in Queens. And there, in the store on a shelf with the rest of the fiction, were five copies of Dancing on the Moon. The first sight of them remains one of the happiest moments of my life, particularly when I correlate it with the unfortunate experiences and deaths from AIDS of the friends who inspired those stories.
That spring and the following one were full of similar thrills. My book found its way into the windows of Brentano’s on Fifth Avenue and B. Dalton’s in the West Village on Eighth Street. I did readings and signings for the first time — including at Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C and Glad Day in Boston, among other stores. I’m not a widely bought or distributed author and the press runs of my books haven’t been the kind to impress any kind of bestseller list, but I’ve now seen my books in an airport bookshop (in New Orleans), in foreign bookstores (also at Word is Out, the gay bookstore in the Bloomsbury district of London, where I was on the shelves with many of my friends’ books), and part of a suggested reading list posted at a university bookstore. And even now, fifteen or so years later, I still get a thrill discovering something I have written in a store, even if it is a used copy of my novel, Where the Rainbow Ends, in the second-hand bookstore in my hometown, north of Atlanta.
Hopefully as you get older and wiser, you discover things about yourself that keep you happy. I have been fortunate to have taken some amazing trips during the last two decades — many due to the generosity of friends — and I’ve learned that I find great joy in being a bookstore tourist. Some people go to museums or sporting events or concerts or restaurants when they travel. I love to hunt for books — and, for the record, not for just my own. I search out local ghost story anthologies, local gay history books, local literary journals and magazines, unusual translations, and all sorts of novels and fiction by both mainstream publishers and small presses. Of all the bookstores I've been to, some other memorable experiences stand out — a deja-vous experience at the Haunted Bookshop in Cambridge (realizing I had already been there decades before with a friend who was now deceased), a boulevard in Pisa, Italy, lined with bookstores, store after store after store, with bins of books outside in the bright sun, the same with Galway, Ireland and the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. I remember the first time I walked into City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and didn’t want to leave because the friend I was with wanted to go elsewhere. I can still spend hours wandering along Charing Cross while many of my other friends are out at the theater. And I’ve often thought I might one day retire to Napa, California — on my last visit there a few years ago I counted more than four bookstores within blocks of each other. I'm not ready for that yet, though. (I still have a few more years left...) And first I'd like to find that town in Wales where there's nothing but bookstores.
It’s hard to explain this sort of thrill to someone who hasn’t had the experience of seeing their writing displayed in a bookstore. It’s immensely gratifying and awesome and exhilarating, probably like what an architect might feel standing in front of his completed building, particularly if you have spent years and years, as I do, writing a book, struggling with the plots and characters and themes and then trying to find a publisher who was willing to release it out into the world. I remember the first time I saw a book of mine in a bookstore — it was the winter of 1993, late February, and I was temping at a job on Park Avenue in Manhattan. My first collection of short stories had been accepted more than two years before by Viking, but because of a recession and a company freeze on signing contracts with new authors, the book was not slated for publication until that spring. The store was a small Barnes and Noble outlet, situated on a corner of one of the high-rising glass skyscrapers on Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. I hadn’t expected to find my book so soon in a store. I was on a lunch break, escaping my desk where I had eaten a sandwich because I was too poor to afford the neighborhood restaurants. It was a winter I could barely even afford to take the subway. I had stepped out of the cold into the bookstore, thinking I might look at a magazine or find a title I might later be able to get from the public library, before I headed back to my dismal job, where, at the time, I was typing up the license plates of cars and trucks that had been abandoned and were sitting in a lot in Queens. And there, in the store on a shelf with the rest of the fiction, were five copies of Dancing on the Moon. The first sight of them remains one of the happiest moments of my life, particularly when I correlate it with the unfortunate experiences and deaths from AIDS of the friends who inspired those stories.
That spring and the following one were full of similar thrills. My book found its way into the windows of Brentano’s on Fifth Avenue and B. Dalton’s in the West Village on Eighth Street. I did readings and signings for the first time — including at Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C and Glad Day in Boston, among other stores. I’m not a widely bought or distributed author and the press runs of my books haven’t been the kind to impress any kind of bestseller list, but I’ve now seen my books in an airport bookshop (in New Orleans), in foreign bookstores (also at Word is Out, the gay bookstore in the Bloomsbury district of London, where I was on the shelves with many of my friends’ books), and part of a suggested reading list posted at a university bookstore. And even now, fifteen or so years later, I still get a thrill discovering something I have written in a store, even if it is a used copy of my novel, Where the Rainbow Ends, in the second-hand bookstore in my hometown, north of Atlanta.
Hopefully as you get older and wiser, you discover things about yourself that keep you happy. I have been fortunate to have taken some amazing trips during the last two decades — many due to the generosity of friends — and I’ve learned that I find great joy in being a bookstore tourist. Some people go to museums or sporting events or concerts or restaurants when they travel. I love to hunt for books — and, for the record, not for just my own. I search out local ghost story anthologies, local gay history books, local literary journals and magazines, unusual translations, and all sorts of novels and fiction by both mainstream publishers and small presses. Of all the bookstores I've been to, some other memorable experiences stand out — a deja-vous experience at the Haunted Bookshop in Cambridge (realizing I had already been there decades before with a friend who was now deceased), a boulevard in Pisa, Italy, lined with bookstores, store after store after store, with bins of books outside in the bright sun, the same with Galway, Ireland and the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. I remember the first time I walked into City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and didn’t want to leave because the friend I was with wanted to go elsewhere. I can still spend hours wandering along Charing Cross while many of my other friends are out at the theater. And I’ve often thought I might one day retire to Napa, California — on my last visit there a few years ago I counted more than four bookstores within blocks of each other. I'm not ready for that yet, though. (I still have a few more years left...) And first I'd like to find that town in Wales where there's nothing but bookstores.
Friday, October 31, 2008
November Publishing Notes
The buzz: Charles Busch’s new play, The Third Story, will debut off-Broadway January 14, 2009 at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village. ** The inaugural production of the Shameless Theater Company, a new theater company in London which will focus on works with gay themes, will be American Briefs, a series of short works by US-based playwrights, followed by Busted Jesus Comix, based on the real-life story of a Florida minor prosecuted on obscenity charges for writing a comic book, and The Choir by Australian playwright Errol Bray, about the castration of young boys.
Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia, Pa. celebrated its 35th anniversary in October. Ed Hermance is the store’s co-owner. Giovanni's has 12,000 titles in its active inventory. It holds 50 readings a year and a photograph of the author James Baldwin, who once visited the store, hangs behind the front counter. Giovanni's is the second-oldest gay-and-lesbian bookstore in the country, behind only New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop. ** The 38-year-old feminist bookstore Amazon Bookstore Coop is changing its name to True Colors Bookstore. Ruta Skujins is the store’s new owner. According to the terms of an out-of-court settlement reached in a 1999 trademark infringement lawsuit brought against online retailer Amazon.com by the feminist bookstore, rights to the Amazon name reverted to the Internet retailer if ownership of the 2,800-square-foot bricks-and-mortar store in south Minneapolis changed hands.
A Missoula, Montana, library board voted to keep The Joy of Gay Sex on its shelves after a resident requested that it be removed. ** Towleroad reported that the Time Out Gay and Lesbian London guide book was refused for sale at the Historic Royal Palace bookshops, including the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew Gardens and the Banqueting House, bookshops. A list of books was 'censored' by management at Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity which manages the sites on behalf of the Queen.
The city of West Hollywood donated a former storage garage to the ONE Archives for a museum of gay history, which opened in October. The inaugural exhibit looks at Los Angeles' gay pride parades from its inception. The president of the board and curator of the collection is Joseph Hawkins, a professor of gender studies and anthropology at USC. Future exhibits will be devoted to lesbian pulp fiction and photographs of nude musclemen. Starting small, the space is 600 square feet and is open for four hours three days a week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and is located at 626 N. Robertson Blvd. Admission is free.
Viking will publish Colm Toibin's new novel, Brooklyn, about a young woman who emigrates from a small Irish town to Brooklyn in the 1950s, in May 2009. Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s novel The Mere Future in October 2009. Fourth Estate has acquired Michael Cunningham's new novel, set in New York. Ecco will publish designer, artist, and actress Gloria Vanderbilt’s OBSESSION: An Erotic Tale, in July 2009. Chronicle will publish Jack Kerouac's You’re a Genius All the Time: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, comprised of the thirty maxims Kerouac penned to define his spontaneous prose style, providing inspiration for all creative types. Norton will release a paperback edition of Luc Montagnier's 1999 book VIRUS: The Co-discoverer of HIV Tracks its Rampage and Charts the Future. Montagnier received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, and the book provides his first-hand account of that discovery process.
Author Gore Vidal was injured in a fall and cancelled an appearance at an Ohio library, and is recuperating at home. The 83-year-old author told the AP he's working on a new novel about the U.S.-Mexican war in the 1840s.
There will be a fundraiser for Stuart Timmons, author of The Trouble With Harry and Gay LA, who suffered a stroke in January, on Saturday, November 15, 3 to 5 p.m. at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at 909 West Adams Blvd. in Los Angeles. There will be readings by Malcolm Boyd, Chris Freeman, Trebor Healey, Michael Kearns, Felice Picano, Derek Ringold, Terry Wolverton, and others. There is a $25 suggested contribution.
Australian writer Geoff Knight has launched a GayWriters Web site as a ning community at http://gaywriters.ning.com/.
AfterElton is sponsoring a Vote for the Best Gay Books at http://www.afterelton.com/print/2008/10/booksurvey_voting).
Kudos: Till Kleinert's Cowboy, a 35-minute film about a city dweller and a country lad's terrible price for love, won the £25,000 first prize at the Iris Prize Festival in Cardiff, which the organizers call the world's biggest gay and lesbian film festival. The German director’s film also won him a £500 travel award to help him return to the UK to make his next film. James Bolton and Dream Boy, a love story between teenagers in the American South in the 1970s, won the festival’s award for best feature film. The feature film is selected by the Friends of Iris, individuals who open their homes to the makers of films shortlisted for the festival. ** Among the finalists for the National Book Awards were: Frank Bidart for Watching the Spring Festival, Mark Dotyfor Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems, Reginald Gibbons for Creatures of a Day, Richard Howard for Without Saying, and Patricia Smith for Blood Dazzler. ** The winners of the 2008 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are: Best Novel: Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale. Best Short Fiction: "Ever So Much More than Thirty" by Joshua Lewis from the anthology So Fey. ** Manuel Muñoz was one of the 10 recipients of the 2008 Whiting Writers' Awards.
And the Nominees Will Be: The Publishing Triangle is now accepting submissions for its 2009 debut fiction, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry awards, given for books published in 2008. Details and forms can be found at the Web site http://www.publishingtriangle.org/. ** Submissions for the next cycle of the Lambda Literary Awards are now being accepted, for books published during 2008. Awards are given in twenty-two (22) categories. For more details visit the Lambda Literary Foundation at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.
Open Calls: Editor Stephen Soucy is looking for short stories for the anthology ART from ART, about stories that are connected directly to—or inspired by—a work of art, to be published by Modernist Press. Deadline is 12/01/08. Submit your story and a brief bio via email to shsoucy@modernistpress.com. ** Queerphilosophy is looking for essays and pieces of creative non-fiction for an anthology slotted for 2009. Pieces should explore how individuals navigate through current ideas of sexuality and gender identity when faced with traditional philosophies and religions. Submit work that is at least 1000 words to queerphilosophy@gmail.com . For more details visit the Web site at http://www.queerphilosophy.com/. ** Knockout Literary Magazine is sponsoring a 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize. Three prizes will be awarded: $300, $50, and $25 gift certificates to Powell's Books and publication of prize-winning poems in Knockout. Submission deadline: 8/1/09. Details and entry guidelines: www.knockoutlit.org/rsprize.htm. ** The Eric Rofes Center for Multi-cultural Queer Studies plans to house the largest collection of LGBT/Queer/SGL chapbooks. Submissions can be sent to: HSU- Multicultural Center, c/o Eric Rofes Center Chapbook Archive, 1 Harpst Street, Arcata, CA 95521.
Passages: Ron Hanby, director of gay and lesbian sales at Bookazine, died in October. Shelf Awareness reported that the company called him "a passionate bookseller and an advocate for each and every one of his accounts. He worked hard to make sure that our booksellers had a level of personal service unparalleled in this industry." Before joining Bookazine, Hanby worked at Waldenbooks, B. Dalton Bookseller and Encore Books. In 1997 Hanby received a Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award.
Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia, Pa. celebrated its 35th anniversary in October. Ed Hermance is the store’s co-owner. Giovanni's has 12,000 titles in its active inventory. It holds 50 readings a year and a photograph of the author James Baldwin, who once visited the store, hangs behind the front counter. Giovanni's is the second-oldest gay-and-lesbian bookstore in the country, behind only New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop. ** The 38-year-old feminist bookstore Amazon Bookstore Coop is changing its name to True Colors Bookstore. Ruta Skujins is the store’s new owner. According to the terms of an out-of-court settlement reached in a 1999 trademark infringement lawsuit brought against online retailer Amazon.com by the feminist bookstore, rights to the Amazon name reverted to the Internet retailer if ownership of the 2,800-square-foot bricks-and-mortar store in south Minneapolis changed hands.
A Missoula, Montana, library board voted to keep The Joy of Gay Sex on its shelves after a resident requested that it be removed. ** Towleroad reported that the Time Out Gay and Lesbian London guide book was refused for sale at the Historic Royal Palace bookshops, including the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew Gardens and the Banqueting House, bookshops. A list of books was 'censored' by management at Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity which manages the sites on behalf of the Queen.
The city of West Hollywood donated a former storage garage to the ONE Archives for a museum of gay history, which opened in October. The inaugural exhibit looks at Los Angeles' gay pride parades from its inception. The president of the board and curator of the collection is Joseph Hawkins, a professor of gender studies and anthropology at USC. Future exhibits will be devoted to lesbian pulp fiction and photographs of nude musclemen. Starting small, the space is 600 square feet and is open for four hours three days a week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and is located at 626 N. Robertson Blvd. Admission is free.
Viking will publish Colm Toibin's new novel, Brooklyn, about a young woman who emigrates from a small Irish town to Brooklyn in the 1950s, in May 2009. Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s novel The Mere Future in October 2009. Fourth Estate has acquired Michael Cunningham's new novel, set in New York. Ecco will publish designer, artist, and actress Gloria Vanderbilt’s OBSESSION: An Erotic Tale, in July 2009. Chronicle will publish Jack Kerouac's You’re a Genius All the Time: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, comprised of the thirty maxims Kerouac penned to define his spontaneous prose style, providing inspiration for all creative types. Norton will release a paperback edition of Luc Montagnier's 1999 book VIRUS: The Co-discoverer of HIV Tracks its Rampage and Charts the Future. Montagnier received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, and the book provides his first-hand account of that discovery process.
Author Gore Vidal was injured in a fall and cancelled an appearance at an Ohio library, and is recuperating at home. The 83-year-old author told the AP he's working on a new novel about the U.S.-Mexican war in the 1840s.
There will be a fundraiser for Stuart Timmons, author of The Trouble With Harry and Gay LA, who suffered a stroke in January, on Saturday, November 15, 3 to 5 p.m. at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at 909 West Adams Blvd. in Los Angeles. There will be readings by Malcolm Boyd, Chris Freeman, Trebor Healey, Michael Kearns, Felice Picano, Derek Ringold, Terry Wolverton, and others. There is a $25 suggested contribution.
Australian writer Geoff Knight has launched a GayWriters Web site as a ning community at http://gaywriters.ning.com/.
AfterElton is sponsoring a Vote for the Best Gay Books at http://www.afterelton.com/print/2008/10/booksurvey_voting).
Kudos: Till Kleinert's Cowboy, a 35-minute film about a city dweller and a country lad's terrible price for love, won the £25,000 first prize at the Iris Prize Festival in Cardiff, which the organizers call the world's biggest gay and lesbian film festival. The German director’s film also won him a £500 travel award to help him return to the UK to make his next film. James Bolton and Dream Boy, a love story between teenagers in the American South in the 1970s, won the festival’s award for best feature film. The feature film is selected by the Friends of Iris, individuals who open their homes to the makers of films shortlisted for the festival. ** Among the finalists for the National Book Awards were: Frank Bidart for Watching the Spring Festival, Mark Dotyfor Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems, Reginald Gibbons for Creatures of a Day, Richard Howard for Without Saying, and Patricia Smith for Blood Dazzler. ** The winners of the 2008 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are: Best Novel: Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale. Best Short Fiction: "Ever So Much More than Thirty" by Joshua Lewis from the anthology So Fey. ** Manuel Muñoz was one of the 10 recipients of the 2008 Whiting Writers' Awards.
And the Nominees Will Be: The Publishing Triangle is now accepting submissions for its 2009 debut fiction, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry awards, given for books published in 2008. Details and forms can be found at the Web site http://www.publishingtriangle.org/. ** Submissions for the next cycle of the Lambda Literary Awards are now being accepted, for books published during 2008. Awards are given in twenty-two (22) categories. For more details visit the Lambda Literary Foundation at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.
Open Calls: Editor Stephen Soucy is looking for short stories for the anthology ART from ART, about stories that are connected directly to—or inspired by—a work of art, to be published by Modernist Press. Deadline is 12/01/08. Submit your story and a brief bio via email to shsoucy@modernistpress.com. ** Queerphilosophy is looking for essays and pieces of creative non-fiction for an anthology slotted for 2009. Pieces should explore how individuals navigate through current ideas of sexuality and gender identity when faced with traditional philosophies and religions. Submit work that is at least 1000 words to queerphilosophy@gmail.com . For more details visit the Web site at http://www.queerphilosophy.com/. ** Knockout Literary Magazine is sponsoring a 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize. Three prizes will be awarded: $300, $50, and $25 gift certificates to Powell's Books and publication of prize-winning poems in Knockout. Submission deadline: 8/1/09. Details and entry guidelines: www.knockoutlit.org/rsprize.htm. ** The Eric Rofes Center for Multi-cultural Queer Studies plans to house the largest collection of LGBT/Queer/SGL chapbooks. Submissions can be sent to: HSU- Multicultural Center, c/o Eric Rofes Center Chapbook Archive, 1 Harpst Street, Arcata, CA 95521.
Passages: Ron Hanby, director of gay and lesbian sales at Bookazine, died in October. Shelf Awareness reported that the company called him "a passionate bookseller and an advocate for each and every one of his accounts. He worked hard to make sure that our booksellers had a level of personal service unparalleled in this industry." Before joining Bookazine, Hanby worked at Waldenbooks, B. Dalton Bookseller and Encore Books. In 1997 Hanby received a Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
October Publishing Notes
The buzz: The Associated Press reported that Federico Garcia Lorca's family won't oppose a petition to open a mass grave where his body is believed to have been dumped after Franco supporters allegedly executed the poet and playwright at the outbreak of Spain's Civil War. Garcia Lorca was 38 when he was killed. Investigations indicate the poet, who was open about his homosexuality, was shot along with a school teacher named Dioscoro Galindo Gonzalez and two labor union activists -- Francisco Galadi and Juan Arcolla -- on Aug. 18, 1936, near the Viznar mountain gorge in southern Spain. The bodies are believed to lie in a site near a designated a memorial park. Several thousand others are believed to have been shot and dumped at the gorge. The Telegraph reported that British author Alexander McCall Smith will include more gay characters in his popular The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. The Advocate reported that Sir Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono are both reported to be unhappy with the book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman that claims John Lennon longed to be in a relationship with McCartney. Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak came out at the age of 80 in the pages of The New York Times. Rachel Maddow's book on how the United States has departed from its constitutional ideals and historical traditions to become a militarist nation will be published by Crown. In Spring 2010 Little Brown will publish Cris Beam's J, about a female-to-male transgender teen as he begins to live as a boy and comes to terms with what it means to be trans and Puerto Rican in New York City. Lethe Press is launching a new imprint of “bear” titles -- Bear Bones Books. The reissue of Jeff Mann’s memoir Edge will be the first book in the series. Ron Suresha will helm the imprint. Blind Eye books will publish Josh Lanyon's novel The White Mountains in September 2009. Circle of Seven productions has produced a video trailer for Dark Scribe Press’s upcoming book of queer horror: Unspeakable Horror. The trailer can be viewed on the press’s blog site: http://darkscribepress.blogspot.com/2008/09/unspeakable-book-trailer.html. Velvet Mafia is now posting new content weekly. Among the recent items are poems by Andy Quan and Brian Brown, and fiction from Jeff Leavell, John Stewart, Drew Gummerson and Sean Meriwether. The Tectonic Theater Project has added an epilogue to The Laramie Project, their play about the murder of college student Matthew Shepard. The troupe revisited Laramie to interview residents about changes since the murder ten years ago. The epilogue will be added to the published piece and included in future performances. Plans for a new gay-and-lesbian theater festival in Orlando ran aground after accusations that the chief organizer took money from an AIDS fundraiser. The GLBT theater festival was originally planned to include three plays, a series of new-play readings, and the presentation of awards honoring two deceased gay and lesbian theater artists. Q-Notes reported that a casting call ad for auditions of a South Carolina production of the off-Broadway hit Naked Boys Singing was canceled by The State, a daily newspaper in Columbia, “because of the nature of the content.” Also in the Carolinas, Q-Notes reported that C3 Entertainment in North Carolina produced a play asserting people could not only pray being gay away, but also pray away AIDS. Arch Brown’s Thorny Theater in Palm Springs, California has launched its new season with Brown’s play Sex Symbols. DVD distributor Wolfe Video has acquired Were the World Mine, directed by Tom Gustafson, an original musical about a gay high school student who is cast in his school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The film has won several awards at film festivals. Variety reported that director Steven Soderbergh is working on a biopic of Liberace, with Michael Douglas playing the flamboyant pianist. Matt Damon is in talks to play Scott Thorson, Liberace's alleged companion of five years. Designer Tom Ford has acquired the rights to Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel A Single Man, about a middle-aged gay professor. Actor Colin Firth is said to be in discussions for the role, with Julianne Moore play a friend and a former student. Jamie Bell is also said to be part of the cast, with the movie beginning shooting in November. New York magazine reported that Barack Obama supporter and openly gay actor and author Alan Cumming is hoping to become a U.S. citizen in time to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election. OutWeek, the former GLBTQ New York City-based magazine published from June 1989 to July 1991, is now available in an online archive, thanks to sponsorship by The Gill Foundation, Larry Kramer, and Gabriel Rotello, with help from the One Foundation and Tectonic Theater Project. The magazine was noted for its “outings” of national figures and its coverage of AIDS activism. Boston Edge reported that an archive of historical gay video footage belonging to Gay Cable Network pioneer and sex club entrepreneur Lou Maletta -- much of it in VHS format -- sits uncatalogued and deteriorating in a Manhattan storage room. The video and DAT tapes includes footage from the Continental Baths in the ‘70s of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, a comment made by Dick Cheney about gay marriage back in 1984, and some of the earliest coverage of AIDS within the gay community of New York. Gay Cable News was the first news show of any kind to broadcast a picture of a Karposi's sarcoma lesion, and that clip is now preserved by the Museum of Broadcasting. A library in Helena, Montana, wants to ban the book The Joy of Gay Sex. The library board of directors is expected to make a decision on the matter at its Oct. 21 meeting. According to several press reports, sources in Wasilla, Alaska, noted that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin tried to use her sway as mayor to censor the local library, and now New York literary agent Holly Bemiss and her partner Erin Bried are throwing a “Sarah Palin Book Club” fundraiser for the Lambda Literary Foundation October 2 at 7 pm at Cattyshack in Brooklyn. A special prize will be given to the best Sarah Palin lookalike. Christopher and Anne Rice are opening up their home in Rancho Mirage, California for “Written in the Sand 2008,” another fundraiser for Lambda Literary Foundation on Saturday, November 8. Admission is $65 and $40 for students.
Kudos: Un Altro Pianeta, a drama from Stefano Tummolini, won the second Queer Lion Award from the Venice Film Festival for the best feature with a gay theme. James Lear was named Writer of the Year for his novel The Palace of Varieties at the Erotic Awards in London. Alex Ross of The New Yorker and author of The Rest Is Noise, was one of the 25 recipients of the 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Fellowships. Tony Kushner received the first Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. Greg Wrenn’s book of poems Off the Fire Road received The Laurel Review/GreenTower Press Midwest Chapbook Series Award and will be published in the spring of 2009.
Open Calls: The online magazine Limp Wrist is offering a $150 scholarship to a LGBT high school senior via a poetry contest. The recipient also receives a spot at the 2009 Juniper Summer Writers Institute. There is no entry fee, but students must identify as a member of the LGBT community. Deadline is December 15, 2008. Further details may be found at editor Dustin Brookshire’s blog: http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/. ** Starbooks Press is seeking submissions of historically-based erotic novels or anthologies until March 2009. The publisher also has open calls for several erotica anthologies, including Pretty Boys and Roughnecks (deadline February 15,2009) and Unmasked II: More Erotic Tales of Gay Superheroes (deadline March 15, 2009). ** A reminder that the deadline for The White Crane/James White Poetry Prize for a book-length poetry collection is October 30. More details can be found at: http://www.jameswhitepoetryprize.org/.
Passages: Poet Reginald Shepherd died September 11, 2008 from cancer. He was 45. Shepherd was the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). He is the author of: Fata Morgana (2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards, Otherhood (2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Wrong (1999), Angel, Interrupted (1996), and Some Are Drowning (1994), winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry (all University of Pittsburgh Press). Shepherd's work has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies, as well as in such journals as American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Yale Review. He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press). Shepherd received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other awards and honors. ** John Burnside, the inventor of a kaleidoscope-like device called the teleidoscope and an early gay movement activist who was the longtime partner of the late gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, died on September 15, 2008 at his home in San Francisco. He was 91. In 1979, Burnside and Hay joined Don Kilhefner in organizing the first Spiritual Gathering for Radical Faeries. Burnside and Hay were featured in the 1977 documentary Word Is Out and the 2002 documentary Hope Along the Wind. Donations in Burnside's memory to continue his and Hay's activist work may be made to the Harry Hay Fund, c/o Chas Nol, 174 1/2 Hartford St., San Francisco, CA 94114.
Kudos: Un Altro Pianeta, a drama from Stefano Tummolini, won the second Queer Lion Award from the Venice Film Festival for the best feature with a gay theme. James Lear was named Writer of the Year for his novel The Palace of Varieties at the Erotic Awards in London. Alex Ross of The New Yorker and author of The Rest Is Noise, was one of the 25 recipients of the 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Fellowships. Tony Kushner received the first Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. Greg Wrenn’s book of poems Off the Fire Road received The Laurel Review/GreenTower Press Midwest Chapbook Series Award and will be published in the spring of 2009.
Open Calls: The online magazine Limp Wrist is offering a $150 scholarship to a LGBT high school senior via a poetry contest. The recipient also receives a spot at the 2009 Juniper Summer Writers Institute. There is no entry fee, but students must identify as a member of the LGBT community. Deadline is December 15, 2008. Further details may be found at editor Dustin Brookshire’s blog: http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/. ** Starbooks Press is seeking submissions of historically-based erotic novels or anthologies until March 2009. The publisher also has open calls for several erotica anthologies, including Pretty Boys and Roughnecks (deadline February 15,2009) and Unmasked II: More Erotic Tales of Gay Superheroes (deadline March 15, 2009). ** A reminder that the deadline for The White Crane/James White Poetry Prize for a book-length poetry collection is October 30. More details can be found at: http://www.jameswhitepoetryprize.org/.
Passages: Poet Reginald Shepherd died September 11, 2008 from cancer. He was 45. Shepherd was the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). He is the author of: Fata Morgana (2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards, Otherhood (2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Wrong (1999), Angel, Interrupted (1996), and Some Are Drowning (1994), winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry (all University of Pittsburgh Press). Shepherd's work has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies, as well as in such journals as American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Yale Review. He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press). Shepherd received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other awards and honors. ** John Burnside, the inventor of a kaleidoscope-like device called the teleidoscope and an early gay movement activist who was the longtime partner of the late gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, died on September 15, 2008 at his home in San Francisco. He was 91. In 1979, Burnside and Hay joined Don Kilhefner in organizing the first Spiritual Gathering for Radical Faeries. Burnside and Hay were featured in the 1977 documentary Word Is Out and the 2002 documentary Hope Along the Wind. Donations in Burnside's memory to continue his and Hay's activist work may be made to the Harry Hay Fund, c/o Chas Nol, 174 1/2 Hartford St., San Francisco, CA 94114.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Market News
New Presses, New Books, New Stories: While mainstream publishers are leaning more and more to focusing their few gay books on memoirs, light romances, and young adult novels, a new crop of independent boutique publishers are starting to fill in the gaps with a variety of gay offerings, with many offering an outlet for gay short fiction. Modernist Press (http://www.modernistpress.com/), started by Steve Soucy, launches this month with an anthology of gay stories titled Nine Hundred & Sixty-Nine: West Hollywood Stories, edited by Soucy, with fiction by Felice Picano, John Morgan Wilson, Shaun Levin, Timothy State, and others. Modernist is also interested in publishing full-length works of fiction (novels/novellas) and short story collections. For more information, contact Steve Soucy at mailto:shsoucy@yahoo.com. Ignavia, an online literary journal which features gay and lesbian authors and short fiction that is “dark, edgy and queer,” has a new issue up online at http://www.ignaviapress.com/. An editor’s note reveals that Ignavia plans to begin publishing books in 2009. Dark Scribe Press (http://www.darkscribepress.com/) is another independent publisher of dark genre literature – horror, suspense, and thrillers. The Press places a strong emphasis on the integration of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters in their offerings. First up for the Press is Unspeakable Horror: Shadows from the Closet, an anthology of queer horror stories edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, with fiction by Lee Thomas, Rick R. Reed, Kevin W. Reardon, and others, due in bookstores in December. Rebel Satori Press (http://www.rebelsatori.com/) is an independent publisher of books on spirituality and revolutionary personal transformation. (Satori is a Zen term for enlightenment.) The Press publishes Ashé Journal, along with new/experimental fiction and creative/inspirational non-fiction. Recently the Press published the anthology Madder Love: Queer Men In the Precincts of Surrealism, edited by Peter Dubé, with work by Stephen Beachy, Tom Cardamone, Trebor Healey, Kevin Killian, Rob Stephenson, and others. Forthcoming for the press are novels by J. Warren (Stealing Ganymede) and Sven Davisson (The Devil’s Island). Lethe Press (http://www.lethepressbooks.com/) is another independent publisher that continues to grow. Recently, Lethe has published Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades, a collection of lesbian ghost stories edited by Catherine Lundoff, and a solo collection of speculative fiction by Steve Berman titled Second Thoughts. Berman has also implemented two new annual anthologies for the press, the successful Wilde Stories, an anthology of the year’s best gay speculative fiction which was released this summer, and Best Gay Stories, the 2008 edition which features stories by Raymond Luczak, Rick Bowes, Greg Herren, Jeff Mann, and others.
Friday, August 29, 2008
September Publishing Notes
The buzz: This fall, Haiduk Press will publish Patrick M. Chapman’s Thou Shall Not Love -What Evangelicals Really Say to Gays, a critique of evangelical views on a variety of subjects, including gay marriage. Lethe Press is in talks with Lawrence Schimel's A Midsummers Night Press to partner in the release of both Best Gay Poetry 2008 and Best Lesbian Poetry 2008 before the end of fall. Lethe Press is also publishing John McNeill’s Sex as God Intended it to Be, Craig Gidney’s Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, the anthology Time Well Bent: Queer Alternate History, and the Press is reissuing Jeff Mann’s memoir Edge: Travels of a Leatherbear. Arcade will publish Daniel Harris's Celebrity: A Star-Studded Look at Fame and the Limelight, in July 2009. Alyson will publish a new collection of short stories by Jim Grimsley, Jesus Is Sending You This Message, with an introduction by Dorothy Allison. Sarah Schulman’s next novel will be The Mere Future, which will be published in 2009. Harper will publish playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Paul Rudnick's untitled collection of humorous essays, including his humorous New Yorker pieces. Modernist Press will publish Nine Hundred & Sixty-Nine: West Hollywood Stories in September and celebrate the launch of the book at the West Hollywood Bookfair on Sunday September 28th. Patricia Nell Warren wrote the intro to the collection of gay stories, which features short fiction by Max Pierce, Felice Picano, Timothy State, and others. The reading at the Book Fair is from 4:50 pm to 5:30 pm on the Robertson Stage. More details can be found here. Freaks Read, a literary salon which features gay and erotica writers, is a free event that happens on the last Wednesday of each month at Nowhere (322 E. 14th St. between First and Second Avenues) in Manhattan. Join the moderated "nowherenyc" Yahoo group to receive future announcements. Writers interested in participating can send a story sample to Charlie Vazquez at firekingpress@yahoo.com with Freaks Read as the subject. Perry Brass and Bob Cabell have produced a series of podcasts called Naked Books, about books that "show all and hide nothing" when it comes to genuine feelings and a closeness to life. Among the new LGBT collections at the NY Public Library are the backfiles of the magazine Pinups from photographer and editor Christopher Schulz. The Library is also working on acquiring a complete backfile of HX and Next magazines, a collection of Japanese erotica, and a historic drag performance collection. M. Christian will teach an erotica writing class on October 12th in downtown San Francisco. More details can be found by writing him at Zobop@aol.com. The next annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 14 - 17, 2009 in New Orleans. Participants lined up include Jess Wells, Radclyffe, Michael Thomas Ford, and Ali Liebegott. The memorial video produced by Lambda Literary can be found on YouTube here. Rhiannon Argo blogs about the recent Lambda young writers retreat on the new Invert(e) blog site. The blog is the brainchild of the Suspect Thoughts team of Greg Wharton and Ian Philips. Invert(e) is also a new literary journal from the ST Press. Donations are down at White Crane and the organization and the magazine has a call out for financial assitance. Visit http://www.gaywisdom.org/ to see the complete listing of everything White Crane does and to make a tax-deductible contribution. The DreamWalker Group has established a BuyDirect Page which sells books directly from the Web site. Rich Goscicki, author of Mirror Reversal, is currently featured. The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the archive of American photographer Robert Giard as part of the Yale Collection of American Literature. Giard, who died in 2002, was known for his portraits of gay and lesbian writers. Bong, a 350-page book about Nguyen Van Dung, a gay man who lives in Ha Noi, was recently published in Vietman. “Bong,” is Vietnamese slang for a homosexual. The book was written by two local journalists who taped more than 200 hours of interviews with Dung. Another book about a gay man, Pham Thanh Trung, will soon be published. Afdhere Jama, the editor of the gay Muslim magazine Huriyah, has released a book about LGBT people in the Islamic World titled Illegal Citizens: Queer lives in the Muslim World, published by Salaam Press, which follows the lives of 33 people in 22 countries including Nigeria, Lebanon, Indonesia, Bosnia, China, India, Israel, and Ukraine. Jama was born in Somalia. He moved to the USA after civil war broke out in his native country. The New York Times reported that Rufus Wainwright has dropped plans to write a musical for the Metropolitan Opera over concerns about the libretto and performance dates. Wainwright wanted his opera, Prima Dona, commissioned by the Met, to be in French, and the production was not slated until 2014. The musical will now premiere next July at the Manchester International Festival in England. Craig Lucas has also been commissioned by the Met and his libretto, with music by Nico Muhly, is expected to be workshopped soon. Wig Out! will be the season opener at the Vineyard Theater will feature the downtown drag performer Daniel T. Boothe, aka Sweetie. The new play by Tarell Alvin McCraney is about competition among drag queens. James Franco will play the young Allen Ginsberg in a film by Rob Epstein. And E! television reported that "a source close to club DJ and Lohan pal Samantha Ronson" is "certainly telling friends she's planning to write a book.”
Also on the horizon: In addition to the titles mentioned above that Lethe Press will publish in the forthcoming months, the Press will also publish my collection Still Dancing: New and Selected Stories. This collection brings together twenty of my stories about the impact of AIDS on the gay community which have been written over the last three decades. Along with ten stories from my first collection Dancing on the Moon, are ten newly selected stories. And for this collection I’ve also chosen stories that revolve around gay New Yorkers—those lost, those surviving, those displaced, those undaunted, and those who became expatriates. Still Dancing’s pub date is scheduled for World AIDS Day, December 1, 2008.
Searching for friends of James Voss: British historian Helen Graham is seeking friends of James Voss, a writer who died of AIDS in the mid-1980s. Graham is working on film and book projects about gay Finnish-American International Brigader and poet William Aalto who died in New York in 1958 while in his early forties. Foss, who knew Aalto during this period, was in his twenties. In the mid-1980s, shortly before he died of AIDS, Foss wrote an evocative biographical sketch of Aalto which remained unpublished but was deposited in a New York history archive and with writer Donald Windham. Foss may have also worked for MIT and his last known residence in the 1980s was on 86th Street in Brooklyn. For further info and queries, Graham can be contacted at h.graham@rhul.ac.uk.
Kudos: Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize. ** The Golden Crown Literary Society winners have been announced. A full list can be found at the Web site. ** Press Pass Q reported that Fay Jacobs has been named a winner in the annual National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. She received first place for her book Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach, in the category of non-fiction humor. The award will be presented at the group’s annual conference to be held this year in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in September. ** Winners of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation’s 2007 awards were: Robert Askins of New York, NY for Clean Living, a one-act play; Diana Star Helmer & Thomas S. Owens of Perry, IA for Morty's Mother Marched, a children's story book; and Tracy Wynn of Concord, MA for Mrs. Somebody Somebody, a short story.
Open Calls: The deadline for the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation’s Playwriting Competition is November 30, 2008. All works must present the gay and lesbian lifestyle in a positive manner and be based on, or directly inspired by, a historic person, culture, work of art, or event. For further submission information, visit the Foundation’s Web site at http://www.aabbfoundation.org. ** The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, in association with the Marigny Theatre Corporation and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, is sponsoring their third annual playwriting contest. The winning play will premier the weekend of the Festival, May 14-17, 2009. There is a $10 fee for every play submitted. Participants can enter more than once. Submission instructions can be found on the Web site. ** Applications are being accepted for the 2008 James Duggins Mid-Career Awards. Nominations are open through October 1, 2008. The awards, in their third year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each are made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Further details and nomination instructions can be found here: http://www.sasfest.org/duggins.php. ** The deadline for the 2008–09 Queer Foundation High School Seniors English Essay Contest is February 28, 2009. This year’s theme is Pink Ink ("We write not only about different things; we also write differently"—Brecht.) For contest rules, judging criteria, and an application form, visit the Web site.** Chip Capelli will be reading for a forthcoming Lethe Press gay men’s erotica anthology tentatively entitled Gemini: Twice A Man's Pleasure. As part of a new Zodiac-inspired line of gay erotica, all submissions should address a theme inspired by the specific sign: in this case, Gemini. Stories should be between 2,000 and 6000 words. Submissions will be read from September 2, 2008 through January 2, 2009 and may be sent to: Gemini, PO Box 18070, Philadelphia PA 19147-0070. Email queries and other communication may be made to ZodiacEditor@gmail.com. ** Editor Joseph R.G. DeMarco will be reading for a forthcoming Lethe Press gay men's anthology tentatively entitled A Study in Lavender: Queering Holmes. All stories must be both gay-themed and mysteries set in the Sherlock Holmes mythos, however the character of Sherlock Holmes need not be the focus. Submissions should be between 1,000 words and 8,000 words. Submissions will be read from January 1, 2009 through March 30, 2009. Queries/Submissions to: holmesanthology@gmail.com. ** Editors Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia are seeking lesbian cowboy erotica for an anthology to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is October 31, 2008. Word length is 2000-5000 words. This anthology is a follow up to Rode Hard, Put Away Wet, assembled by the same editors for Suspect Thoughts Press in 2005. Submit manuscripts as Word or RTF attachments to sacchigreen@gmail.com. Editor Ron Jackson Suresha is seeking stories for Bearotica 3: More Hairy Beefy Macho Fiction. Deadline is November 1, 2008. Preferred length: 2500-3500 words. Submission and guideline details can be found at: www.suresha.com/writing/calls/b3_cfs.php.
Passages: Larry Townsend, gay leather activist and author, died July 29, 2008, at the age of 77. Townsend was the pseudonymous author of The Leatherman's Handbook, several gay leather novels and a leather advice column. His friend and writer Jack Fritscher has posted an obituary on his Web site at http://www.jackfritscher.com/. ** Del Martin, the pioneering lesbian rights activist, died August 27, 2008 with her wife, Phyllis Lyon by her bedside. Martin died at a San Francisco hospital two weeks after a broken arm exacerbated her existing health problems, according to Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Martin and Lyon were partners for 55 years. Co-founders in the 1950s of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization in the United States, they battled homophobia in the National Organization for Women in the 1960s; founded the Lyon-Martin Health Services clinics for lesbians in the 1970s; and in the new millennium, became the first gay couple to be married in San Francisco - twice. Their books Lesbian/Woman and Lesbian Love and Liberation are classics in lesbian literature. In 2003, Joan Biren immortalized their amazing lives in her award-winning documentary No Secret Anymore: the Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Martin and Lyon exchanged vows at San Francisco City Hall on June 16, the first day same-sex couples could legally wed in California, after being together for more than half a century. Mayor Gavin Newsom, who officiated the wedding, singled them out to be the first gay couple to be declared "spouses for life" in the city in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.
Also on the horizon: In addition to the titles mentioned above that Lethe Press will publish in the forthcoming months, the Press will also publish my collection Still Dancing: New and Selected Stories. This collection brings together twenty of my stories about the impact of AIDS on the gay community which have been written over the last three decades. Along with ten stories from my first collection Dancing on the Moon, are ten newly selected stories. And for this collection I’ve also chosen stories that revolve around gay New Yorkers—those lost, those surviving, those displaced, those undaunted, and those who became expatriates. Still Dancing’s pub date is scheduled for World AIDS Day, December 1, 2008.
Searching for friends of James Voss: British historian Helen Graham is seeking friends of James Voss, a writer who died of AIDS in the mid-1980s. Graham is working on film and book projects about gay Finnish-American International Brigader and poet William Aalto who died in New York in 1958 while in his early forties. Foss, who knew Aalto during this period, was in his twenties. In the mid-1980s, shortly before he died of AIDS, Foss wrote an evocative biographical sketch of Aalto which remained unpublished but was deposited in a New York history archive and with writer Donald Windham. Foss may have also worked for MIT and his last known residence in the 1980s was on 86th Street in Brooklyn. For further info and queries, Graham can be contacted at h.graham@rhul.ac.uk.
Kudos: Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize. ** The Golden Crown Literary Society winners have been announced. A full list can be found at the Web site. ** Press Pass Q reported that Fay Jacobs has been named a winner in the annual National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. She received first place for her book Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach, in the category of non-fiction humor. The award will be presented at the group’s annual conference to be held this year in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in September. ** Winners of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation’s 2007 awards were: Robert Askins of New York, NY for Clean Living, a one-act play; Diana Star Helmer & Thomas S. Owens of Perry, IA for Morty's Mother Marched, a children's story book; and Tracy Wynn of Concord, MA for Mrs. Somebody Somebody, a short story.
Open Calls: The deadline for the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation’s Playwriting Competition is November 30, 2008. All works must present the gay and lesbian lifestyle in a positive manner and be based on, or directly inspired by, a historic person, culture, work of art, or event. For further submission information, visit the Foundation’s Web site at http://www.aabbfoundation.org. ** The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, in association with the Marigny Theatre Corporation and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, is sponsoring their third annual playwriting contest. The winning play will premier the weekend of the Festival, May 14-17, 2009. There is a $10 fee for every play submitted. Participants can enter more than once. Submission instructions can be found on the Web site. ** Applications are being accepted for the 2008 James Duggins Mid-Career Awards. Nominations are open through October 1, 2008. The awards, in their third year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each are made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Further details and nomination instructions can be found here: http://www.sasfest.org/duggins.php. ** The deadline for the 2008–09 Queer Foundation High School Seniors English Essay Contest is February 28, 2009. This year’s theme is Pink Ink ("We write not only about different things; we also write differently"—Brecht.) For contest rules, judging criteria, and an application form, visit the Web site.** Chip Capelli will be reading for a forthcoming Lethe Press gay men’s erotica anthology tentatively entitled Gemini: Twice A Man's Pleasure. As part of a new Zodiac-inspired line of gay erotica, all submissions should address a theme inspired by the specific sign: in this case, Gemini. Stories should be between 2,000 and 6000 words. Submissions will be read from September 2, 2008 through January 2, 2009 and may be sent to: Gemini, PO Box 18070, Philadelphia PA 19147-0070. Email queries and other communication may be made to ZodiacEditor@gmail.com. ** Editor Joseph R.G. DeMarco will be reading for a forthcoming Lethe Press gay men's anthology tentatively entitled A Study in Lavender: Queering Holmes. All stories must be both gay-themed and mysteries set in the Sherlock Holmes mythos, however the character of Sherlock Holmes need not be the focus. Submissions should be between 1,000 words and 8,000 words. Submissions will be read from January 1, 2009 through March 30, 2009. Queries/Submissions to: holmesanthology@gmail.com. ** Editors Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia are seeking lesbian cowboy erotica for an anthology to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is October 31, 2008. Word length is 2000-5000 words. This anthology is a follow up to Rode Hard, Put Away Wet, assembled by the same editors for Suspect Thoughts Press in 2005. Submit manuscripts as Word or RTF attachments to sacchigreen@gmail.com. Editor Ron Jackson Suresha is seeking stories for Bearotica 3: More Hairy Beefy Macho Fiction. Deadline is November 1, 2008. Preferred length: 2500-3500 words. Submission and guideline details can be found at: www.suresha.com/writing/calls/b3_cfs.php.
Passages: Larry Townsend, gay leather activist and author, died July 29, 2008, at the age of 77. Townsend was the pseudonymous author of The Leatherman's Handbook, several gay leather novels and a leather advice column. His friend and writer Jack Fritscher has posted an obituary on his Web site at http://www.jackfritscher.com/. ** Del Martin, the pioneering lesbian rights activist, died August 27, 2008 with her wife, Phyllis Lyon by her bedside. Martin died at a San Francisco hospital two weeks after a broken arm exacerbated her existing health problems, according to Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Martin and Lyon were partners for 55 years. Co-founders in the 1950s of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization in the United States, they battled homophobia in the National Organization for Women in the 1960s; founded the Lyon-Martin Health Services clinics for lesbians in the 1970s; and in the new millennium, became the first gay couple to be married in San Francisco - twice. Their books Lesbian/Woman and Lesbian Love and Liberation are classics in lesbian literature. In 2003, Joan Biren immortalized their amazing lives in her award-winning documentary No Secret Anymore: the Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Martin and Lyon exchanged vows at San Francisco City Hall on June 16, the first day same-sex couples could legally wed in California, after being together for more than half a century. Mayor Gavin Newsom, who officiated the wedding, singled them out to be the first gay couple to be declared "spouses for life" in the city in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
August Publishing Notes
The buzz: Sykes Press in Toronto has just published Delicious: A Memoir of Glenway Wescott by the late Daniel Diamond, a young poet who worked as the personal secretary to the author of The Pilgrim Hawk. This fall St. Martin’s will publish Love Letters of Great Men, edited by Ursula Doyle, the romantic book from the Sex and the City film that didn't exist...until now -- with letters from Robert Browning to Oscar Wilde and others. A special comic of Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel appeared in the 100th issue of Entertainment Weekly, where her memoir Fun Home was listed as number 68 of “new classic” books from the past 25 years. Star of Bravo’s Flipping Out, Jeff Lewis’s Jeff Lewis’s Real Estate Rules will be published by Center Street. Bywater Books will publish addiction recovery counselor Z. Egloff's Verge, a novel of a twenty something gay woman struggling to stay celibate, to stay sober and to get into film school while producing a documentary. Bonnie Shimko’s The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye will be published by Melanie Kroupa Books. John Waters has begun writing a treatment for a sequel to the musical Hairspray. Kinky Boots, the 2006 British comedy about a drag queen who helps save a struggling shoe company, has been acquired for the stage by producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig, who plan to turn it into a Broadway musical. Jerry Mitchell, who directed the Broadway adaptation of Legally Blonde, is in talks to direct. Bailiwick Theater of Chicago will be opening its 2008 season with David Brendan Hopes's play, Anna Livia, Lucky in Her Bridges. Bradley Fowler filed a $70 million lawsuit against two Bible publishing companies for intentionally altering scripture to promote homophobia. By inserting the word “homosexual” into I Corinthians 6:9, he says, the publishers intended to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion to cause “me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence … including murder.” Fowler also alleges that unsavory edits caused him years of “demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.” Vincent Puglisi has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in 2006 murder of Curious George author Alan Shalleck. Shalleck apparently met Puglisi and his then-boyfriend Rex Ditto on a gay hook-up site. Shalleck’s body was found in February 2006 covered with garbage bags on the driveway of his mobile home. An autopsy found that the 76 year old had been stabbed to death. Brent Rinehart, the Oklahoma County Commissioner, who was running for reelection, reportedly published a 16-page comic book in which a cast of characters battled the ever-worrisome homos. The 16-page comic book made fun of homosexuals and criticized Rinehart’s political opponents. Rinehart was tossed out of office by voters in his district, finishing third in a three-way primary battle. A new Indiana law requiring bookstores and other retailers to register with the state and pay a $250 fee if they sell "sexually explicit" material was thrown out the day it was to take effect by U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker. According to the Associated Press, Barker found the law "too broad and said it could be applied against 'unquestionably lawful, nonobscene, nonpornographic materials being sold to adults.'" The state of Indiana will not appeal the ruling, Attorney General Steve Carter announced.
Things to add to your calendar: K.M. Soehnlein and Trebor Healey will participate in the “Passing On the Pen” event on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm in Los Angeles. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society and the Lambda Literary Foundation have joined forces to celebrate the contributions of three generations of GLBT Storytellers. The two organizations will host a series of conversations, entitled "Passing On The Pen," designed to pair some of the pioneers of GLBT literature with today's emerging GLBT storytellers. Each event will be held in the gallery of the GLBT Historical Society from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, and will be free of charge and open to the public. For more information: visit http://www.glbthistory.org/.
Kudos: Kay Ryan, 62, has been announced as the nation's 16th poet laureate. She lives in Marin County with her longtime partner Carol Adair, whom she married in San Francisco in 2004. Judith Barrington’s Lost Lands was the winner of the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. Also selected was Steven Riel’s Postcard from P-Town, and Matthew Hittinger’s Platos de Sal.
Open Calls: Swell, a LGBT literary journal (http://www.swellzine.com/), is sponsoring a fiction contest. LGBT writers and their allies are invited to submit well-crafted short fiction on any theme for consideration. Deadline is: September 30, 2008. Complete guidelines are detailed at http://www.newtownwriters.org/. ** The deadline for submission for the premier issue of Collective Fallout, a new literary magazine dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and mystery fiction and poetry, is December 1, 2008. Visit the blog for more details: http://collectivefalloutmag.blogspot.com/. ** Knockout, a print literary magazine that publishes a 50-50 mix of work by LGBTQ and straight authors, is sponsoring a poetry contest. The winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Powell's Books (redeemable online) and publication of their winning poem in the magazine's third issue. Submissions of up to three poems of any length must be received by August 31, 2008. There is a $5 entry fee per submission. Multiple submissions are allowed. For complete guidelines and for more information about Knockout, visit www.knockoutlit.org/contest.htm.
Passages: Gay science fiction writer Thomas Disch committed suicide July 4, 2008. He was 68. The author of popular sci-fi novels Camp Concentration and 334, Disch had been openly gay since 1968. In recent years Disch’s apartment had devastated by a fire, his partner of more than 30 years, poet Charles Naylor, died, his home in upstate New York flooded; and he faced eviction. He also suffered from diabetes and sciatica. Disch was born in Des Moines in 1940 and moved to New York City to study architecture at New York University, where he worked at several low-paying jobs, including writing copy for an ad firm and carrying a spear at the Metropolitan Opera. He dropped out of the architecture program at the Cooper Union, and then left NYU after he sold a short story for $112.50. Disch also published more than a half dozen books of poetry, a whimsical Child's Garden of Grammar; a history of speculative fiction, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of; and the Brave Little Toaster series for children.
Things to add to your calendar: K.M. Soehnlein and Trebor Healey will participate in the “Passing On the Pen” event on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm in Los Angeles. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society and the Lambda Literary Foundation have joined forces to celebrate the contributions of three generations of GLBT Storytellers. The two organizations will host a series of conversations, entitled "Passing On The Pen," designed to pair some of the pioneers of GLBT literature with today's emerging GLBT storytellers. Each event will be held in the gallery of the GLBT Historical Society from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, and will be free of charge and open to the public. For more information: visit http://www.glbthistory.org/.
Kudos: Kay Ryan, 62, has been announced as the nation's 16th poet laureate. She lives in Marin County with her longtime partner Carol Adair, whom she married in San Francisco in 2004. Judith Barrington’s Lost Lands was the winner of the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. Also selected was Steven Riel’s Postcard from P-Town, and Matthew Hittinger’s Platos de Sal.
Open Calls: Swell, a LGBT literary journal (http://www.swellzine.com/), is sponsoring a fiction contest. LGBT writers and their allies are invited to submit well-crafted short fiction on any theme for consideration. Deadline is: September 30, 2008. Complete guidelines are detailed at http://www.newtownwriters.org/. ** The deadline for submission for the premier issue of Collective Fallout, a new literary magazine dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and mystery fiction and poetry, is December 1, 2008. Visit the blog for more details: http://collectivefalloutmag.blogspot.com/. ** Knockout, a print literary magazine that publishes a 50-50 mix of work by LGBTQ and straight authors, is sponsoring a poetry contest. The winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Powell's Books (redeemable online) and publication of their winning poem in the magazine's third issue. Submissions of up to three poems of any length must be received by August 31, 2008. There is a $5 entry fee per submission. Multiple submissions are allowed. For complete guidelines and for more information about Knockout, visit www.knockoutlit.org/contest.htm.
Passages: Gay science fiction writer Thomas Disch committed suicide July 4, 2008. He was 68. The author of popular sci-fi novels Camp Concentration and 334, Disch had been openly gay since 1968. In recent years Disch’s apartment had devastated by a fire, his partner of more than 30 years, poet Charles Naylor, died, his home in upstate New York flooded; and he faced eviction. He also suffered from diabetes and sciatica. Disch was born in Des Moines in 1940 and moved to New York City to study architecture at New York University, where he worked at several low-paying jobs, including writing copy for an ad firm and carrying a spear at the Metropolitan Opera. He dropped out of the architecture program at the Cooper Union, and then left NYU after he sold a short story for $112.50. Disch also published more than a half dozen books of poetry, a whimsical Child's Garden of Grammar; a history of speculative fiction, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of; and the Brave Little Toaster series for children.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
July Publishing Notes
The buzz: Greenwood Press will publish a three-volume encyclopedia titled LGBTQ America Today in November 2008. According to an article written by Guy Trebay in The New York Times, the book that pregnant father Thomas Beatie was contracted to write, has been shelved. Simon Spotlight Entertainment will publish Christopher Ciccone's Life With My Sister Madonna, based on his life and forty-seven years of growing up with and working with his sister, written with Wendy Leigh. University of Wisconsin Press will publish The Diva Complex: Gay Men on the Women Who Shaped Their Lives, an anthology edited by Michael Montlack, and including writers such as David Trinidad, Lloyd Schwartz, and Wayne Kostenbaum, paying passionate homage to a wide range of divas — among them Julia Child, Wonder Woman, Virginia Woolf, and Margaret Cho. Keith Stern's Queers in History, a reference book of the hundreds of prominent people throughout history who were gay, lesbian, or bisexual, will be published by BenBella Books. Alyson will publish Out Traveler Atlanta by Jordan McCauley with Matt Burkhalter. Del Ray will publish Michael Thomas Ford's Jane Bites Back, a novel about Jane Austen as a modern-day vampire and her frustration with her inability to get another novel published. Senator Larry Craig has announced that he is writing a book. Savannah Knoop, who played the role of JT Leroy in public, is writing a book about the charade for Seven Stories titled Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy. Harmony Books will publish a memoir by Tony winner Patti LuPone, for release in 2010. Novelist Philip Galanes is writing a new etiquette column for The New York Times. Matthew Bourne is choreographing an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray that will premiere in Edinburgh in August. The New York City Opera has commissioned an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the Annie Proulx short story that became the basis for the Oscar-winning movie. Charles Wuorinen will compose the opera, which is set to premiere in the spring of 2013. Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, which had announced plans to close at the end of June has a new owner and will stay in business, according to the Star Tribune. Ruta Skujins, a St. Paul native, will become the first sole owner of the bookshop that was started 38 years ago as a workers' cooperative. OutLoud Bookstore in Nashville has been put up for sale by co-owners Ted Jensen and Kevin Medley. Lambda Literary Foundation now has a MySpace page. The Foundation’s 2nd annual Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers will be held August 10 - 17, 2008. The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival is set for October 15-19, 2008. For more details visit: http://www.atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/. A three part video of the Fellow Travelers project, a collection of images of Gay male liberation pioneers taken by Mark Thompson, can be found on YouTube. Julio Vasconcellos and the online Experience Project, have compiled video, photographic, and written testimonials of the recent gay weddings in California. http://www.experienceproject.com/topics/gay_lesbian.php?r=g1. And Metaversal Village is releasing a new video game based on the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
David, David, and more David: Hachette Book Group USA is offering a digital download of the audiobook version of David Sedaris's new When You Are Engulfed in Flames for sale via their Web site — the first time the company has sold directly to consumers from their site. The Observer noted that the book has been characterized as fiction by Barnes & Noble in their weekly bestseller lists. Sedaris told The New York Times, "I've always been a huge exaggerator, but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn't true." Sedaris also brought a crowd of over 500 people to Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, setting a new record at the store for staying power—Sedaris, after reading to fans, stayed and signed books for nine and a half hours.
Events of Note: The Lavender Library: The House of Homosexual Culture, Tuesday July 15, 2008, 7.30 p.m., Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. A special festival event celebrating queer literature. Julian Clary, Dave McAlmont, Andy Bell, Maureen Duffy, Stella Duffy, Paul Burston, Karen Mcleod, and Rupert Smith champion their favorite books, and reveal how they've inspired their life and work. More details here: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/calendar/productions/the-lavender-library-40977. ** Michael Luongo will be conducting a special photo lecture at the Smithsonian Institute on Buenos Aires, Argentina on Thursday July 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m., The Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, SW (near 12th Street, SW). (This location is on the Mall next to the Smithsonian Castle.) Metro: Smithsonian Mall Exit (Blue/Orange) Event Code: CODE: 1M2-370. http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=198536.
Kudos: Canadian poet Rachel Zolf received the Trillium book prize for best poetry book for Human Resources. The Trillium Awards, awarded by the Ontario government, is the province's leading award for literature. Robin Blaser received the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize, the world’s most lucrative poetry award for a single book. Blaser won for his collection The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, which includes poems written over 50 years. Poet John Ashbery received the international Griffin poetry prize for Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems. Both awards carry a $50,000 prize. Manuel Muñoz was among the writers awarded a fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Fay Jacobs’ book Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach won the Delaware Press Association’s 2008 First Place Award for non-fiction humor. Two of her columns from the magazine Letters from Camp Rehoboth were also singled out for prizes. Woof! A Gay Man's Guide to Dogs by Andrew De Prisco was awarded the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Gay/Lesbian category. Claude J. Summers, general editor of glbtq.com, received the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award at the Lambda Literary Foundation Awards ceremony in West Hollywood, California. The Monette-Horwitz Trust Awards were established in the will of the late novelist Paul Monette to recognize his relationship with the late Roger Horwitz and to honor individuals and organizations for their significant contributions toward eradicating homophobia. The Queer Foundation has announced the recipients of its college scholarships for 2008–2009. They are Christopher Chavez of Phoenix, AZ, Geoffrey Mino of Newtown, PA, and Ericka Sokolower-Shain of Berkeley, CA. Chavez, whose award-winning essay is titled "In or Out," will attend the University of Chicago. Mino's essay is titled "New Youth Rising." He will attend Brown. Sokolower-Shain, who will study at Wesleyan, was recognized for her essay "Beyond the Line." Read more about 2008–2009 recipients at queerfoundation.org.
Golden Crown Finalists: The Golden Crown Literary Society, a literary and educational organization for the study, discussion, enjoyment, and enhancement of lesbian literature will have their 2008 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, from July 31 - August 3, 2008. The Fourth Annual GCLS Literary Awards will be presented on August 2, 2008 at the Wild Horse Pass Resort. Finalists have been announced in eleven categories, including Debut Author, Trailblazer, Popular Choice, Poetry, Dramatic Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Erotica, Speculative Fiction, Anthology, and Short Story, Collection, and can be found on the Society’s Web site: http://www.gclscon.com/2008GCLSAwards-Finalists.html.
Open Calls: Wendell Ricketts, who edited Everything I Have Is Blue, an anthology of writing by working class queers, is seeking fiction, memoir, and poetry submissions for the online Still Blue Project: More Writing By (For or About) Working-Class Queers. Working-class writers of all genders are welcome to submit. There are no limits on subject matter, other than that erotica is not eligible for submission. More details can be found at the Web site: http://www.everythingihaveisblue.com/still_call.html.
Passages: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar Paula Gunn Allen, whose work cleared the path for many Native writers, particularly Native Two-Spirit/GLBTQ folks and Native feminists, died May 29, 2008. She was the author of numerous books and editor of several collections, including Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995 and The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Her writing was inspired by Pueblo tales and is noted for its strong political streak. Her novel, The Woman Who Owned The Shadows, was published in 1983. The story revolves around Ephanie, a mixed-blood like Allen herself, and her struggle to express herself creatively. Allen was awarded a 2007 Lannan Foundation Fellowship and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas in 2001. In 2004 she received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her book Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. ** Jonathan Williams, the founder of the Jargon Society, the small publishing house in the western mountains of North Carolina, died on March 16, 2008 in Highlands, N.C. He was 79 and lived and worked in Scaly Mountain, N.C. The cause was pneumonia. Williams authored more than 25 books during his lifetime. Williams was also an accomplished photographer whose images of writers, artists, gravestones and natural landscapes are housed at Yale University. Williams founded The Jargon Society at age 21 and published 113 books during his lifetime. Guided by his quixotic mission — "To keep afloat the Ark of Culture in these dark and tacky times" — it spotlighted talented but neglected poets, writers and artists, including Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Guy Davenport, Louis Zukofsky, Paul Metcalf, Mina Loy and Lorine Niedecker. Among his awards were a Guggenheim fellowship and NEA grants. Williams is survived by his partner of 40 years, Thomas Meyer. ** Michael Jon Shernoff, a psychotherapist for more than 30 years, a prodigious writer, a professor, and an LGBT, AIDS, and environmental activist, died on June 17, 2008 at his home in New York City at the age of 57. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, according to his partner of nine years, John Goodman. Gay City News reported that Shernoff published more than 60 articles, mostly related to mental health issues involving gay men, sexuality, and mental health. He edited seven anthologies, including Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner. In 2006, Routledge published Shernoff's book, Without Condoms: Unprotected Sex, Gay Men and Barebacking. Donations in his memory can be made to the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York 10011; The Nature Conservancy, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, Virginia, 22203; and Lambda Legal, 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500, New York 10005.
David, David, and more David: Hachette Book Group USA is offering a digital download of the audiobook version of David Sedaris's new When You Are Engulfed in Flames for sale via their Web site — the first time the company has sold directly to consumers from their site. The Observer noted that the book has been characterized as fiction by Barnes & Noble in their weekly bestseller lists. Sedaris told The New York Times, "I've always been a huge exaggerator, but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn't true." Sedaris also brought a crowd of over 500 people to Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, setting a new record at the store for staying power—Sedaris, after reading to fans, stayed and signed books for nine and a half hours.
Events of Note: The Lavender Library: The House of Homosexual Culture, Tuesday July 15, 2008, 7.30 p.m., Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. A special festival event celebrating queer literature. Julian Clary, Dave McAlmont, Andy Bell, Maureen Duffy, Stella Duffy, Paul Burston, Karen Mcleod, and Rupert Smith champion their favorite books, and reveal how they've inspired their life and work. More details here: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/calendar/productions/the-lavender-library-40977. ** Michael Luongo will be conducting a special photo lecture at the Smithsonian Institute on Buenos Aires, Argentina on Thursday July 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m., The Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, SW (near 12th Street, SW). (This location is on the Mall next to the Smithsonian Castle.) Metro: Smithsonian Mall Exit (Blue/Orange) Event Code: CODE: 1M2-370. http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=198536.
Kudos: Canadian poet Rachel Zolf received the Trillium book prize for best poetry book for Human Resources. The Trillium Awards, awarded by the Ontario government, is the province's leading award for literature. Robin Blaser received the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize, the world’s most lucrative poetry award for a single book. Blaser won for his collection The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, which includes poems written over 50 years. Poet John Ashbery received the international Griffin poetry prize for Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems. Both awards carry a $50,000 prize. Manuel Muñoz was among the writers awarded a fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Fay Jacobs’ book Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach won the Delaware Press Association’s 2008 First Place Award for non-fiction humor. Two of her columns from the magazine Letters from Camp Rehoboth were also singled out for prizes. Woof! A Gay Man's Guide to Dogs by Andrew De Prisco was awarded the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Gay/Lesbian category. Claude J. Summers, general editor of glbtq.com, received the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award at the Lambda Literary Foundation Awards ceremony in West Hollywood, California. The Monette-Horwitz Trust Awards were established in the will of the late novelist Paul Monette to recognize his relationship with the late Roger Horwitz and to honor individuals and organizations for their significant contributions toward eradicating homophobia. The Queer Foundation has announced the recipients of its college scholarships for 2008–2009. They are Christopher Chavez of Phoenix, AZ, Geoffrey Mino of Newtown, PA, and Ericka Sokolower-Shain of Berkeley, CA. Chavez, whose award-winning essay is titled "In or Out," will attend the University of Chicago. Mino's essay is titled "New Youth Rising." He will attend Brown. Sokolower-Shain, who will study at Wesleyan, was recognized for her essay "Beyond the Line." Read more about 2008–2009 recipients at queerfoundation.org.
Golden Crown Finalists: The Golden Crown Literary Society, a literary and educational organization for the study, discussion, enjoyment, and enhancement of lesbian literature will have their 2008 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, from July 31 - August 3, 2008. The Fourth Annual GCLS Literary Awards will be presented on August 2, 2008 at the Wild Horse Pass Resort. Finalists have been announced in eleven categories, including Debut Author, Trailblazer, Popular Choice, Poetry, Dramatic Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Erotica, Speculative Fiction, Anthology, and Short Story, Collection, and can be found on the Society’s Web site: http://www.gclscon.com/2008GCLSAwards-Finalists.html.
Open Calls: Wendell Ricketts, who edited Everything I Have Is Blue, an anthology of writing by working class queers, is seeking fiction, memoir, and poetry submissions for the online Still Blue Project: More Writing By (For or About) Working-Class Queers. Working-class writers of all genders are welcome to submit. There are no limits on subject matter, other than that erotica is not eligible for submission. More details can be found at the Web site: http://www.everythingihaveisblue.com/still_call.html.
Passages: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar Paula Gunn Allen, whose work cleared the path for many Native writers, particularly Native Two-Spirit/GLBTQ folks and Native feminists, died May 29, 2008. She was the author of numerous books and editor of several collections, including Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995 and The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Her writing was inspired by Pueblo tales and is noted for its strong political streak. Her novel, The Woman Who Owned The Shadows, was published in 1983. The story revolves around Ephanie, a mixed-blood like Allen herself, and her struggle to express herself creatively. Allen was awarded a 2007 Lannan Foundation Fellowship and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas in 2001. In 2004 she received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her book Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. ** Jonathan Williams, the founder of the Jargon Society, the small publishing house in the western mountains of North Carolina, died on March 16, 2008 in Highlands, N.C. He was 79 and lived and worked in Scaly Mountain, N.C. The cause was pneumonia. Williams authored more than 25 books during his lifetime. Williams was also an accomplished photographer whose images of writers, artists, gravestones and natural landscapes are housed at Yale University. Williams founded The Jargon Society at age 21 and published 113 books during his lifetime. Guided by his quixotic mission — "To keep afloat the Ark of Culture in these dark and tacky times" — it spotlighted talented but neglected poets, writers and artists, including Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Guy Davenport, Louis Zukofsky, Paul Metcalf, Mina Loy and Lorine Niedecker. Among his awards were a Guggenheim fellowship and NEA grants. Williams is survived by his partner of 40 years, Thomas Meyer. ** Michael Jon Shernoff, a psychotherapist for more than 30 years, a prodigious writer, a professor, and an LGBT, AIDS, and environmental activist, died on June 17, 2008 at his home in New York City at the age of 57. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, according to his partner of nine years, John Goodman. Gay City News reported that Shernoff published more than 60 articles, mostly related to mental health issues involving gay men, sexuality, and mental health. He edited seven anthologies, including Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner. In 2006, Routledge published Shernoff's book, Without Condoms: Unprotected Sex, Gay Men and Barebacking. Donations in his memory can be made to the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York 10011; The Nature Conservancy, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, Virginia, 22203; and Lambda Legal, 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500, New York 10005.
Friday, May 30, 2008
June Publishing Notes
The buzz: St. Martin’s Press will publish Thomas Beatie’s memoir, Love Makes A Family: A Memoir of Hardship, Healing and an Extraordinary Pregnancy, about the author’s transformation from a girl scout and beauty queen to a legal and recognized man with a black belt in marital arts and a loving wife — and their controversial decision to have Thomas — who underwent gender reassignment surgery but kept his female reproductive organs — get pregnant and carry their child. Book packager LifeTime Media will start their own publishing program with Pressure Is A Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Live and the Battle of the Sexes by tennis legend Billie Jean King. In the fall of 2009, Doubleday will publish Joseph Papp and Kenneth Turan’s Free For All, the definitive oral history of The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater. Gival Press will publish Chip Livingston’s poetry collection, The Museum of False Starts. Lethe Press is reissuing Salvatore Sapienza’s novel, Seventy Times Seven. Cambridge House will publish in the fall of 2009 Jeffrey Duban's Sappho of Lesbos: Contemporary Translations in Archaic Greek Love Lyric, a translation of poems and fragments by Sappho and her contemporaries, with detailed introductions, poem-by-poem commentary, and incisive discussion of the art of translation. JoSelle Vanderhooft's The Memory Palace, a growing up gay memoir structured around the Renaissance mnemonic device of a building with rooms populated by thoughts and objects, will be published in January 2009. And Tango Makes Three, the 2005 picture book that features a baby penguin with two dads, held the top spot as the American Library Association's most challenged book in public schools and libraries for the second year in a row. Author Chuck Palahniuk gave a revealing interview to Austin Bunn for the Advocate, which is available online at the magazine’s Web site. Author Anne Rice donated an authentic Chinese wedding dress for a special ebay auction to benefit the Lambda Literary Foundation and its Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers. Jim McDonough’s popular Web site Queerwriters.com has migrated to a Ning community. Sapphic Planet, a group for authors who write lesbian fiction, now has a Web site, a MySpace and Glee page. New York’s LGBT film festival, NewFest is showing film adaptations of Sarah Waters' Affinity and Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy. Wayne Hoffman’s short story “Sucker,” an excerpt from his novel Hard, has been adapted into a short film, and is also having its NYC premiere at the festival as part of a program of sexy short films called “Sweat.” Sigourney Weaver has signed to star in a Lifetime movie adaptation of Leroy Aaron’s Prayers for Bobby, about a devout Christian woman who questions her faith after her gay son commits suicide. And Nicole Kidman will play singer Dusty Springfield in a movie being written by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham.
Things to add to your calendar: Queer Women Reading Poetry, hosted by Alix Olson at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery, June 12 at 6:30 pm, 26 Wooster Street, NYC. Poets include Sini Anderson, Kate Broad, Cheryl Burke, Staceyann Chinn, r. erica doyle, Stephanie Gray, Tracy Grinnell, Sue Landers, Sara marcus, Marty McConnell, Lenelle Moise and Elizabeth Redddin. A limited edition chapbook containing work from the poets scheduled to read will be available for purchase. ** That's Revolting!: Radical queer activism — past, present, and future. Thursday, June 5, 6pm, San Francisco Main Library Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room (downstairs), 100 Larkin Street. With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Carol Queen, Bo Brown, Ralowe T. Ampu, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Eric Stanley, and Gina de Vries. ** This is the Thing by Kirk Read, an evening of stories about sex work, hallucinations and the apocalypse, with music by Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, video by Liz Singer, props and design by Doug Hansen and Kirk Read, at the Garage, 975 Howard @ 6th Street, San Francisco, June 10-14, 2008 Tuesday through Saturday, 8pm. Tickets: $12-15, 1-800-838-3006.
Kudos: Author, editor and journalist Michael T. Luongo was awarded the Reporting Award at the Society for Professional Journalist's New York Deadline Club Awards for his November 2007 story “Our Man in Baghdad,” which was published in the New York City weekly Gay City News. The story focuses on the hidden gay life in Iraq, with Luongo meeting some of the hundreds of Iraqi men with Gaydar profiles, both to his and their great peril. ** Ken Anderson was the winner of the 2008 Saints & Sinners Playwriting Contest for Someone Bought the House on the Island. ** IPPY Awards (Independent Publisher Book Awards) in the Gay/Lesbian category went to: Gold: First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far), ed. Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel, Silver: Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire, by Lisa M. Diamond, and Bronze: The Brides of March, by Beren de Motier; Carnal Sacraments, by Perry Brass; A Hint of Homosexuality? by Bruce H. Joffe. A Gold Award in the Erotica category went to Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games, edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman. A Gold Award went to Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, by Carrie Jones in the Juvenile/Young Adult Fiction category.
Lamba Literary Winners: LGBT ANTHOLOGY: First Person Queer, edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel ; LGBT ARTS & CULTURE: The View From Here by Matthew Hays; LGBT CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT: Hero by Perry Moore; LGBT DRAMA/THEATER: Return to the Caffe Cino, edited by Steve Susoyev and George Birimisa; LGBT EROTICA: Homosex, Simon Sheppard; LGBT NONFICTION: Gay Artists in Modern American Culture, Michael S. Sherry; LGBT POETRY: Blackbird and Wolf, Henri Cole; LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR: The Dust of Wonderland, Lee Thomas; LGBT STUDIES: Between Women, Sharon Marcus; BISEXUAL: Split Screen, Brett Hartinger; TRANSGENDER: Transparent, Cris Beam; LESBIAN DEBUT FICTION: Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, Aoibheann Sweeney; GAY DEBUT FICTION: A Push and a Shove, Christopher Kelly; WOMEN'S FICTION: The IHOP Papers, Ali Leibegott; WOMEN'S ROMANCE: Out of Love, KG MacGregor; WOMEN'S MYSTERY: Wall of Silence, Gabrielle Goldsby; WOMEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY: And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, Nicola Griffith; MEN'S FICTION: Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman; MEN's ROMANCE: Changing Tides, Michael Thomas Ford; MEN's MYSTERY: Murder in the Rue Chartres, Greg Herren; MEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY: Mississippi Sissy, Kevin Sessums.
Open Calls: New Town Writers is sponsoring the Swell Fiction Contest. Deadline is September 30, 2008 for unpublished stories of up to 5000 words. There is an $8 entry fee. For more details visit http://www.swellzine.com/. ** Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book, is looking for lesbian, bisexual and queer women couples who have you been together for more than five years for research for a new sex guide for lesbian couples. Confidential interviews (via telephone) will be done with couples who enjoy a satisfying sexual relationship. Inquiries can be sent to felice@felicenewman.com. ** Subaru and the Logo Channel are teaming up to produce a series of short portrait documentaries called “Real Momentum Profiles,” featuring Subaru owners. The producers are seeking gay men and women who own Subarus. Singles and couples are encouraged to submit a photograph along with a short questionnaire available from subarulogocasting@gmail.com.
Passages: Nuala O'Faolain, author and former Irish Times columnist, died of lung cancer on May 9, 2008 at the age of 68 in Dublin. She had been living in County Clare and New York City. She was the author of the 1996 memoir, Are You Somebody?, an unblinking and unsentimental description of Irish life in the 1940s and '50s. ** Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him a reputation as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture, and dance, died May 12, 2008. He was 82. Rauschenberg, born in 1925, met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist became lovers and influenced each other's work. According to the book Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists, Rauschenberg told biographer Calvin Tomkins that ''Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, 'I've got a terrific idea for you,' and then I'd have to find one for him.'' In recent years Rauschenberg founded the organization Change Inc., which helps struggling artists pay medical bills.
Things to add to your calendar: Queer Women Reading Poetry, hosted by Alix Olson at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery, June 12 at 6:30 pm, 26 Wooster Street, NYC. Poets include Sini Anderson, Kate Broad, Cheryl Burke, Staceyann Chinn, r. erica doyle, Stephanie Gray, Tracy Grinnell, Sue Landers, Sara marcus, Marty McConnell, Lenelle Moise and Elizabeth Redddin. A limited edition chapbook containing work from the poets scheduled to read will be available for purchase. ** That's Revolting!: Radical queer activism — past, present, and future. Thursday, June 5, 6pm, San Francisco Main Library Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room (downstairs), 100 Larkin Street. With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Carol Queen, Bo Brown, Ralowe T. Ampu, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Eric Stanley, and Gina de Vries. ** This is the Thing by Kirk Read, an evening of stories about sex work, hallucinations and the apocalypse, with music by Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, video by Liz Singer, props and design by Doug Hansen and Kirk Read, at the Garage, 975 Howard @ 6th Street, San Francisco, June 10-14, 2008 Tuesday through Saturday, 8pm. Tickets: $12-15, 1-800-838-3006.
Kudos: Author, editor and journalist Michael T. Luongo was awarded the Reporting Award at the Society for Professional Journalist's New York Deadline Club Awards for his November 2007 story “Our Man in Baghdad,” which was published in the New York City weekly Gay City News. The story focuses on the hidden gay life in Iraq, with Luongo meeting some of the hundreds of Iraqi men with Gaydar profiles, both to his and their great peril. ** Ken Anderson was the winner of the 2008 Saints & Sinners Playwriting Contest for Someone Bought the House on the Island. ** IPPY Awards (Independent Publisher Book Awards) in the Gay/Lesbian category went to: Gold: First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far), ed. Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel, Silver: Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire, by Lisa M. Diamond, and Bronze: The Brides of March, by Beren de Motier; Carnal Sacraments, by Perry Brass; A Hint of Homosexuality? by Bruce H. Joffe. A Gold Award in the Erotica category went to Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games, edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman. A Gold Award went to Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, by Carrie Jones in the Juvenile/Young Adult Fiction category.
Lamba Literary Winners: LGBT ANTHOLOGY: First Person Queer, edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel ; LGBT ARTS & CULTURE: The View From Here by Matthew Hays; LGBT CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT: Hero by Perry Moore; LGBT DRAMA/THEATER: Return to the Caffe Cino, edited by Steve Susoyev and George Birimisa; LGBT EROTICA: Homosex, Simon Sheppard; LGBT NONFICTION: Gay Artists in Modern American Culture, Michael S. Sherry; LGBT POETRY: Blackbird and Wolf, Henri Cole; LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR: The Dust of Wonderland, Lee Thomas; LGBT STUDIES: Between Women, Sharon Marcus; BISEXUAL: Split Screen, Brett Hartinger; TRANSGENDER: Transparent, Cris Beam; LESBIAN DEBUT FICTION: Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, Aoibheann Sweeney; GAY DEBUT FICTION: A Push and a Shove, Christopher Kelly; WOMEN'S FICTION: The IHOP Papers, Ali Leibegott; WOMEN'S ROMANCE: Out of Love, KG MacGregor; WOMEN'S MYSTERY: Wall of Silence, Gabrielle Goldsby; WOMEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY: And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, Nicola Griffith; MEN'S FICTION: Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman; MEN's ROMANCE: Changing Tides, Michael Thomas Ford; MEN's MYSTERY: Murder in the Rue Chartres, Greg Herren; MEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY: Mississippi Sissy, Kevin Sessums.
Open Calls: New Town Writers is sponsoring the Swell Fiction Contest. Deadline is September 30, 2008 for unpublished stories of up to 5000 words. There is an $8 entry fee. For more details visit http://www.swellzine.com/. ** Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book, is looking for lesbian, bisexual and queer women couples who have you been together for more than five years for research for a new sex guide for lesbian couples. Confidential interviews (via telephone) will be done with couples who enjoy a satisfying sexual relationship. Inquiries can be sent to felice@felicenewman.com. ** Subaru and the Logo Channel are teaming up to produce a series of short portrait documentaries called “Real Momentum Profiles,” featuring Subaru owners. The producers are seeking gay men and women who own Subarus. Singles and couples are encouraged to submit a photograph along with a short questionnaire available from subarulogocasting@gmail.com.
Passages: Nuala O'Faolain, author and former Irish Times columnist, died of lung cancer on May 9, 2008 at the age of 68 in Dublin. She had been living in County Clare and New York City. She was the author of the 1996 memoir, Are You Somebody?, an unblinking and unsentimental description of Irish life in the 1940s and '50s. ** Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him a reputation as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture, and dance, died May 12, 2008. He was 82. Rauschenberg, born in 1925, met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist became lovers and influenced each other's work. According to the book Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists, Rauschenberg told biographer Calvin Tomkins that ''Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, 'I've got a terrific idea for you,' and then I'd have to find one for him.'' In recent years Rauschenberg founded the organization Change Inc., which helps struggling artists pay medical bills.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
May Publishing Notes
The buzz: PlanetOut, Inc. announced that it was selling its magazine and book publishing businesses -- including The Advocate, Out, and Alyson Books -- to Regent Releasing for $6 million. Regent is an affiliate of the Here! cable network. Film director Stephen Daldry, who arrives on Broadway with a musical version of his film Billy Elliot, has expressed interest in adapting another one of his films, The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham’s novel, into an opera. Musician Rufus Wainwright has been commissioned to write an opera by the New York Metropolitan Opera. Ang Lee and Focus Features are planning a feature film based on the gay-themed memoir Taking Woodstock, by Elliot Tiber with Tom Monte. A paperback tie in with the movie, expected in 2009, will also coincide with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Tony-winner (Take Me Out) Richard Greenberg’s new play, The Injured Party, debuted last month in Los Angeles at South Coast Repertory. Harper Perennial will publish a new collection of short fiction by Dennis Cooper, Ugly Man, in the Summer of 2009. Knopf will publish Emma Donoghue's Lesbian Plots: From Geoffrey Chaucer to Sarah Waters. Ballantine will publish Rita Mae Brown's Pure Gold, a memoir about the animals in the author’s life. Performance artist Terry Galloway's Mean Little Deaf Queer, about being gay and disabled, will be published by Beacon Press in the Spring of 2009. Beacon will also publish Kate Clinton’s untitled book project in the Spring of 2009. Patrick Conlon's The Essential Hospital Handbook will be published by Yale University Press in the Spring of 2009. Atlantic Books will publish Edmund White's biography Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel. Bowen Press, the young adult division of HarperCollins, will publish Tom Dolby's Secret Society, about a group of Manhattan teens who are inducted into an elite secret society headquartered on the Upper East Side, in the Summer of 2009. Editors Vince Liaguno and Chad Helder are revealing the table of contents of their new queer-themed horror anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet one day at a time during the month of May on their Web site for Dark Scribe Magazine. King & King, a children’s picture book with positive gay role models, was withdrawn from two British elementary schools under pressure from Muslim parents. Activist and author Larry Kramer sent a critical letter to the head of the literary organization PEN American Center blasting the association for featuring few LGBT authors at an international literature festival it hosted. Kramer also took aim at PEN Board member Michael Cunningham. Rob Weisbach is stepping down as President and CEO of Weinstein Books to pursue other publishing opportunities. Keith Kahla, who has been at St. Martin’s Press for 20 years, has been promoted to Executive Editor. Longtime New Yorker Charles Flowers is relocating to Los Angeles along with establishing a west coast beachhead of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Playwright Robert Patrick is honoring the life of Joe Cino, owner of former Caffe Cino, with a solid bronze plaque to be mounted on the site of the Caffe, now the home of Po Restaurant at 31 Cornelia Street in New York. Fifty years ago Joe Cino rented a storefront in New York City’s Greenwich Village in order to open a coffee house, which eventually morphed into what is now regarded as the birthplace of the Off Off Broadway movement and the American Gay Theatre Movement. Rapture Café & Books in the East Village in New York closed April 24, 2008. The store will continue to host reading events at other locations. Owners Jim Deva and Bruce Smyth of Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium in Vancouver, who challenged Canada’s Customs agents and censorship laws, has put the bookstore up for sale. Michael Walker and the DREAMWalker Group are now producing a regular newsletter of interest to LGBT writers and is open for submissions and suggestions. Visit the Web site at http://www.dreamwalkergroup.com/ for more details. The New York Public Library now has a LGBT blog at http://lgbt.nypl.org/.
Things to add to your calendar: The 20th Lambda Literary Awards ceremony will be held May 29, 2008 in West Hollywood, on the eve of Book Expo’s opening weekend in Los Angeles. Michael Corbett will be master of ceremonies and guest presenters include Bernard Cooper, Felice Picano, Torie Osborn, Michael Nava, Lillian Faderman, Chad Allen, Peter Paige, Denise Penn, Anne Stockwell, and Calpernia. Guest performers will be the Gay Men’s Chorus, Tim Miller, and the Gay Mafia. ** Gayfest NYC, a festival of new plays and musicals, will run from May 14 to June 15, 2008. ** The annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans will be May 8 – 11, 2008. ** The Second Tuesday Lecture Series on May 13 at the LGBT Center in New York City will feature writers Perry Brass, Laura Antoniou and Michael Luongo discussing "The Literature of Porn."
Kudos: Martin Duberman was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography for The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein and Alex Ross was a finalist in the General Nonfiction category for The Rest Is Noise. Making the New York Public Library’s list of 25 books to remember from 2007 were Hotel de Dream by Edmund White and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt. Maureen Brady, Joan Larkin, Stephen McCauley, and Tim Miller will be inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at this year’s Literary Festival in New Orleans. Also to be announced are the winners of the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize – an unrestricted cash grant of $5,000 established by Jim Duggins. This year’s honorees are Michelle Tea and Ronald L. Donaghe. Gaylaxicon 2009 will be October 9-11, 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Margaret Weis, Andy Mangels, and Lawrence Schimel will be the guests of honor.
Publishing Triangle Nods: Joan Larkin was presented The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry for My Body. There was a tie for The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry. The winners were Steve Fellner for Blind Date with Cavafy and Daniel Hall for Under Sleep . Myriam Gurba received The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction for Dahlia Season. The Ferro Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction were presented to Peter Cameron for Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You and Ali Liebegott for The IHOP Papers. Janet Malcolm was presented The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction for Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice. Michael Rowe received The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction for Other Men's Sons. The Publishing Triangle Leadership Award was presented to Richard Labonté and Carol Seajay. Katherine V. Forrest received The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Open Calls: GotCast.com is casting a new game show titled My Gay BFF, about the friendships between straight women and their gay best friends. Visit the Web site for more details and audition information.
Things to add to your calendar: The 20th Lambda Literary Awards ceremony will be held May 29, 2008 in West Hollywood, on the eve of Book Expo’s opening weekend in Los Angeles. Michael Corbett will be master of ceremonies and guest presenters include Bernard Cooper, Felice Picano, Torie Osborn, Michael Nava, Lillian Faderman, Chad Allen, Peter Paige, Denise Penn, Anne Stockwell, and Calpernia. Guest performers will be the Gay Men’s Chorus, Tim Miller, and the Gay Mafia. ** Gayfest NYC, a festival of new plays and musicals, will run from May 14 to June 15, 2008. ** The annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans will be May 8 – 11, 2008. ** The Second Tuesday Lecture Series on May 13 at the LGBT Center in New York City will feature writers Perry Brass, Laura Antoniou and Michael Luongo discussing "The Literature of Porn."
Kudos: Martin Duberman was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography for The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein and Alex Ross was a finalist in the General Nonfiction category for The Rest Is Noise. Making the New York Public Library’s list of 25 books to remember from 2007 were Hotel de Dream by Edmund White and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt. Maureen Brady, Joan Larkin, Stephen McCauley, and Tim Miller will be inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at this year’s Literary Festival in New Orleans. Also to be announced are the winners of the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize – an unrestricted cash grant of $5,000 established by Jim Duggins. This year’s honorees are Michelle Tea and Ronald L. Donaghe. Gaylaxicon 2009 will be October 9-11, 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Margaret Weis, Andy Mangels, and Lawrence Schimel will be the guests of honor.
Publishing Triangle Nods: Joan Larkin was presented The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry for My Body. There was a tie for The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry. The winners were Steve Fellner for Blind Date with Cavafy and Daniel Hall for Under Sleep . Myriam Gurba received The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction for Dahlia Season. The Ferro Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction were presented to Peter Cameron for Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You and Ali Liebegott for The IHOP Papers. Janet Malcolm was presented The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction for Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice. Michael Rowe received The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction for Other Men's Sons. The Publishing Triangle Leadership Award was presented to Richard Labonté and Carol Seajay. Katherine V. Forrest received The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Open Calls: GotCast.com is casting a new game show titled My Gay BFF, about the friendships between straight women and their gay best friends. Visit the Web site for more details and audition information.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
April Publishing Notes
The buzz: Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City is becoming a theatrical musical. Avenue Q book writer Jeff Whitty and Scissor Sisters bandmates Jason Sellards and John Garden are penning the musical, due on Broadway during the 2009-10 season. Gayfest NYC will present their opening gala benefit event on April 14, 2008 with Leslie Jordan’s one man act, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet. Proceeds will go to the Harvey Milk High School. BBC is turning Simon Doonan’s memoir, Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, into the television show Beautiful People. The PEN American Center is trying to get Sebastian Horsley allowed on U.S. soil. The British writer, who wrote the memoir Dandy in the Underworld, was barred from entering the country on the grounds of "moral turpitude" after landing in Newark on March 18. Author John Rechy, author of the legendary City of Night, marks fifty years with Grove Press with About My Life and the Kept Woman. Harmony Books will publish Wade Rouse’s The Faux Thoreau: A City Boy Battles Blizzards, Wrestles Raccons and Cuts Cable in a Quest for his Modern-Day Walden Pond. Author Lewis DeSimone has launched a new blog: http://sexandthesissy.wordpress.com/. Bookazine has acquired the assets of the book distribution division of Publishers Distributing Company, part of the PlanetOut media company. Among the publishers affected by the sale are Bruno Gmunder Verlag, Starbooks Press, Colt Studio, and Douglas Simonson Press. Julia Pastore has started a new lesbian reading group. Contact her at jpastore@randomhouse.com if interested in joining.
Poetry in Ireland Continues: Pinknews.co.uk reported that The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in Ireland said that works by Cathal O’Searcaigh, a poet accused of sexually exploiting young men in Nepal, will continue to be taught in schools. Education Minister Mary Hanafin has been advised by the council: "On balance, the Council considered that its original position on the artistic merit and suitability for study of the work of Cathal O'Searcaigh should stand." O’Searcaigh, whose Irish language works are taught at Leaving Certificate, the equivalent of A Level, had been accused of the "sexual exploitation and grooming" of 16 year old Nepalese boys. Allegations about the poet's relationship with the young boys surfaced after the screening of Fairytale of Kathmandu, a documentary on Mr Searcaigh's charitable work in Nepal made by a former friend of his. The poet wrote a letter denouncing the accusations, saying: "If my gay lifestyle and relationships in Nepal have offended anyone, I am sorry. But to suggest that I in any way coerced or preyed upon these young men is untrue and distasteful. My relationships in Nepal have always been open and loving and above board." Opposition education spokesman Brian Hayes challenged Ms Hanafin on the "appropriateness or otherwise" of having the work on the current syllabus. The minister - who recently had to defend her actions in helping Mr Searcaigh secure a visa to Ireland for a Nepalese friend - said she was "shocked and appalled" by the allegations.
Kudos: David Leavitt was named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, The Indian Clerk. Leslea Newman has been selected Poet Laureate of Northhampton, Massachusetts.
And The Nominees Are: Katharine Forrest will be presented with the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. The awards -- including the Ferro-Grumley Fiction Awards, The Shilts-Grahn Nonfiction Awards, The Lorde-Gunn Poetry Awards, The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and The Publishing Triangle Leadership Award -- will be announced on April 28, 2008 at the Tishman Auditorium at the New School in Greenwich Village, New York City. For a list of the nominated books, visit the Publishing Triangle’s Web site.
The 20th Lambda Literary Awards will be presented Thursday, May 29, 2008 at the Silver Screen Theater, Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA. Ann Bannon, Malcolm Boyd, and Mark Thompson will receive Pioneer Awards. Nominations in the 21 literary categories can be found on the Foundation’s Web site.
Open Calls: Limp Wrist, a new literary journal, is accepting fiction and poetry submissions. The first issue will be this spring. More details can be found at http://www.limpwristmag.com/. ** Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. Deadline is May 15, 2008. More details can be found at http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.
Passages: Sir Arthur C. Clarke died March 18, 2008 at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka. He was the author of more than 100 books, among them Childhood’s End and The Sentinel, which was made into the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke was never open about his homosexuality. In his later years, he was fond of saying, "At my age, now I'm just a little bit cheerful." With the stipulation that they not be published until 50 years after his death, his "Clarkives," a vast collection of private writings, is expected to reveal his homosexuality, even though it's a widely accepted fact among the author's fans.
Poetry in Ireland Continues: Pinknews.co.uk reported that The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in Ireland said that works by Cathal O’Searcaigh, a poet accused of sexually exploiting young men in Nepal, will continue to be taught in schools. Education Minister Mary Hanafin has been advised by the council: "On balance, the Council considered that its original position on the artistic merit and suitability for study of the work of Cathal O'Searcaigh should stand." O’Searcaigh, whose Irish language works are taught at Leaving Certificate, the equivalent of A Level, had been accused of the "sexual exploitation and grooming" of 16 year old Nepalese boys. Allegations about the poet's relationship with the young boys surfaced after the screening of Fairytale of Kathmandu, a documentary on Mr Searcaigh's charitable work in Nepal made by a former friend of his. The poet wrote a letter denouncing the accusations, saying: "If my gay lifestyle and relationships in Nepal have offended anyone, I am sorry. But to suggest that I in any way coerced or preyed upon these young men is untrue and distasteful. My relationships in Nepal have always been open and loving and above board." Opposition education spokesman Brian Hayes challenged Ms Hanafin on the "appropriateness or otherwise" of having the work on the current syllabus. The minister - who recently had to defend her actions in helping Mr Searcaigh secure a visa to Ireland for a Nepalese friend - said she was "shocked and appalled" by the allegations.
Kudos: David Leavitt was named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, The Indian Clerk. Leslea Newman has been selected Poet Laureate of Northhampton, Massachusetts.
And The Nominees Are: Katharine Forrest will be presented with the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. The awards -- including the Ferro-Grumley Fiction Awards, The Shilts-Grahn Nonfiction Awards, The Lorde-Gunn Poetry Awards, The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and The Publishing Triangle Leadership Award -- will be announced on April 28, 2008 at the Tishman Auditorium at the New School in Greenwich Village, New York City. For a list of the nominated books, visit the Publishing Triangle’s Web site.
The 20th Lambda Literary Awards will be presented Thursday, May 29, 2008 at the Silver Screen Theater, Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA. Ann Bannon, Malcolm Boyd, and Mark Thompson will receive Pioneer Awards. Nominations in the 21 literary categories can be found on the Foundation’s Web site.
Open Calls: Limp Wrist, a new literary journal, is accepting fiction and poetry submissions. The first issue will be this spring. More details can be found at http://www.limpwristmag.com/. ** Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. Deadline is May 15, 2008. More details can be found at http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.
Passages: Sir Arthur C. Clarke died March 18, 2008 at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka. He was the author of more than 100 books, among them Childhood’s End and The Sentinel, which was made into the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke was never open about his homosexuality. In his later years, he was fond of saying, "At my age, now I'm just a little bit cheerful." With the stipulation that they not be published until 50 years after his death, his "Clarkives," a vast collection of private writings, is expected to reveal his homosexuality, even though it's a widely accepted fact among the author's fans.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
March Publishing Notes
The buzz: The London Evening Standard's theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh has turned playwright to write Plague Over England, a new play about Sir John Gielgud’s triumphant return from a 1953 gay sex scandal, which recently debuted in London at the Finborough Theater. Two plays based on the 1920s Leopold and Loeb crimes recently opened in LA: Thrill Me by Stephen Dolginoff and Dickie and Babe by Daniel Henning. The restless yearning towards my Self, a poem by Perry Brass set to music by Paula M. Kimper, will debut in New York City this month. Bash’d, a gay rap opera by Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, with music by Aaron Macri, is gearing up for a commercial off-Broaway run. Mike Jones, the escort who exposed Ted Haggard in a sex scandal, will play himself in a new one-man show, Naked Before God, in Denver in March. Novelist Frank Anthony Pollo is urging a boycott of the film version of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, based on the novel by Michael Chabon, because the adaptation cuts out the gay character of Arthur. Details are at Pollo’s MySpace page: www.myspace.com/mysteriesofpittsburgh. Kensington will publish Pollo’s novel, Band Fags!, in June. Timothy State’s blog Balancing Boyfriends is excerpted in the Japanese-English text book, Try Reading Blogs in English, published by Tokyo’s Kosaido Publishing Company. Writer and editor Michael Luongo is teaching travel writing courses at NYU this month and in Tuscany in May for the Il Chiostro program. Simon & Schuster will publish Gary Marmorstein’s Lorenz Hart: An American Life. Writer and editor Steve Berman found so many worthy stories to include in his planned Best Gay Fiction 2008 that he is spinning off a second anthology of speculative fiction from the entries, titled Wilde Side. Both titles will be available by late spring. Prime Books is also reprinting Berman’s earlier anthology of queer fairie stories, So Fey. David Sedaris has changed the title of his new book of essays from All the Beauty You’ll Ever Need to When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Release date is June 3 with a print run of 650,000 copies. An appeals judge tossed out a Lexington, Massachsuetts couple’s case against their child’s school, which had the audacity to read a fairy tale about two kings in love. Lambda Rising’s Baltimore LGBT bookstore will close this spring, but longtime Lambda Rising Baltimore store manager Michael Leommon plans to open Saratoga Coffee Bar in Baltimore, a café that will also sell books. Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, a feminist and LGBT bookstore in South Minneapolis is being sold, because of the financial condition of the store. The bookstore is the oldest feminist bookstore in the country. Amazon Bookstore gained fame as part of a highly publicized lawsuit against Amazon.com in the late 1990s.
Kudos: Freeheld: The Laurel Hester Story, Cynthia Wade’s documentary about the New Jersey lesbian police officer’s struggle to have her domestic partner recognized as her next of kin, won the Oscar for Best Documentary. Winners of the The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for Short Fiction, representing the best science fiction, fantasy or horror short fiction with significant positive GLBT content, are “In the Quake Zone” by David Gerrold from the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways, “Instinct” by Joy Parks from the anthology The Future Is Queer, and “The Language of Moths” by Christopher Barzak from the magazine Realms of Fantasy. In the Other Work category, the three winners are: the anthology The Future Is Queer, edited by Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel, the television series Torchwood, created by Russell T Davies, and the film V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue. The juries for the awards also identified a Short List of Recommended works, which can be found at http://www.spectrumawards.org/. Nominations for the 2008 Awards are open and the 2008 Awards will be presented at Gaylaxicon 2008 in Washington DC in October 2008.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is seeking stories for the 2009 edition of Best Gay Erotica, which will be judged this season by James Lear. Deadline is April 15, 2008. Original stories of 6000 words or less or work published between July 2007 and July 2008 are eligible. Submissions should be sent to mailto:bge2008@gmail.com in *.doc format. ** Labonté is also editing several other anthologies for Cleis Press, including Bears: Gay Erotic Stories. Deadline is March 15, 2008, and stories should be 8000 words or less. Submissions should be sent to cleiseditor@gmail.com. ** For Best Gay Romance 2009, stories should be 6000 words or less. Deadline: May 20, 2008. Submissions to cleiseditor@gmail.com; please put BGR 2009 in the subject line. ** For the erotic anthology Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction, Labonté is looking for stories 6000 words or less. Deadline is Aug. 15, 2008. Submissions to: cleiseditor@gmail.com; please put "Daddies" in the subject line. ** For the erotic anthology Boy Crazy: The First Time, Labonté is looking for sexual/erotic coming-out short stories, 6000 words or less. Deadline is Oct. 15, 2008. Submissions to cleiseditor@gmail.com; please put"Boy Crazy" in the subject line. ** The British queer literary journal Chroma is planning a themed issue on the “Americas.” Deadline is August 15, 2008. ** Chroma is also sponsoring its Queer Writing Competition in Poetry and Short Story. Deadline is September 1, 2008. For more details visit the Chroma Web site. **
Kudos: Freeheld: The Laurel Hester Story, Cynthia Wade’s documentary about the New Jersey lesbian police officer’s struggle to have her domestic partner recognized as her next of kin, won the Oscar for Best Documentary. Winners of the The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for Short Fiction, representing the best science fiction, fantasy or horror short fiction with significant positive GLBT content, are “In the Quake Zone” by David Gerrold from the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways, “Instinct” by Joy Parks from the anthology The Future Is Queer, and “The Language of Moths” by Christopher Barzak from the magazine Realms of Fantasy. In the Other Work category, the three winners are: the anthology The Future Is Queer, edited by Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel, the television series Torchwood, created by Russell T Davies, and the film V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue. The juries for the awards also identified a Short List of Recommended works, which can be found at http://www.spectrumawards.org/. Nominations for the 2008 Awards are open and the 2008 Awards will be presented at Gaylaxicon 2008 in Washington DC in October 2008.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is seeking stories for the 2009 edition of Best Gay Erotica, which will be judged this season by James Lear. Deadline is April 15, 2008. Original stories of 6000 words or less or work published between July 2007 and July 2008 are eligible. Submissions should be sent to mailto:bge2008@gmail.com in *.doc format. ** Labonté is also editing several other anthologies for Cleis Press, including Bears: Gay Erotic Stories. Deadline is March 15, 2008, and stories should be 8000 words or less. Submissions should be sent to cleiseditor@gmail.com. ** For Best Gay Romance 2009, stories should be 6000 words or less. Deadline: May 20, 2008. Submissions to cleiseditor@gmail.com; please put BGR 2009 in the subject line. ** For the erotic anthology Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction, Labonté is looking for stories 6000 words or less. Deadline is Aug. 15, 2008. Submissions to: cleiseditor@gmail.com; please put "Daddies" in the subject line. ** For the erotic anthology Boy Crazy: The First Time, Labonté is looking for sexual/erotic coming-out short stories, 6000 words or less. Deadline is Oct. 15, 2008. Submissions to cleiseditor@gmail.com; please put"Boy Crazy" in the subject line. ** The British queer literary journal Chroma is planning a themed issue on the “Americas.” Deadline is August 15, 2008. ** Chroma is also sponsoring its Queer Writing Competition in Poetry and Short Story. Deadline is September 1, 2008. For more details visit the Chroma Web site. **
Friday, February 01, 2008
February Publishing Notes
The buzz: Harper will publish George Michael’s “no-holds barred” autobiography in the fall of 2009. Rosie O’Donnell is rumored to be at work on a one-woman show. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel has been appointed an adjunct professor and the chairwoman of the playwriting department at Yale School of Drama. Author, comedian, and daytime TV host Ellen DeGeneres ousted talk show queen Oprah Winfrey as the U.S.'s favorite television personality in a poll released in January. Among the recent films showcased at Sundance was an adaptation of Michael Cabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Logo will air a prequel series to the play and movie Sordid Lives this fall The series will include guest appearances by Leslie Jordan, Margaret Cho, and others. Editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe has left Hyperion to pursue the next chapter in his career. This fall City Lights will publish So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, a new novel by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Susie Bright is headed on a farewell tour for Best American Erotica. Details can be found at http://booktour.com/author/susie_bright and http://www.bestamericanerotica.com/. Susie is also writing a memoir and has signed on to edit two new anthologies for Chronicle Books. The Sex Workers Art Show tour is going to 38 cities in 41 days in January and February. The full schedule can be found at http://sexworkersartshow.com/tourschedule.html and http://sexworkersartshow.com/newbook.html. Also featured at the show will be a new anthology of sex worker writings, Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry, edited by Annie Oakley, and featuring work by several of the show’s performers, as well as Eileen Myles, Bruce LaBruce, Nomy Lamm, and Michelle Tea.
Kudos: The winners of the 2008 Stonewall Book Awards are: The Barbara Gittings Book Award in Literature to Ellis Avery for The Tea House Fire, and The Israel Fishman Book Award for Nonfiction to Mark Doty for Dog Years: A Memoir. The 2008 honor books in literature are: Bow Grip by Ivan E. Coyote, Dark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany, The IHOP Papers by Ali Liebegott, and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt. The honor books in non-fiction are: Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman by Leo Lerman and Stephen Pascal, Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums, Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers by Cris Beam, and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm. The Alice B. Reader’s Appreciation Awards given annually to living writers for career achievement of distinguished stories about lesbians were presented to: Kim Baldwin, Ann Bannon, Cate Culpepper, Lauren Wright Douglas, Jennifer L. Jordan, Val McDermid, Joanna Russ, and Therese Szymanski. Vintage by Steve Berman has made the long list for the Andrew Norton Award given to young adult novels of speculative fiction. GLAAD does not present book awards, but the GLAAD Media Awards include categories for comic books and theater. The nominations in the Comic Book category of the GLAAD Media Awards went to: American Virgin by Steven T. Seagle, The Boys by Garth Ennis, Midnighter by Garth Ennis, Brian K. Vaughan, Christos Gage, Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, and Keith Giffin, The Outsiders by Judd Winick, Greg Rucka, and Tony Bedard, and Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore. Theater nominees for LA Theater are: Act A Lady by Jordan Harrison, Anything by Tim McNeil, Avenue Q, book by Jeff Whitty, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, Havana Bourgeois by Carlos Lacamara, and The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel. For New York Theater – Broadway & Off–Broadway: 100 Saints You Should Know by Kate Fodor, All That I Will Ever Be by Alan Ball, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman, Some Men by Terrence McNally, and Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam. For Off–Off Broadway: 1001 Beds by Tim Miller, BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera by Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, music by Aaron Macri, I Google Myself by Jason Schafer, Yank! book and lyrics by David Zellnik, music by Joseph Zellnik, The Young Ladies Of by Taylor Mac. San Francisco’s Theater Rhinoceros will receive a special recognition.
Open Calls: White Crane Institute in collaboration with Phil Willkie has established the biennial White Crane/James White Poetry Prize for Gay male poets. Mark Doty will be the judge for the first year. The award will be presented in spring 2009 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the White Crane Journal. A prize of $1,000, publication by White Crane Books, and five author copies will be given annually for a book-length poetry collection. Submit 48 to 80 pages of poetry with a $25 entry fee, postmarked by October 30, 2008. Visit the White Crane web site (http://www.gaywisdom.org/) for complete guidelines. For further information, write info@jameswhitepoetryprize.org.
Kudos: The winners of the 2008 Stonewall Book Awards are: The Barbara Gittings Book Award in Literature to Ellis Avery for The Tea House Fire, and The Israel Fishman Book Award for Nonfiction to Mark Doty for Dog Years: A Memoir. The 2008 honor books in literature are: Bow Grip by Ivan E. Coyote, Dark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany, The IHOP Papers by Ali Liebegott, and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt. The honor books in non-fiction are: Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman by Leo Lerman and Stephen Pascal, Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums, Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers by Cris Beam, and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm. The Alice B. Reader’s Appreciation Awards given annually to living writers for career achievement of distinguished stories about lesbians were presented to: Kim Baldwin, Ann Bannon, Cate Culpepper, Lauren Wright Douglas, Jennifer L. Jordan, Val McDermid, Joanna Russ, and Therese Szymanski. Vintage by Steve Berman has made the long list for the Andrew Norton Award given to young adult novels of speculative fiction. GLAAD does not present book awards, but the GLAAD Media Awards include categories for comic books and theater. The nominations in the Comic Book category of the GLAAD Media Awards went to: American Virgin by Steven T. Seagle, The Boys by Garth Ennis, Midnighter by Garth Ennis, Brian K. Vaughan, Christos Gage, Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, and Keith Giffin, The Outsiders by Judd Winick, Greg Rucka, and Tony Bedard, and Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore. Theater nominees for LA Theater are: Act A Lady by Jordan Harrison, Anything by Tim McNeil, Avenue Q, book by Jeff Whitty, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, Havana Bourgeois by Carlos Lacamara, and The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel. For New York Theater – Broadway & Off–Broadway: 100 Saints You Should Know by Kate Fodor, All That I Will Ever Be by Alan Ball, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman, Some Men by Terrence McNally, and Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam. For Off–Off Broadway: 1001 Beds by Tim Miller, BASH’d: A Gay Rap Opera by Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow, music by Aaron Macri, I Google Myself by Jason Schafer, Yank! book and lyrics by David Zellnik, music by Joseph Zellnik, The Young Ladies Of by Taylor Mac. San Francisco’s Theater Rhinoceros will receive a special recognition.
Open Calls: White Crane Institute in collaboration with Phil Willkie has established the biennial White Crane/James White Poetry Prize for Gay male poets. Mark Doty will be the judge for the first year. The award will be presented in spring 2009 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the White Crane Journal. A prize of $1,000, publication by White Crane Books, and five author copies will be given annually for a book-length poetry collection. Submit 48 to 80 pages of poetry with a $25 entry fee, postmarked by October 30, 2008. Visit the White Crane web site (http://www.gaywisdom.org/) for complete guidelines. For further information, write info@jameswhitepoetryprize.org.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
January Publishing Notes
The buzz: Augusten Burroughs’ new memoir, A Wolf At The Table, is expected to be in stores this April. Rich Merritt, author of the new novel, Code of Conduct, has launched a Web site and a blog for writers at http://www.richmerritt.com/. Andy Quan’s new book of poetry, Bowling Pin Fire, is now in bookstores. Kensington will publish Rakesh Satyal’s Blue Boy, about a sexually confused Indian-American boy who thinks he may be the reincarnation of the Hindu god Krishna. The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris has opened “L’Enfer,” its secret collection of erotic manuscripts and art, to the public for the first time in nearly 40 years. The collection, amassed over 170 years, includes manuscripts by the Marquis de Sade. Letters to Noel Coward, a new book edited by Barry Day, revealed that Noel Coward served as a British spy before and during World War II. Little Britain star David Walliams has signed a two-book deal with Harper Collins Children’s Books. His untitled debut novel is expected in the Autumn of 2008. Chad Allen is expected to star in a third in the Donald Strachey mysteries for Here! TV. Rupert Everett will write and act in a movie about Oscar Wilde. Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey have signed on to star in I Love You Phillip Morris, based on the book by Steve Russell. Among the talent lining up for Gus Van Sant’s film of The Mayor of Castro Street are Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, James Franco as Milk’s longterm partner Scott Smith, Josh Brolin as Dan White, and Emile Hirsch as Milk’s aide Cleve Jones.
Kudos: C. Bard Cole won the 2007 Novel of Novels contest for This is Where My Life Went Wrong. It will be the first book-length work of fiction to be published by Blatt Books. Among Out magazine’s annual list of notable queers were writers Edmund White, Kevin Sessums, Thomas Mallon, Eliot Schrefer, Kim Powers, Lori Sonderlind, and editor Will Schwalbe. Arch Brown’s Palm Spring’s Thorny Theater won four Desert Theater League Star Awards including Best Original Writing for David Brendan Hopes for his play Anna Livia, Lucky in her Bridges, and Best Overall Production for Arch Brown's Doubleltalk. Artist Delmas Howe will receive the 2008 Lifetime Achievement award from the Leslie/Lohman Art Foundation for his contribution to gay art.
Open Calls: The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the three winners of its 2008 High School Seniors English Essay Contest College scholarships in the amount of $1,000 for studies in queer theory or a related field at a US college. Deadline is February 29, 2008. More details can be found at the Web site. ** Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimmel are seeking submissions for Queer Utopias, a science fiction anthology, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press, Spring 2009. Maximum word length: 10,000 words. Submissions can be sent as an attachment in .doc format to queerutopias@gmail.com. Deadline is May 15, 2008. ** The Leslie/Lohman Gallery accepting submissions for four large group art exhibitions in 2008. The Great Gay Photo Show, a large group photography show; Art! Actually! Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, about the act of making art, The Great Lesbian Show, a large group lesbian show, and Imaginary Portraits: Gay Lovers In History, a large group show of portraits based on known or newly discovered LGBTQ couples from ancient to contemporary society. For more details on deadlines and submission requirements, please visit the gallery’s Web site.
My Favorites of 2007: Favorite novel: Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin. The trip down memory lane was unforgettable. Favorite memoir: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Deserves every award it received. Favorite story: “Love and Hydrogen” by Jim Shepard -- I finally caught up with this ill-fated romance that takes place on board the Hindenburg. Favorite movie: La Vie en Rose. Marion Cottilard is amazing as Edith Piaf.
Passages: Historian Allan Bérubé died of complications from stomach ulcers at the Catskills Regional Medical Center in New York on December 11, 2007. He was 61. Berbe was the author of Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II, published in 1990 and which won a Lambda Literary Award and was adapted as a documentary by Arthur Dong. In 1996, Bérubé received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work. He was also one of the founders of the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Project in 1978. He is survived by his partner John Nelson, his mother, and three sisters. ** Mel Cheren, a pioneering force in the dance music movement of the '70s and an AIDS activist, died December 7, 2007, from complications of AIDS. He was 74. Known as the “Godfather Of Disco,” Cheren co-founded West End Records in 1976. Cheren was a key backer of the Paradise Garage, a nightclub in the West Village. Cheren gave Gay Men’s Health Crisis its first home, donating space for it in a building he owned in Chelsea, and sponsored its first fund-raiser, at the Paradise Garage. Cheren also started 24 Hours For Life in 1987, a non-profit organization of music and media professionals who raised money for AIDS awareness. In 2000, Cheren published a memoir, My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep on Dancin', which became the basis of a feature length documentary, suitably titled The Godfather of Disco.
Kudos: C. Bard Cole won the 2007 Novel of Novels contest for This is Where My Life Went Wrong. It will be the first book-length work of fiction to be published by Blatt Books. Among Out magazine’s annual list of notable queers were writers Edmund White, Kevin Sessums, Thomas Mallon, Eliot Schrefer, Kim Powers, Lori Sonderlind, and editor Will Schwalbe. Arch Brown’s Palm Spring’s Thorny Theater won four Desert Theater League Star Awards including Best Original Writing for David Brendan Hopes for his play Anna Livia, Lucky in her Bridges, and Best Overall Production for Arch Brown's Doubleltalk. Artist Delmas Howe will receive the 2008 Lifetime Achievement award from the Leslie/Lohman Art Foundation for his contribution to gay art.
Open Calls: The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the three winners of its 2008 High School Seniors English Essay Contest College scholarships in the amount of $1,000 for studies in queer theory or a related field at a US college. Deadline is February 29, 2008. More details can be found at the Web site. ** Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimmel are seeking submissions for Queer Utopias, a science fiction anthology, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press, Spring 2009. Maximum word length: 10,000 words. Submissions can be sent as an attachment in .doc format to queerutopias@gmail.com. Deadline is May 15, 2008. ** The Leslie/Lohman Gallery accepting submissions for four large group art exhibitions in 2008. The Great Gay Photo Show, a large group photography show; Art! Actually! Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, about the act of making art, The Great Lesbian Show, a large group lesbian show, and Imaginary Portraits: Gay Lovers In History, a large group show of portraits based on known or newly discovered LGBTQ couples from ancient to contemporary society. For more details on deadlines and submission requirements, please visit the gallery’s Web site.
My Favorites of 2007: Favorite novel: Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin. The trip down memory lane was unforgettable. Favorite memoir: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Deserves every award it received. Favorite story: “Love and Hydrogen” by Jim Shepard -- I finally caught up with this ill-fated romance that takes place on board the Hindenburg. Favorite movie: La Vie en Rose. Marion Cottilard is amazing as Edith Piaf.
Passages: Historian Allan Bérubé died of complications from stomach ulcers at the Catskills Regional Medical Center in New York on December 11, 2007. He was 61. Berbe was the author of Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II, published in 1990 and which won a Lambda Literary Award and was adapted as a documentary by Arthur Dong. In 1996, Bérubé received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work. He was also one of the founders of the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Project in 1978. He is survived by his partner John Nelson, his mother, and three sisters. ** Mel Cheren, a pioneering force in the dance music movement of the '70s and an AIDS activist, died December 7, 2007, from complications of AIDS. He was 74. Known as the “Godfather Of Disco,” Cheren co-founded West End Records in 1976. Cheren was a key backer of the Paradise Garage, a nightclub in the West Village. Cheren gave Gay Men’s Health Crisis its first home, donating space for it in a building he owned in Chelsea, and sponsored its first fund-raiser, at the Paradise Garage. Cheren also started 24 Hours For Life in 1987, a non-profit organization of music and media professionals who raised money for AIDS awareness. In 2000, Cheren published a memoir, My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep on Dancin', which became the basis of a feature length documentary, suitably titled The Godfather of Disco.
Friday, November 30, 2007
December Publishing Notes
The buzz: Duke University Press will publish Our Caribbean, A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, edited by Thomas Glave. Starbooks Press has published Ken Anderson’s collection of stories, The Statue of Pan. Among the forthcoming Spring 2008 releases are The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution by Pagan Kennedy and Straight Acting: Gay Men, Masculinity and Finding True Love by Angelo Pezzote. Former Blithe House Quarterly editor and publisher Aldo Alvarez is teaching a Gay & Lesbian literature class at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago. British actors and authors Stephen Fry and Simon Callow are planning to turn a London house where French poet Paul Verlaine stayed with Arthur Rimbaud into a museum dedicated to poetry, “a wonderful memento of the fruitful if nightmarish stay in England of these extraordinary men, of the work they did there, and indeed, of their affair,” according to a statement made by Callow. Authors Rob Stephenson, Rachel Bussel Kramer, and Amie Evans will read from Entangled Lives, an anthology of erotic memoirs edited by Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Saturday, December 8, 2007, at 7 p.m. at Rapture Cafe and Books in Manhattan.
Kudos: Daniel Mendelsohn is the winner of the Prix Medicis for a foreign work for The Lost. Making the list of The New York Times Notable Books for 2007 were Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon, The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt, Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin, and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm. The longlist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award includes Winkie by Clifford Chase and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. On Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year for 2007 was Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman.
Open Calls: Shonia L. Brown is seeking erotica submissions of 4000 words or less for I Love You to Death: Black Lesbian Diaries. Submissions can be sent to: Nghosi Books, PO Box 1908, Stone Mountain GA 30086. Include a brief author bio and e-mail address. Deadline is October 31, 2008. ** Christopher Pierce is editing Taken By Force: Erotic Stories of Abduction and Captivity for STARbooks Press. Deadline is January 20, 2008. Stories can be sent as .doc attachment to:mailto:%20pierce@starbookspress.com with Taken By Force in the subject line. ** SPUTNIK57, a new online magazine, is seeking science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story submissions. Stories should contain strong female protagonists, and lesbian characters who are portrayed in a positive light. Stories should be between 1000 and 15,000 words in length. Submissions should be sent as an e-mail attachment, either as a rtf or a Word document to submissions@sputnik57.ca. ** The online journal Ignavia is seeking dark, edgy, queer fiction under 4000 words. Visit the Web site for specific guidelines. ** Patty G. Henderson is editing Chilling Tales of Terror and the Supernatural: In 1,000 Words or Less, a lesbian/gay anthology of horror flash fiction. Each author will get a ‘block’ of a minimum of 5 flash stories and not more than 10, depending on the word count. For more information, visit the Guidelines page. ** Steve Berman will be reading short fiction featuring gay male protagonists and themes for the forthcoming Best Gay Short Stories: 2007 anthology from Lethe Press. All stories must have been published in the 2007 calendar year. Stories need not have released in-print; on-line publications are acceptable. No work longer than novelette (17,500 words). Work should be submitted to: Steve Berman, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052. Deadline is January 31, 2008. The final selection of stories will be made in March 2008. Release is slated to coincide with the Saints & Sinners conference in New Orleans in May of 2008. ** Les Wright is seeking essays, memoir, fiction, and poetry for HIV+ 25 Years: Interrupted Journeys: Lessons from The Lazarus Generation. Submissions should be between 1500 and 4000 words. Deadline is September 30, 2008. Submissions can be sent to PO Box 460358, San Francisco, CA 94114. For more information, e-mail Les Wright at leskwright@thinkingbear.com.
Passages: Jane Rule died November 27, 2007, from complications from liver cancer at her home on Galiano Island, British Columbia. She was 76. Rule, American by birth and Canadian by choice, was the author of a numerous books, including the novels Desert of the Heart, This is not for You, and Memory Board, and the non-fiction essays Lesbian Images. Born in New Jersey on March 28, 1931 Jane Vance Rule graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1952. She studied briefly in a writing program at Stanford before accepting a teaching position at Concord Academy in Massachusetts. There she met Helen Sonthoff, another teacher, who would become her lifelong partner. Eventually both women held positions at the University of British Columbia until 1976 when they moved to Galiano Island. Sonthoff died in 2000 and Rule wrote a painfully beautiful meditation on grief that appeared in Go Big. In the last several years small, independent presses like Insomniac Press in Toronto, Little Sister's and Arsenal Pulp in Vancouver have reissued Rule’s fiction. Her last project was a small book of new essays for Hedgerow Press, a small quality press on Vancouver Island, scheduled for release in 2008. Rule was inducted into the Order of Canada in July 2007. For further biographical information, the Canadian publication Xtra has a detailed tribute by Marilyn Schuster and samples of Rule’s writings.
Kudos: Daniel Mendelsohn is the winner of the Prix Medicis for a foreign work for The Lost. Making the list of The New York Times Notable Books for 2007 were Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon, The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt, Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin, and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm. The longlist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award includes Winkie by Clifford Chase and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. On Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year for 2007 was Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman.
Open Calls: Shonia L. Brown is seeking erotica submissions of 4000 words or less for I Love You to Death: Black Lesbian Diaries. Submissions can be sent to: Nghosi Books, PO Box 1908, Stone Mountain GA 30086. Include a brief author bio and e-mail address. Deadline is October 31, 2008. ** Christopher Pierce is editing Taken By Force: Erotic Stories of Abduction and Captivity for STARbooks Press. Deadline is January 20, 2008. Stories can be sent as .doc attachment to:mailto:%20pierce@starbookspress.com with Taken By Force in the subject line. ** SPUTNIK57, a new online magazine, is seeking science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story submissions. Stories should contain strong female protagonists, and lesbian characters who are portrayed in a positive light. Stories should be between 1000 and 15,000 words in length. Submissions should be sent as an e-mail attachment, either as a rtf or a Word document to submissions@sputnik57.ca. ** The online journal Ignavia is seeking dark, edgy, queer fiction under 4000 words. Visit the Web site for specific guidelines. ** Patty G. Henderson is editing Chilling Tales of Terror and the Supernatural: In 1,000 Words or Less, a lesbian/gay anthology of horror flash fiction. Each author will get a ‘block’ of a minimum of 5 flash stories and not more than 10, depending on the word count. For more information, visit the Guidelines page. ** Steve Berman will be reading short fiction featuring gay male protagonists and themes for the forthcoming Best Gay Short Stories: 2007 anthology from Lethe Press. All stories must have been published in the 2007 calendar year. Stories need not have released in-print; on-line publications are acceptable. No work longer than novelette (17,500 words). Work should be submitted to: Steve Berman, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052. Deadline is January 31, 2008. The final selection of stories will be made in March 2008. Release is slated to coincide with the Saints & Sinners conference in New Orleans in May of 2008. ** Les Wright is seeking essays, memoir, fiction, and poetry for HIV+ 25 Years: Interrupted Journeys: Lessons from The Lazarus Generation. Submissions should be between 1500 and 4000 words. Deadline is September 30, 2008. Submissions can be sent to PO Box 460358, San Francisco, CA 94114. For more information, e-mail Les Wright at leskwright@thinkingbear.com.
Passages: Jane Rule died November 27, 2007, from complications from liver cancer at her home on Galiano Island, British Columbia. She was 76. Rule, American by birth and Canadian by choice, was the author of a numerous books, including the novels Desert of the Heart, This is not for You, and Memory Board, and the non-fiction essays Lesbian Images. Born in New Jersey on March 28, 1931 Jane Vance Rule graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1952. She studied briefly in a writing program at Stanford before accepting a teaching position at Concord Academy in Massachusetts. There she met Helen Sonthoff, another teacher, who would become her lifelong partner. Eventually both women held positions at the University of British Columbia until 1976 when they moved to Galiano Island. Sonthoff died in 2000 and Rule wrote a painfully beautiful meditation on grief that appeared in Go Big. In the last several years small, independent presses like Insomniac Press in Toronto, Little Sister's and Arsenal Pulp in Vancouver have reissued Rule’s fiction. Her last project was a small book of new essays for Hedgerow Press, a small quality press on Vancouver Island, scheduled for release in 2008. Rule was inducted into the Order of Canada in July 2007. For further biographical information, the Canadian publication Xtra has a detailed tribute by Marilyn Schuster and samples of Rule’s writings.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
November Publishing Notes
The buzz: The comment heard ‘round the world comes courtesy this month of author J.K. Rowling. During a Q&A session for fans in New York City at Carnegie Hall, the author of the beloved Harry Potter books revealed that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. Sneaking under the radar this month was the comment by Potter film star Daniel Radcliffe that he wants to follow in actor Rupert Everett’s footsteps and play a gay spy in the remake of Another Country. Little Ashes, a new UK-Spanish film, will depict the love affair between Salvador Dali, the eccentric master of the avant-garde, and his fellow Spaniard Federico Garcia Lorca, the doomed dramatist and poet. The cable TV channel Here! has ramped up its original programming efforts. Two new fresh cases of the Donald Strachey mystery movie franchise starring Chad Allen are in the works. The company will also film House of Usher, the second planned installment in a series of 12 movies based on Edgar Allen Poe tales. The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis will premier a new play by Tony Kushner, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialist with a Key to the Scriptures, in 2009. In a recent issue of Venus, Charlene Cothran, the editor and publisher the publication for black lesbians, announced that she had gone straight. The 700 Club ran a profile on Cothran in June titled “A Lesbian’s Deliverance.” Over 85 deaf and hearing people share their stories in Eyes of Desire 2: A Deaf GLBT Reader, a new anthology edited by Raymond Luczak, published by Handtype Press, and a follow up to Luczak’s popular 1993 anthology. Luczak is also the publisher of the new anthology. The new press showcases literature and art created by signers, Deaf and hearing alike. Author Michael Travis Jasper turned to his local tattoo artist to design the cover for his new novel, To Be Chosen. Persona Press/Nikos Diaman Limited Editions recently published The City, a new novel by N.A. Diaman, and Following My Heart, a memoir. Gotham will publish Isaac Mizrahi’s How to Have Style, an illustrated guide to looking fabulous for all occasions. The Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City will celebrate its 40th birthday on November 27. A new GLBT bookstore has opened in Royal Oak, MI, Five15 Media, Mojo & More. The Gittings-Lahusen gay and lesbian book collection was donated to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts. The collection contains approximately 1,000 titles dating from the late 1920s to the present day and represents a lifetime of collecting by two important gay rights activists, Barbara Gittings and her life partner, Kay Tobin Lahusen.
A few things to do this month: Contributors Stephen Greco, Sam J. Miller, Joseph Manera, Joel Nichols, and Don Shewey read from their funny and touching memoirs and stories about two vital obsessions—books and sex at a group reading for Sex by the Book: Gay Men's Tales of Lit and Lust, Thursday, November 15th @ 7pm at The Center, 208 W 13th St, New York, NY - (212) 620-7310. ** The Publishing Triangle sponsors Publishing 102: How to Market Your Book. Learn how to market and promote your book as a panel of publishing professionals explain the ABCs of book buzz and take your questions. A panel discussion featuring Mark Nichols, Marketing Director for the American Booksellers Association's Book Sense program; Colleen Lindsay, publicity and marketing manager for Doubleday Books, an imprint of Random House; and Felicia Luna Lemus, author of the novels Like Son and Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties. The panel will be moderated by Brent Gallenberger, senior marketing manager for trade books at Rodale. Thursday, November 15 at 8:00 p.nm. at The Center, 208 West 13th Street. Admission: $7 for Publishing Triangle members, $10 for nonmembers.
Where to spend some money: Saints and Sinners will hold their sixth annual literary festival May 8-11, 2008 in New Orleans. Organizers are seeking help in achieving a goal of raising $20,000 between now and December 31, 2007. Saints and Sinners is completely organized by unpaid volunteers. The fundraising goal would allow organizers to hire a much-needed, part-time office assistant to help with the pre-conference administrative work, and pay for general operating expenses to produce the event—venue rental, printing, advertising, etc. Donations would also go towards providing registration scholarships for individuals who otherwise might not be able to afford to register for the event. To help ensure the festival continues and grows, an “Archangel Membership Program” has been started. Details can be found on the Web site: www.sasfest.org. Donations may be mailed to: Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, Attention: Paul Willis, 938 Lafayette Street, #514, New Orleans, LA 70113.
Kudos: Joe Keenan was awarded this year’s Thurber Prize for humor for his novel My Lucky Star. Arch Brown’s GLBT Thorny Theater in Palm Springs received 20 nominations from the The Desert Theater League, including Outstanding Production of a Drama for The Shape Shifter and Anna Livia, Lucky in her Bridges. Pariah, a short film by Dee Rees, about a lesbian teenager, won the ₤25000 Iris Prize as the best entry of the three-day film festival in Cardiff, Wales. The film also won the NewFest festival award in New York earlier this year. Harper Lee is being awarded America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for her outstanding contribution to literature. Her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and is ranked by the Guinness Book of World Records as the top selling novel of all time. The novel has sold more than 30 million copies. This year’s San Francisco Litquake festival opened up with the first Barbary Coast Award for a Lifetime of Literary Achievement presented to Armistead Maupin. Actress Laura Linney, who was in the 1994 PBS series of Maupin’s 1976 novel Tales of the City was on hand to give Maupin the award. Litquake has grown from a one-day event in the bandstand at Golden Gate Park to a weeklong festival with 354 authors in 58 venues throughout the city, at Kepler’s in Silicon Valley and Book Passage in Marin County.
And the Nominees Are: The Publishing Triangle is now accepting nominations for its 2008 fiction, nonfiction, and poetry awards, given for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2007. Each year, the organization presents six awards to lesbian and gay authors: The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction; the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction; the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Two additional awards, the Ferro-Grumley Awards for Lesbian and Gay Fiction, are presented at the same awards ceremony under the aegis of the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards Inc. All of these literary prizes include honorariums: $3,000 for the Whitehead Award; $1,000 each for fiction and nonfiction; and $500 each for poetry. The deadline for nominations is December 3, 2007. Visit http://www.publishingtriangle.org/ for instructions and to download a nomination form. The awards themselves will be presented in a gala ceremony at the New School in Greenwich Village on April 28, 2008.
Open Calls: My Gender Cookbook, a gender and cooking anthology, seeks submissions of creative nonfiction essays and recipes that explore how gender and sexual identities affect our cooking choices: how we eat, what we eat, and with whom we eat. Essay submissions will not be considered without a recipe and should be between 500 and 3000 words. Please include a brief bio, e-mail contact info and your essay and recipe as word document attachments. Only previously unpublished materials will be considered. Submissions will be accepted no later than February 1st 2008. Please send submissions to mygendercookbook@gmail.com. ** Dark Scribe Press is seeking short story submissions for Unspeakable Horror, an anthology of queer horror tales. E-mail queries only. Queries can be emailed to publisher@darkscribepress.com and will be accepted through May 15, 2008. Response time to queries is 30-60 days. Once a query is greenlighted, the deadline for actual submissions is June 30, 2008. Response time to submissions is 30-60 days. Please put Query/Anthology in the subject line of all e-mails. Kindly note that queries with attachments will be deleted – do not send your story until you have queried first. The anthology is slated for fourth quarter 2008 publication. ** The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in association with the Marigny Theatre Corporation and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is sponsoring their second annual playwright’s contest. The winning play will be produced by the Marigny Theatre Corporation and will premier the weekend of the 6th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Event, May 8-11, 2008. There is a $10 fee for every play submitted. Participants can enter more then once. In addition to a full production at the Festival, the winning playwright will receive a $500 cash prize and an “All-Access” Pass to the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Deadline for Submission is December 31, 2007. Visit the Saints and Sinners Web site for more details. ** Brad Nichols is looking for submissions for Island Boys, Tropical Gay Erotica. Length should be 2500-4000 words. Deadline is December 1, 2007. Submit original stories to alysonanthology@planetoutinc.com. Simone Thorne is editing Island Girls, Tropical Lesbian Erotica. Length should be 2500-4000 words. Deadline is December 1, 2007. Submit original stories to alysonanthology@planetoutinc.com. ** Sassafras Lowrey is editing Kicked out, an anthology which chronicles the experiences of former queer youth and current queer youth who were forced to leave home as minors because of their sexuality and/or gender identity. Submissions should be between 1,500 and 2,500 words in length and previously unpublished. Submit your piece via e-mail in .doc format to KickedOutAnthology@gmail.com. Multiple submissions per contributor are welcome. Deadline is March 1, 2008. More information can be found at: http://www.myspace.com/kickedoutanthology ** Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel are seeking submissions for Second Person Queer: How We Lived Our Lives – and How You Can Live Yours. Essays should be between 1,000-2,000 words and written in the second person (addressed to a "you"). Submissions can be sent to secondpersonqueer@gmail.com. Deadline is March 15, 2008. ** Notisha Massaquoi & Selly Thiam are seeking submissions for None-on-Record: Stories of Queer Africa. QLGBT Africans are invited to submit original, unpublished essays, poems, short stories, plays, creative non-fiction, and visual art. Submissions can be sent to NORsubmission@gmail.com. Deadline is March 31, 2008. More details can be found at www.myspace.com/noneonrecord.
Passages: Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic for The New York Times from 1992 to 2004, died of lung cancer on October 3, 2007. One of the most influential critics of his generation, he frequently wrote about the central role played by gay men in New York's cultural history. ** Downtown icon and gay performing artist Dean Johnson died September 20, 2007. The six-foot-six promoter and poet was found dead in Washington, D.C. Johnson, 45, founded the weekly party Rock and Roll Fag Bar in the late eighties, and also started HomoCorps, a monthly gay music showcase at CBGB. At times a porn star and at other times a rock star (he fronted Dean and the Weenies and later the Velvet Mafia), he was always recognizable by his height (often augmented by heels) and brazen eyewear. Friends gathered in October at Rapture Café and Books in the East Village to remember a man who was rarely forgotten.
A few things to do this month: Contributors Stephen Greco, Sam J. Miller, Joseph Manera, Joel Nichols, and Don Shewey read from their funny and touching memoirs and stories about two vital obsessions—books and sex at a group reading for Sex by the Book: Gay Men's Tales of Lit and Lust, Thursday, November 15th @ 7pm at The Center, 208 W 13th St, New York, NY - (212) 620-7310. ** The Publishing Triangle sponsors Publishing 102: How to Market Your Book. Learn how to market and promote your book as a panel of publishing professionals explain the ABCs of book buzz and take your questions. A panel discussion featuring Mark Nichols, Marketing Director for the American Booksellers Association's Book Sense program; Colleen Lindsay, publicity and marketing manager for Doubleday Books, an imprint of Random House; and Felicia Luna Lemus, author of the novels Like Son and Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties. The panel will be moderated by Brent Gallenberger, senior marketing manager for trade books at Rodale. Thursday, November 15 at 8:00 p.nm. at The Center, 208 West 13th Street. Admission: $7 for Publishing Triangle members, $10 for nonmembers.
Where to spend some money: Saints and Sinners will hold their sixth annual literary festival May 8-11, 2008 in New Orleans. Organizers are seeking help in achieving a goal of raising $20,000 between now and December 31, 2007. Saints and Sinners is completely organized by unpaid volunteers. The fundraising goal would allow organizers to hire a much-needed, part-time office assistant to help with the pre-conference administrative work, and pay for general operating expenses to produce the event—venue rental, printing, advertising, etc. Donations would also go towards providing registration scholarships for individuals who otherwise might not be able to afford to register for the event. To help ensure the festival continues and grows, an “Archangel Membership Program” has been started. Details can be found on the Web site: www.sasfest.org. Donations may be mailed to: Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, Attention: Paul Willis, 938 Lafayette Street, #514, New Orleans, LA 70113.
Kudos: Joe Keenan was awarded this year’s Thurber Prize for humor for his novel My Lucky Star. Arch Brown’s GLBT Thorny Theater in Palm Springs received 20 nominations from the The Desert Theater League, including Outstanding Production of a Drama for The Shape Shifter and Anna Livia, Lucky in her Bridges. Pariah, a short film by Dee Rees, about a lesbian teenager, won the ₤25000 Iris Prize as the best entry of the three-day film festival in Cardiff, Wales. The film also won the NewFest festival award in New York earlier this year. Harper Lee is being awarded America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for her outstanding contribution to literature. Her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and is ranked by the Guinness Book of World Records as the top selling novel of all time. The novel has sold more than 30 million copies. This year’s San Francisco Litquake festival opened up with the first Barbary Coast Award for a Lifetime of Literary Achievement presented to Armistead Maupin. Actress Laura Linney, who was in the 1994 PBS series of Maupin’s 1976 novel Tales of the City was on hand to give Maupin the award. Litquake has grown from a one-day event in the bandstand at Golden Gate Park to a weeklong festival with 354 authors in 58 venues throughout the city, at Kepler’s in Silicon Valley and Book Passage in Marin County.
And the Nominees Are: The Publishing Triangle is now accepting nominations for its 2008 fiction, nonfiction, and poetry awards, given for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2007. Each year, the organization presents six awards to lesbian and gay authors: The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction; the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction; the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Two additional awards, the Ferro-Grumley Awards for Lesbian and Gay Fiction, are presented at the same awards ceremony under the aegis of the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards Inc. All of these literary prizes include honorariums: $3,000 for the Whitehead Award; $1,000 each for fiction and nonfiction; and $500 each for poetry. The deadline for nominations is December 3, 2007. Visit http://www.publishingtriangle.org/ for instructions and to download a nomination form. The awards themselves will be presented in a gala ceremony at the New School in Greenwich Village on April 28, 2008.
Open Calls: My Gender Cookbook, a gender and cooking anthology, seeks submissions of creative nonfiction essays and recipes that explore how gender and sexual identities affect our cooking choices: how we eat, what we eat, and with whom we eat. Essay submissions will not be considered without a recipe and should be between 500 and 3000 words. Please include a brief bio, e-mail contact info and your essay and recipe as word document attachments. Only previously unpublished materials will be considered. Submissions will be accepted no later than February 1st 2008. Please send submissions to mygendercookbook@gmail.com. ** Dark Scribe Press is seeking short story submissions for Unspeakable Horror, an anthology of queer horror tales. E-mail queries only. Queries can be emailed to publisher@darkscribepress.com and will be accepted through May 15, 2008. Response time to queries is 30-60 days. Once a query is greenlighted, the deadline for actual submissions is June 30, 2008. Response time to submissions is 30-60 days. Please put Query/Anthology in the subject line of all e-mails. Kindly note that queries with attachments will be deleted – do not send your story until you have queried first. The anthology is slated for fourth quarter 2008 publication. ** The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in association with the Marigny Theatre Corporation and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is sponsoring their second annual playwright’s contest. The winning play will be produced by the Marigny Theatre Corporation and will premier the weekend of the 6th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Event, May 8-11, 2008. There is a $10 fee for every play submitted. Participants can enter more then once. In addition to a full production at the Festival, the winning playwright will receive a $500 cash prize and an “All-Access” Pass to the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Deadline for Submission is December 31, 2007. Visit the Saints and Sinners Web site for more details. ** Brad Nichols is looking for submissions for Island Boys, Tropical Gay Erotica. Length should be 2500-4000 words. Deadline is December 1, 2007. Submit original stories to alysonanthology@planetoutinc.com. Simone Thorne is editing Island Girls, Tropical Lesbian Erotica. Length should be 2500-4000 words. Deadline is December 1, 2007. Submit original stories to alysonanthology@planetoutinc.com. ** Sassafras Lowrey is editing Kicked out, an anthology which chronicles the experiences of former queer youth and current queer youth who were forced to leave home as minors because of their sexuality and/or gender identity. Submissions should be between 1,500 and 2,500 words in length and previously unpublished. Submit your piece via e-mail in .doc format to KickedOutAnthology@gmail.com. Multiple submissions per contributor are welcome. Deadline is March 1, 2008. More information can be found at: http://www.myspace.com/kickedoutanthology ** Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel are seeking submissions for Second Person Queer: How We Lived Our Lives – and How You Can Live Yours. Essays should be between 1,000-2,000 words and written in the second person (addressed to a "you"). Submissions can be sent to secondpersonqueer@gmail.com. Deadline is March 15, 2008. ** Notisha Massaquoi & Selly Thiam are seeking submissions for None-on-Record: Stories of Queer Africa. QLGBT Africans are invited to submit original, unpublished essays, poems, short stories, plays, creative non-fiction, and visual art. Submissions can be sent to NORsubmission@gmail.com. Deadline is March 31, 2008. More details can be found at www.myspace.com/noneonrecord.
Passages: Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic for The New York Times from 1992 to 2004, died of lung cancer on October 3, 2007. One of the most influential critics of his generation, he frequently wrote about the central role played by gay men in New York's cultural history. ** Downtown icon and gay performing artist Dean Johnson died September 20, 2007. The six-foot-six promoter and poet was found dead in Washington, D.C. Johnson, 45, founded the weekly party Rock and Roll Fag Bar in the late eighties, and also started HomoCorps, a monthly gay music showcase at CBGB. At times a porn star and at other times a rock star (he fronted Dean and the Weenies and later the Velvet Mafia), he was always recognizable by his height (often augmented by heels) and brazen eyewear. Friends gathered in October at Rapture Café and Books in the East Village to remember a man who was rarely forgotten.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
October Publishing Notes
The buzz: Rosie O’Donohue has made a few more headlines by deciding not to do any interviews to promote her new book Celebrity Detox. Jonathan Plummer, the man who helped author Terry McMillian find her grove and then announced his own, has had his tell-all novel, Balancing Act, banned from an Oakland, California bookstore. The new season of Project Runway, beginning in November, has four openly gay designers in the cast, one who is HIV-positive and penning his memoirs. Dale Peck’s new novel Body Surfing, a dark literary thriller about a race of demons who possess their prey, moving from body to body via sexual release, and the female hunter bent on destroying them, will be published by Atria. Pecan Grove Press has just published playwright David Brendan Hopes’ book of poetry, A Dream of Adonis. Author Dale Lazarov and illustrator Delic Van Loond have launched Fancy, a fantasy adult Web comic at Adultwebcomics.com. The Hourglass Group and New York Theater Workshop is presenting The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, adapted from the 1950s lesbian pulp novels by Ann Bannon. The production runs through October 20th in New York City at The Fourth Street Theater. San Francisco’s Theater Rhinoceros, the nation’s “longest-running professional queer theater company,” is celebrating its thirtieth season this year. The Menier Chocolate Factory Theater in London plans to revive the musical La Cage au Folles as its Christmas show. Sean Penn and Matt Damon are both attached to Gus Van Sant’s film of Harvey Milk, based on Randy Shilt’s book The Mayor of Castro Street.
Cleveland Just Got a Lot Cooler: Greg Wharton and Ian Philips, the fearless duo behind the Suspect Thoughts Press and Web site, have left the Bay Area behind and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where this month they are opening a bookstore at 4903 Clark Avenue. Suspect Thoughts Books will carry books from Suspect Thoughts Press as well as those from other independent and small presses. The new store will be open from 11 am to 7 pm Wednesdays through Sundays and a companion on-line bookstore has also been launched at http://www.alternaqueerbooks.com/. Greg and Ian have also launched a new editorial service to help queer writers, Leonard & Virginia Editorial. More details can be found at http://www.leonardandvirginia.com/.
Kudos: Ed Radtke’s The Speed of Life, a coming-of-age story about a group of youths who steal video cameras and make a film from the pilfered tapes, won the first Queer Lion Award from the Venice Film Festival.
And the Nominees Are: Nominations are now being accepted for the 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards for books published during 2007. New guidelines and a nomination form are available at the Lammy Web site: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/. Deadline is December 1, 2007. The winners will be announced Thursday May 29 in West Hollywood.
Open Calls: Blair Mastbaum and Will Fabro are looking for submission for Cool Thing: Fiction by Gay Writers Under 30 to be published by Running Press in the Fall of 2008. Word limit is 10,000 words. Deadline is November 1, 2007. Send Word documents to: fictionanthology@gmail.com. ** White Crane Books is seeking essays and short fiction for Idol Thoughts: Gay Men and Their Heroes, an anthology to be edited by Bo Young and Steve Berman. Essays should be between 500-1,500 words in length. Fiction submitted should be between 1,000-3,500 words in length. Submissions can be emailed to sberman8@yahoo.com. Deadline is February 1, 2008. ** Rebel Satori Press is seeking poetry and prose for Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism. Deadline is October 31, 2007. Send submissions to: Peter Dubé, PO Box 643, Succ. Place du Parc, Montreal, Quebec H2X 4A6, Canada. ** Eric Summers is looking for submissions for Ride Me Cowboy: Erotic Tales of the West to be published by Starbooks Press. Deadline is February 15, 2008. For more details e-mail eric@starbookspress.com. Shane Allison is looking for stories for Fire Men: Hot Gay Erotic to be published by Cleis Press. Stories should be between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Deadline is February 1, 2008. For more details e-mail sdallison01@hotmail.com. The British queer literary journal Chroma is sponsoring its second International Queer Writing Competition in Poetry, Short Story, and Transfabulous categories. Deadline is September 1, 2008. For more details visit the Chroma Web site. ** Chroma is also sponsoring its first Queer Writing Residential in association with the Arvon Foundation to be held February 25 to March 1 in Devon, England. The course will be tutored by Betsy Warland and Thomas Glave and is devised to suit poets, prose-writers, and those interested in cross-genre writing. There are fourteen subsidised places. Course fees for the week will be £290 (which includes tuition, accommodation and food). For more details, see the Chroma Web site and newsletter. ** A contest called The Open Door Project, a five-day publishing introduction in New York City, is open to gay men writing fiction with queer content who have not yet published a book of fiction. Accommodations and transportation will be provided to an out of town winner. The judges include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Samuel R. Delany, Dennis Cooper, Robert Gluck, E. Lynn Harris, Scott Heim, Andrew Holleran, David Leavitt, Stephen McCauley, Dale Peck, and John Weir. Submit stories or stand-alone novel excerpts of up to 8,000 words by March 1, 2008. Submissions can be mailed to: Don Weise, Open Door Project, c/o Oscar Wilde Bookshop, 15 Christopher St, New York, NY 10014. Queries can be sent to dweised@aol.com. ** The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Writing Competition for the Foundation’s 2007 writing grants will be for Short Stories, One-act Plays or short film or video projects. All works must present the gay and lesbian lifestyle in a positive manner and be based on, or directly inspired by, a historic person or event. All works must be unpublished, original, and in English. Adaptations or translations of other works of fiction are not acceptable. All submissions must be postmarked by midnight November 30, 2007 and can be sent to: The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, 2500 N. Palm Canyon Drive #A4, Palm Springs, CA 92262. Visit the Web site for more details.
Cleveland Just Got a Lot Cooler: Greg Wharton and Ian Philips, the fearless duo behind the Suspect Thoughts Press and Web site, have left the Bay Area behind and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where this month they are opening a bookstore at 4903 Clark Avenue. Suspect Thoughts Books will carry books from Suspect Thoughts Press as well as those from other independent and small presses. The new store will be open from 11 am to 7 pm Wednesdays through Sundays and a companion on-line bookstore has also been launched at http://www.alternaqueerbooks.com/. Greg and Ian have also launched a new editorial service to help queer writers, Leonard & Virginia Editorial. More details can be found at http://www.leonardandvirginia.com/.
Kudos: Ed Radtke’s The Speed of Life, a coming-of-age story about a group of youths who steal video cameras and make a film from the pilfered tapes, won the first Queer Lion Award from the Venice Film Festival.
And the Nominees Are: Nominations are now being accepted for the 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards for books published during 2007. New guidelines and a nomination form are available at the Lammy Web site: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/. Deadline is December 1, 2007. The winners will be announced Thursday May 29 in West Hollywood.
Open Calls: Blair Mastbaum and Will Fabro are looking for submission for Cool Thing: Fiction by Gay Writers Under 30 to be published by Running Press in the Fall of 2008. Word limit is 10,000 words. Deadline is November 1, 2007. Send Word documents to: fictionanthology@gmail.com. ** White Crane Books is seeking essays and short fiction for Idol Thoughts: Gay Men and Their Heroes, an anthology to be edited by Bo Young and Steve Berman. Essays should be between 500-1,500 words in length. Fiction submitted should be between 1,000-3,500 words in length. Submissions can be emailed to sberman8@yahoo.com. Deadline is February 1, 2008. ** Rebel Satori Press is seeking poetry and prose for Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism. Deadline is October 31, 2007. Send submissions to: Peter Dubé, PO Box 643, Succ. Place du Parc, Montreal, Quebec H2X 4A6, Canada. ** Eric Summers is looking for submissions for Ride Me Cowboy: Erotic Tales of the West to be published by Starbooks Press. Deadline is February 15, 2008. For more details e-mail eric@starbookspress.com. Shane Allison is looking for stories for Fire Men: Hot Gay Erotic to be published by Cleis Press. Stories should be between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Deadline is February 1, 2008. For more details e-mail sdallison01@hotmail.com. The British queer literary journal Chroma is sponsoring its second International Queer Writing Competition in Poetry, Short Story, and Transfabulous categories. Deadline is September 1, 2008. For more details visit the Chroma Web site. ** Chroma is also sponsoring its first Queer Writing Residential in association with the Arvon Foundation to be held February 25 to March 1 in Devon, England. The course will be tutored by Betsy Warland and Thomas Glave and is devised to suit poets, prose-writers, and those interested in cross-genre writing. There are fourteen subsidised places. Course fees for the week will be £290 (which includes tuition, accommodation and food). For more details, see the Chroma Web site and newsletter. ** A contest called The Open Door Project, a five-day publishing introduction in New York City, is open to gay men writing fiction with queer content who have not yet published a book of fiction. Accommodations and transportation will be provided to an out of town winner. The judges include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Samuel R. Delany, Dennis Cooper, Robert Gluck, E. Lynn Harris, Scott Heim, Andrew Holleran, David Leavitt, Stephen McCauley, Dale Peck, and John Weir. Submit stories or stand-alone novel excerpts of up to 8,000 words by March 1, 2008. Submissions can be mailed to: Don Weise, Open Door Project, c/o Oscar Wilde Bookshop, 15 Christopher St, New York, NY 10014. Queries can be sent to dweised@aol.com. ** The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Writing Competition for the Foundation’s 2007 writing grants will be for Short Stories, One-act Plays or short film or video projects. All works must present the gay and lesbian lifestyle in a positive manner and be based on, or directly inspired by, a historic person or event. All works must be unpublished, original, and in English. Adaptations or translations of other works of fiction are not acceptable. All submissions must be postmarked by midnight November 30, 2007 and can be sent to: The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, 2500 N. Palm Canyon Drive #A4, Palm Springs, CA 92262. Visit the Web site for more details.
Friday, August 31, 2007
September Publishing Notes
The buzz: Haworth Press, the parent company of the GLBT imprint Harrington Park Press, has been purchased by Taylor & Francis, pending approval by regulatory authorities in the U.S. and Europe. According to a report from Shelf Awareness, most of the Harrington Park Press nonfiction will be published and distributed by Taylor & Francis, but all fiction titles and some trade titles will be divested to another publishing house. Publicity and advertising for the imprint’s new fiction titles have been temporarily suspended and some fiction titles in the publishing pipeline have been halted. You can find the Lambda Literary Foundation’s "In Memoriam" tribute to LGBT literary figures who died during the last 18 months now up on YouTube. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson and illustrated by Henry Cole, is at the top of the American Library Association’s annual list of most challenged books by parents. The award-winning children’s book is based on the true story of two New York Zoo male penguins who raise a baby penguin. The 2008 edition of Best American Erotica will celebrate the series 15th anniversary and will also be Susie Bright’s last turn as editor. This fall, Susie will announce her new literary endeavor. Author Michael Luongo is teaching a travel writing class, the Global Traveler, this fall at NYU. Among the worthy new blogs that have been recently launched is Worth the Trip, about queer books for kids and teens. Atria will publish Thom Filicia Style: Inspired Ideas for Creating Rooms You’ll Love. The cast of Rikki Beadle-Blair’s play Stonewall, about the 1969 Stonewall riots, was nominated for a best ensemble award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Mike Jones, who authored the memoir I Had To Say Something, about his tryst with Ted Haggard, appeared in Porridge, a new play by Brian Bauman at the Boulder International Fringe Festival in August. Ganymede Arts in Washington, D.C. (formerly Actors Theater of Washington) will be performing David Brendan Hope’s new play The Loves of Mr. Lincoln, in October as part of their GLBT festival. Arch Brown’s Thorny Theater in Palm Springs has announced their new season. Among the plays being offered are: News Boy by Arch Brown, Who Killed Zachary Morgan? by Harriett Weise, The Goddess Tour by Carolyn Gage, 108 Waverly by Dan Clancy and Lynn Portas, Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill, The Bombay Trunk by Felice Picano, and Frank Lee, My Dear and Ships That Piss In the Night both by Arch Brown. And Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, two of the producing forces behind the film versions of Chicago and Hairspray, are planning to create a new television version of Peter Pan.
Scissors Uncut: Augusten Burroughs and St. Martin’s Press have agreed to change a characterization of Burroughs’s Running with Scissors in the author’s note from “memoir” to just “book,” as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Turcotte family. Burroughs will also alter the author’s note in the book to indicate: “I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors.” In a statement released by St. Martin’s Press, the publisher noted that the book could still be described as a “memoir” on the cover and elsewhere. Burroughs also said in the statement in part: “Running With Scissors is still called a memoir. It always has been a memoir, and the family expressly agreed that it will continue to be called one.... Not one word of the actual memoir itself has been changed or altered in any way. The text is exactly as I wrote it, intended it, and lived it.” He defended his work as “entirely accurate.” “I consider this [settlement] not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists,” Burroughs also stated. “I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side.”
Kudos: Author Joe Keenan was named one of three finalists for the annual Thurber Prize for American Humor for his novel My Lucky Star. The winner will be announced in October. The Gold Crown Literary Society, a non-profit that supports authors, publishers and distributors of lesbian fiction, presented their awards at their third annual conference in Atlanta in June. Winners and photos are posted on their Web site. Nu Nu Yi, an author from Myanmar who writes under the name Inwa, was nominated along with 22 other authors from around Asia for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize, for her novel about a gay spirit medium, Smile as they bow; Laugh as they bow.
Open Calls: Editors Lawrence Schimel and Linda Alvarez are accepting submissions for the 2008 editions Best Gay Poetry and Best Lesbian Poetry, to be published by A Midsummer Night’s Press. Poems can have appeared in print or online magazines, journals, or anthologies first published in 2007; or from books or chapbooks first published in 2007, even if the poem was originally published previously in periodicals, so long as the poet has the right to reprint the poem. Submissions from individual poets or queries should be sent by e-mail in .doc format to one of the following addresses, as appropriate: BestGayPoetry@gmail.com or BestLesbianPoetry@gmail.com. Please title documents with the poet’s surname. Include contact information (both street and email address), bio, and previous publication history within the document, as documents will be read separately from the e-mails. Deadline is December 1, 2007. Books and journals for review can be sent to the attention of the appropriate editor at: A Midsummer Night’s Press, 16 West 36th Street, 2nd Floor, New York NY 10018. ** Editors Connie Griffin and David Hooks are seeking nonfiction for Coming Out in the South. Deadline is February 15, 2008. Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.comingoutinthesouth.com/. ** Editor Nicole Foster is looking for lesbian erotica for Wetter, to be published by Alyson in 2008. Submissions can be sent to alysonanthology@planetoutinc.com along with name and pseudonym, as well as contact info and a short bio. In the subject line, add the name of the anthology for which your story is intended. Deadline: Sept 15, 2007.
Scissors Uncut: Augusten Burroughs and St. Martin’s Press have agreed to change a characterization of Burroughs’s Running with Scissors in the author’s note from “memoir” to just “book,” as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Turcotte family. Burroughs will also alter the author’s note in the book to indicate: “I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors.” In a statement released by St. Martin’s Press, the publisher noted that the book could still be described as a “memoir” on the cover and elsewhere. Burroughs also said in the statement in part: “Running With Scissors is still called a memoir. It always has been a memoir, and the family expressly agreed that it will continue to be called one.... Not one word of the actual memoir itself has been changed or altered in any way. The text is exactly as I wrote it, intended it, and lived it.” He defended his work as “entirely accurate.” “I consider this [settlement] not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists,” Burroughs also stated. “I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side.”
Kudos: Author Joe Keenan was named one of three finalists for the annual Thurber Prize for American Humor for his novel My Lucky Star. The winner will be announced in October. The Gold Crown Literary Society, a non-profit that supports authors, publishers and distributors of lesbian fiction, presented their awards at their third annual conference in Atlanta in June. Winners and photos are posted on their Web site. Nu Nu Yi, an author from Myanmar who writes under the name Inwa, was nominated along with 22 other authors from around Asia for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize, for her novel about a gay spirit medium, Smile as they bow; Laugh as they bow.
Open Calls: Editors Lawrence Schimel and Linda Alvarez are accepting submissions for the 2008 editions Best Gay Poetry and Best Lesbian Poetry, to be published by A Midsummer Night’s Press. Poems can have appeared in print or online magazines, journals, or anthologies first published in 2007; or from books or chapbooks first published in 2007, even if the poem was originally published previously in periodicals, so long as the poet has the right to reprint the poem. Submissions from individual poets or queries should be sent by e-mail in .doc format to one of the following addresses, as appropriate: BestGayPoetry@gmail.com or BestLesbianPoetry@gmail.com. Please title documents with the poet’s surname. Include contact information (both street and email address), bio, and previous publication history within the document, as documents will be read separately from the e-mails. Deadline is December 1, 2007. Books and journals for review can be sent to the attention of the appropriate editor at: A Midsummer Night’s Press, 16 West 36th Street, 2nd Floor, New York NY 10018. ** Editors Connie Griffin and David Hooks are seeking nonfiction for Coming Out in the South. Deadline is February 15, 2008. Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.comingoutinthesouth.com/. ** Editor Nicole Foster is looking for lesbian erotica for Wetter, to be published by Alyson in 2008. Submissions can be sent to alysonanthology@planetoutinc.com along with name and pseudonym, as well as contact info and a short bio. In the subject line, add the name of the anthology for which your story is intended. Deadline: Sept 15, 2007.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
August Publishing Notes
The buzz: Producers of the hit Australian stage version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, in Sydney, are now eying productions for London and Broadway. The band Blondie is contributing songs to a British stage musical based on the 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan. PlanetOut, Inc., parent company of Out, The Advocate, and Alyson publishers, announced it was reducing the company’s workforce by fifteen percent. Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish John Waters’ “memoir-in-homage,” Role Models, a self-portrait told through profiles of his favorite personalities, from Miss Esther, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore to Marguerite Duras, atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair to insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena, English novelist Denton Welch to singer Johnny Mathis, all of whom helped the author/director form his own brand of neurotic happiness. Author Greg Herren was elected to the board of directors for the National Stonewall Democrats. Greg Wharton and Ian Philips, the forces behind Suspect Thoughts Press, are being evicted from their Bay Area home, and are holding four “literary salon” fundraisers in August to help with relocation costs. Readers include Michelle Tea, Simon Sheppard, Patrick Califia, Kirk Read, Kevin Killian, Justin Chin, Thea Hillman, and others. Contact Greg at gregw@suspectthoughts.com for locations and details on donations.
Kudos: Jane Rule, author of the novel, Desert of the Heart, was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of her lifetime contribution to literature. Her novel was made into an award-winning film, Desert Hearts, starring Helen Shaver, in 1985. The Queer Foundation has announced their Queer Scholars for 2007-08. They are: Zachary Harrington, St.John’s College, for his essay, “Fairy Tales,” and Michael O’Brien, Temple University, for his essay: “Lepidoptera.”
Open Calls: Editor Paul J. Willis is looking for essays for Sex and the Serodivide: Personal Essays of Intimacy Between Men. For more information, contact pjwillisnola@aol.com. ** Richard Labonté is looking for submissions for Best Gay Bondage 2008, published by Cleis Press. Deadline is September 15, 2007. Submissions or queries to can be sent to BestGayBondage@gmail.com. ** Simon Sheppard is looking for leatherman erotica for Leatherman, another anthology to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is October 15, 2007. For more details visit http://www.simonsheppard.com/leatherman.html or e-mail leatherman@simonsheppard.com. ** GAYFEST NYC (Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, producers) is now accepting submissions for its Second Annual Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City, May 15 - June 15, 2008. A minimum of three new works (plays or musicals) will be selected for fully-produced Main Stage productions with Actors’ Equity Association casts and professional directors and staff personnel. Additional new works will be chosen for presentation in the Festival’s Studio Reading series. Log onto the web site at http://www.gayfestnyc.com/ for more information and to read about last year’s Festival. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 2007. ** Suspect Thoughts Press is sponsoring another Project: QueerLit contest. The contest is open to any unpublished author of an English-language novel with queer and/or bent content. Submissions will be accepted from September 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007. Visit the Project: QueerLit Web site for more details.
Kudos: Jane Rule, author of the novel, Desert of the Heart, was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of her lifetime contribution to literature. Her novel was made into an award-winning film, Desert Hearts, starring Helen Shaver, in 1985. The Queer Foundation has announced their Queer Scholars for 2007-08. They are: Zachary Harrington, St.John’s College, for his essay, “Fairy Tales,” and Michael O’Brien, Temple University, for his essay: “Lepidoptera.”
Open Calls: Editor Paul J. Willis is looking for essays for Sex and the Serodivide: Personal Essays of Intimacy Between Men. For more information, contact pjwillisnola@aol.com. ** Richard Labonté is looking for submissions for Best Gay Bondage 2008, published by Cleis Press. Deadline is September 15, 2007. Submissions or queries to can be sent to BestGayBondage@gmail.com. ** Simon Sheppard is looking for leatherman erotica for Leatherman, another anthology to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is October 15, 2007. For more details visit http://www.simonsheppard.com/leatherman.html or e-mail leatherman@simonsheppard.com. ** GAYFEST NYC (Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, producers) is now accepting submissions for its Second Annual Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City, May 15 - June 15, 2008. A minimum of three new works (plays or musicals) will be selected for fully-produced Main Stage productions with Actors’ Equity Association casts and professional directors and staff personnel. Additional new works will be chosen for presentation in the Festival’s Studio Reading series. Log onto the web site at http://www.gayfestnyc.com/ for more information and to read about last year’s Festival. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 2007. ** Suspect Thoughts Press is sponsoring another Project: QueerLit contest. The contest is open to any unpublished author of an English-language novel with queer and/or bent content. Submissions will be accepted from September 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007. Visit the Project: QueerLit Web site for more details.
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