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.