Saturday, January 01, 2011

January Publishing Notes

The buzz: OutLoud, the gay and lesbian bookstore in Nashville is closing at the end of January 2011. Founders Ted Jensen and Kevin Medley have announced they will start liquidating inventory and close their store after 15 years in business.

Over the last four months, Philip Clark has been publishing an online series at The New Gay called "Fifteen from 1984" that discusses fifteen gay and lesbian writers who appeared at the New York City outlet of A Different Light bookstore in 1984, among them Sarah Schulman, David Leavitt, Quentin Crisp and Jane Chambers.

Andrew Sullivan has taken reader content on his ten-year-old Daily Dish blog on the Atlantic Web site and created The Cannabis Closet, a book published by Blurb and sold through its online bookstore. The book is a compilation of first-person pot use testimonials, from top executives to responsible parents, from entrepreneurs to A-students, from unwinding suburbanites to the very sick.

Chelsea Station Editions continues to grow. Among the new releases for early 2011 will be a new memoir from Felice Picano (True Stories: Portrait from My Past) and the publication of The Temperamentals, Jon Maran’s hit off-Broadway play about Harry Hay and the founding of the Mattachine society, which will soon have productions in Los Angeles, Dallas, and other cities.

In May, Beacon will publish Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States.

In July Cleis Press will publish Shane Allison's Brief Encounters: 60 Hot Gay Shorts and Afternoon Pleasures: Erotica for Gay Couples, bedtime reading for gay couples.

St. Martin’s will publish Emily DePrang's Both: A Transgender Love Story, about her three-year love affair with a female-to-male transsexual intellectual. The author also details the complex strains on their relationship and what led them on a series of increasingly risky sexual experiments including dalliances with prostitution.

Mattilda, aka Matthew Bernstein Sycamore has signed a contract with AK Press to publish his new anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification and the Desire to Conform. The book is scheduled for a spring 2012 release.

Alex Jeffers has launched BrazenHead, an experimental imprint of Lethe Press which will publish, on an occasional basis, exceptional novellas of speculative fiction with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender (GLBT) themes.

This Fall, HCI will publish Frank DeCaro's The Dead Celebrity Cookbook, with 100 classic recipes from legendary (and dead) stars of stage and screen--including Dinah Shore's Brisket, Johnny Cash's Chili, and Liberace's Sticky Buns.

Laura Albert, aka JT LeRoy, is suing Bloomsbury Publishing in Manhattan Federal Court. Albert is asking for $131,573.60 in damages, claiming the publisher used royalties she was due to settle a lawsuit.

The third annual New York Rainbow Book Fair will be Saturday March 26 at the Lesbian and Gay Center in Greenwich Village. For more details on sponsors, exhibitors, panels and readers, visit http://rainbowbookfair.org/.

The ninth annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 12-15 in New Orleans. For more details visit http://www.sasfest.org/.

Gaylaxicon 2011, the annual international Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Convention for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people and their friends, will be May 13-15 in Atlanta.

QueerType has been named as one of the Top LGBT Blogs on the Guide to Online Schools' list found here: http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/library/best-lgbt-blogs.

Open Calls: Magnus Books, a new publisher of LGBT literature, seeks essays for an anthology by and about LGBT Buddhists. 6,000 word limit, April 15, 2011 deadline. No multiple submissions. Work can be mailed to Magnus Books: Cathedral Station, PO Box 1849, New York, NY 10025 or sent to don@magnusbooks.com.

Editor CB Potts is seeking gay male erotica for Melt in Your Mouth: Chocolate, Boys, and Bed to be published this summer by Lethe Press, Summer 2011. 9,000 word limit. Deadline is March 30, 2011. Submissions can be sent to cbanthology@gmail.com.