QueerType

January Publishing Notes

2012-01-02T18:32:00.002-05:00

The buzz: In March of 2012, Chelsea Station Editions will publish My Movie, a collection of short fiction by Lammy winner David Pratt.

This month, Bloomsbury releases Edmund White’s new novel, Jack Holmes and His Friend.

Circumspect Press has published a debut novel by Kergan Edwards-Stout, Songs for the New Depression.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish John Waters' untitled "undercover travel adventure."

Angelo Nikolopoulos' first book of poems, Obscenely Yours, is one of the winners of the Kinereth Gensler Awards and will be published by Alice James Books in May 2013.

Charles Silverman, co-author of The Joy of Gay Sex and a pioneer who helped convince the American Psychological Association being gay was not an illness, will talk about his new memoir For the Ferryman with Perry Bass, an activist and prolific gay writer, Thursday January 5, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Barnes and Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway in New York City.

The Rainbow Book Fair will be March 24, 2012 from 11 am to 5:30 pm in New York. Check the Web site (http://rainbowbookfair.org/) for more details on exhibitors, speakers, and events, which next year will take over two floors at the LGBT Center in Manhattan.

Sibling Rivalry Press and the poetry journal Assaracus will sponsor a celebratory reading of more than 25 poets Friday, March 23, 2012 at CLAGS in New York City.

In order to have an extra spectacular tenth anniversary celebration in 2013, the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans will be holding a SAS 9.5 from May 18-20, 2012, a fund raising event for the tenth anniversary festival in 2013. The SAS 9.5 agenda includes a book launch cocktail party celebrating its 3rd annual short fiction contest, a series of custom manuscript review sessions, and other special events.

Open Calls: Sibling Rivalry Press is seeking submissions for an anthology scheduled for publication in August 2013. This assignment is so gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching, edited by Megan Volpert, will be the first-ever anthology to feature an international roster of LGBTIQ poets writing about and from the teacher's perspective. Whether elementary or collegiate, public or private, the school is an institutional battleground for representations of queer culture. This book will examine the joyous burden that is the experience of LGBTIQ teachers, an inherently valuable and until now relatively invisible piece of the educational puzzle. Submit up to five previously unpublished poems. Poems must engage some aspect of teaching, but need not be explicitly queer-themed. Author must identify as LGBTIQ. Submission period is open January 1 through June 1, 2012. Authors can expect reply by July 1, 2012.for more details visit: http://www.thisassignmentissogay.com/.

Inspired by Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement, editor Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is seeking submissions of We Are Not Just the 99%: Queering the Occupy Movement, Reimagining Resistance. Send rants, manifestoes, journal entries, and essays up to 5000 words, as Word or text file attachments only, to nobodypasses@gmail.com. Include a brief bio. In addition to written nonfiction work, query first before submitting art, photography, posters, flyers, and other forms of visual documentation queering the Occupy movement. The deadline is March 20, 2012.

December Publishing Notes

2011-12-02T08:30:00.003-05:00

The buzz: The Rainbow Book Fair will be March 24, 2012 from 11 am to 5:30 pm in New York. Check the Web site (http://rainbowbookfair.org/) for more details on exhibitors, speakers, and events, which next year will take over two floors at the LGBT Center in Manhattan.

Sibling Rivalry Press and the poetry journal Assaracus will sponsor a celebratory reading of more than 25 poets Friday, March 23, 2012 at CLAGS in New York City.

Band of Thebes, Stephen Bottum’s popular literary blog, has posted its annual list of favorite LGBT reads. View the list here: http://www.bestamericannonrequiredreading.blogspot.com/

Michael Graves, Rob Byrnes and Laurie Weeks will read from their new books on Tuesday December 6 at 7 pm at Barnes and Noble at 82nd & Broadway in Manhattan.

The Publishing Triangle’s annual holiday party is scheduled for Thursday, December 8. http://www.publishingtriangle.org/.

Poets Walter Holland, Timothy Liu, Hanna Bergwall, Michael Montlack, and Jason Schneiderman will be reading at the LGBT Center in Manhattan at 7pm on Thursday, December 8th.

Lethe Press has recently released Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living, Daniel M. Jaffe’s exploration of various aspects of gay-Jewish life: coming out to self and family; redefining one’s relationship to tradition and faith; surviving child abuse and teenage sexual identity angst; experiencing the adult joys and heartbreaks of dating, of forming relationships, and of losing them; coping with HIV/AIDS.

Playwright Tony Kushner is the recipient of a $100,000 Puffin/National Prize for Creative Citizenship, honoring artists and others for “socially responsible work” and challenges to authority.

Kathe Koja’s novel Under the Poppy is the winner of the 2011 Best Novel from the Gaylactic Spectrum Foundation. Winners and short list can be found here: http://www.spectrumawards.org/2011.htm.

On December 3, 2011, the Mischief + Mayhem publishing collective, in conjunction with the New School’s Graduate Writing Program, will mount TRANSMISSIONS, a one-day symposium dedicated to the literature of the first thirty years of the AIDS epidemic. More details can be found here: http://www.newschool.edu/eventdetail.aspx?id=72184

In September 2012 Little Brown will publish Emma Donoghue's Astray, a set of stories spanning centuries and continents, returning to her roots in historical fiction.

Modernist Press will publish Wonder City of the West, a new novel by Felice Picano. The setting for the story is Los Angeles in 1935.

Graywolf will publish Paul Lisiky’s The Narrow Door in 2014.

Charles Silverman, co-author of The Joy of Gay Sex and a pioneer who helped convince the American Psychological Association being gay was not an illness, will talk about his new memoir For the Ferryman with Perry Bass, an activist and prolific gay writer, Thursday January 05, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Barnes and Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway in New York City.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is planning a West Coast book tour in early 2012 for his forthcoming anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform from AK Press.

In order to have an extra spectacular tenth anniversary celebration in 2013, the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans will be holding a SAS 9.5 from May 18-20, 2012, a fund raising event for the tenth anniversary festival in 2013. The SAS 9.5 agenda includes a book launch cocktail party celebrating its 3rd annual short fiction contest, a series of custom manuscript review sessions, and other special events.

Scholastic will publish Paul Rudnick's untitled debut young adult novel, a modern fairytale with a twist, in which a cynical teenager meets a fashion Svengali who promises to make her three dresses to transform her into the most beautiful woman in the world, after which she is launched on a romantic international adventure and must decide -- is beauty everything, or can she be just as happy without it?

In 2012, Harrington Park Press will publish Male Sex Work & Society, edited by Victor Minichiello, PhD and John Scott, Phd, the first scholarly, comprehensive volume devoted to male sex work. Leading contributors from developed and developing countries (including North and South America, Europe, East Asia and the Subcontinent, Oceania, and Africa) will examine research on male sex workers and their clients.

Passages: Writer, publisher and co-founder of Naid press, Barbara Grier, died November 10, 2011 at the age of 78. Lou Maletta, founder of the Gay Cable Network, died November 2, 2011 at the age of 74.

November Publishing Notes

2011-11-01T10:58:00.002-04:00

The buzz: Lou Dellaguzzo is the winner of the 3-in-1 Story competition from UK publisher Treehouse Press. Entries are being accepted for the 2012 competition. For more details visit: http://treehousepress.co.uk/chapbook-contest/the-rules/.

Tom Mendicino, Frank Polito, Michael Salvatore will read excerpts from their humorous and wistful holiday stories collected in an anthology entitled Remembering Christmas. Thursday November 17, 2011 7:00 PM at Barnes and Noble at 82nd & Broadway in Manhattan.

The National Book Foundation made a donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation when Lauren Myracle's accidental inclusion among this year's nominees for the National Book Award in the Young People's Literature category ended when the author withdrew her novel Shine from consideration. The novel deals with the issues of hate crimes and the bullying of gay teens.

New editor William Johnson has giving the Lambda Literary Web site a facelift this month with a magazine format home page.

This month Sibling Rivalry Press releases Sonics in Warholia, Megan Volpert’s collection of poetry.

Rob Byrnes fifth novel, Holy Rollers, will be released by Bold Strokes this month. Byrnes and pals will be celebrating November 16, 2011 with a book launch at The Ritz Bar & Lounge in Manhattan.

Out this month from the University of Texas Press is Sam J. Miller’s book, Horror After 9/11, an anthology of essays about how the horror film has changed since September 11, 2001. Miller co-edited the book with Aviva Briefel. Miller and friends will celebrate with a book launch November 12th at 2PM at Bluestockings Books.

On Saturday, November 12, at noon at the Auburn Avenue Research Library in Atlanta, some of the city’s notable members of the LGBTQ community will participate in “A Conversation on Race & Gender in Queer Culture.” The event is free and open to the public. More details at www.afpls.org.

Icarus, the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, now has a spot in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia

The first issue of Chelsea Station, the new magazine of gay writing published by Chelsea Station Editions, is out this month. The issue features writing by Eric Andrews-Katz, Billie Aul, Tom Cardamone, Anthony R. Cardno, Jameson Currier, Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, David Eye, Michael Graves, William Henderson, Wayne Hoffman, Lisa Huffaker, Alex Jeffers, Richard Johns, Shaun Levin, Vince Liaguno, Jeff Mann, Thomas March, Kevin McLellan, Melissa Tandiwe Myambo, Stephen S. Mills, Eric Norris, Felice Picano, David Pratt, Robert A. Schanke, Charles Silverstein, Jerry L. Wheeler, Emanuel Xavier, and Cal Yeomans. Deadline for Issue 2 is December 1, 2011.

David Rakoff has won the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor for his collection of essays, Half Empty.

On October 9, 2011 an historical marker was placed outside Giovanni’s Room by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission honoring the LGBT bookstore. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter was among those in attendance at the ceremonies, which coincided with the annual OutFest in Center City.

LGBT book award submissions are now open for the Publishing Triangle (http://www.publishingtriangle.org/) and Lambda Literary Foundation (http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.

The Rainbow Book Fair will be March 24, 2012 from 11 am to 5:30 pm in New York. Check the Web site (http://rainbowbookfair.org/) for more details on exhibitors, speakers, and events, which next year will take over two floors at the LGBT Center in Manhattan.

Open Calls: Submissions are now being accepted for the Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival’s Third Annual Short Fiction Contest. SAS Fest is seeking original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 words with GLBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.” For more details, visit www.sasfest.org.

Deadline for Issue 2 of Chelsea Station, a new magazine of gay writing, is December 1, 2011. The magazine includes original and unpublished fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, memoir, humor, narrative travelogue, interviews, and reviews (books, theater, television, and film) relating to gay literature and gay men. Submissions should be sent to info@chelseastationeditions.com. Manuscripts should be emailed as Word attachments. Please include your name, address, and e-mail contact information on the first page of your document. Please also include a brief bio. Please do not send more than one prose work or more than four poems for consideration. Please query if you would like to submit work for consideration in more than one genre for an issue. For more information visit http://www.chelseastationeditions.com/ChelseaStation-ALiteraryJournal.html.

The Queer Foundation's annual High School Seniors English Essay Contest is now underway. Deadline is February 18, 2012. The top essayists are awarded $1,000 scholarships to attend the U.S. college or university of their choice. For more information visit http://www.queerfoundation.org/.

October Publishing Notes

2011-10-03T15:54:00.005-04:00

The buzz: In May 2012 Beacon Press will publish gender theorist and performance artist Kate Bornstein's A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy who Joins the Church of Scientology, and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady She is Today, recalling her childhood as a Jewish American Prince on the Jersey Shore, entering Brown pre-med and graduating with Brown's first ever degree in theater; later, abandoning the theater for a life on the road and hippiedom, finding solace in the Church of Scientology and becoming one of their most successful salesmen and highest ranking officers; after three marriages, fatherhood and gender reassignment surgery the author comes of age in the lesbian community during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s; the final chapter is a letter to her daughter, a high level official in the Church of Scientology who is forbidden to speak to her father.

Also in May 2012, Scribner will publish a posthumous memoir from Reynolds Price, who was working on his "fourth and final memoir," Midstream: An Unfinished Memoir, when he died this past January at age 77. Anne Tyler, who studied under Price at Duke, will write a foreword.

Scribner will publish activist POZ publisher's Sean Strub’s memoir of the AIDS pandemic, encompassing his work with ACT-UP and other organizations, as well as personal loss and survival.

In September 2012, Duke University Press will publish Sarah Schulman's Salt on Green Almonds: Israel/Palestine and The Queer International, about the emerging Palestinian LGBT movement and its impact on both the Global LGBT and the broad politics of the Middle East.

Transworld will publish John Irving's In One Person, the author's thirteenth novel and his most political since The Cider House Rules, featuring a bisexual man, marking Irving's return to the territory of "sexual suspects" he explored in The World According to Garp.

This month Lethe is releasing A Night at the Inn, A Day at the Palace, a short and fantastical fiction collection by two-time Golden Crown Literary Award winner Catherine Lundoff featuring stories about swashbuckling female pirates, opera singers and mercenaries. Also releasing this month from Lethe Press is Night Chant, a collection of poems by Andrew Demcak. Next month the press will release Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Mann.

This month Vanilla Heart Publishing will release the eBook version of Collin Kelley's second novel, Remain In Light, the second installment in his Venus Trilogy. The trade paperback will be released in January.

Also releasing this month from Chelsea Station Editions is For the Ferryman, a new memoir from Charles Silverstein, and Personal Saviors, a new novel by Wesley Gibson.

This month Brooklyn Arts Press is publishing Christopher Hennessy's debut collection of poetry, Love-In-Idleness.

Rob Rosen’s fourth novel, Southern Fried, has been published by MLR Press and is available as both a paperback and an ebook: Rosen’s first novel, Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love, has just been rereleased as a 10th Anniversary Edition.

The new issue of Icarus is out featuring stories by Alex Jeffers, James Bennett, Richard Bowes, an interview with Ginn Hale, and a new column by Tom Cardamone.

Rob Stephenson will read with Debra Di Blasi and Lance Olsen Sunday, October 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave (between Dean St & St Marks Ave) in Brooklyn.

Eleanor Levine and Joanna Hoffman will read from Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry will read Monday, October 10th, at 7:00 p.m. at Bluestockings, 172 Allen in Manhattan. New York, NY. Sandra Tarlin, Hilary Lustick, Rose Fox, and Sima Rabinowitz will read their work from the anthology Tuesday, October 11, at 6:30 p.m. at The City College of New York, sponsored by The Simon H. Rifkind Center, 160 Convent Avenue, New York, NY.

On October 12 at 6:00 p.m., SAGE will host a reading with authors Felice Picano and Jameson Currier at the LGBT Center in Manhattan at 208 West 13th Street. Picano will read from True Stories, a series of memoirs in which he recounts meeting Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Bette Midler, Diana Vreeland & others.ﾠCurrier will read from his latest novel, The Third Buddha.

The Stonewall Inn will be the site of a book launch on October 13 for Well With My Soul, a debut novel by Gregory G. Allen.

Contributors to the Collective Brightness poetry anthology from Sibling Rivalry Press will read Thursday, October 13 at 6:30 p.m. at 446 West 36th Street in Manhattan.

Authors Felice Picano and David Pratt will be reading from their new books at Calamus bookstore in Boston on Friday October 14, 2011 at 7 p.m.

Chad Helder is doing a Halloween book tour for The Vampire Bridegroom: which includes an October 15, 2011 reading at the Q Center in Portland, Oregon and an October 29th event at the Village Books in Fairhaven, Washington.

Atlanta Queer Literary Festival will partner with the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) for a special Drink In Design even on Thursday, Oct. 20, 6-9 p.m. LGBT poets from Atlanta will be reading poems crafted in response to posters in the Graphic Intervention exhibition.

Authors Michael Graves and Michael Schiavone will read from their new works October 25, 2011 at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts.

LGBT book award submissions are now open for the Publishing Triangle (http://www.publishingtriangle.org/) and Lambda Literary Foundation (http://www.lambdaliterary.org/)

Audible audio books has lined up Annette Benning to narrate Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe, Jennifer Connelly to narrate The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, and Anne Hathaway to narrate The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The books will be released in 2012.

Open Calls: Submissions are now being accepted for the Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival’s Third Annual Short Fiction Contest. SAS Fest is seeking original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 words with GLBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.” For more details, visit www.sasfest.org.

Deadline for Issue 2 of Chelsea Station, a new magazine of gay writing, is December 1, 2011. The magazine includes original and unpublished fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, memoir, humor, narrative travelogue, interviews, and reviews (books, theater, television, and film) relating to gay literature and gay men. Submissions should be sent to info@chelseastationeditions.com. Manuscripts should be emailed as Word attachments. Please include your name, address, and e-mail contact information on the first page of your document. Please also include a brief bio. Please do not send more than one prose work or more than four poems for consideration. Please query if you would like to submit work for consideration in more than one genre for an issue. For more information visit http://www.chelseastationeditions.com/ChelseaStation-ALiteraryJournal.html.

September Publishing Notes

2011-09-01T14:07:00.002-04:00

The buzz: In Fall 2012, Jonathan Cape will publish Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig’s based on the author’s regular Sunday breakfasts with Lucian Freud, and on many hours of recorded conversations, including discussions between the two of them on subjects as diverse as art, debt, enemies, death threats, poetry, escaping from Nazi Germany, falling out with Jerry Hall, why he hated his brother Clement, painting David Hockney, his first love, sleeping with horses, escaping the Krays, hanging with the Queen, his role as a father, why Velazquez was the greatest painter, and dancing with Garbo, illustrated with some of Greig's own photograph.

This month Sibling Rivalry Press will publish Nocturnal Omissions by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard and Eric Norris, a dialogue on love, sex, and art and inspired by correspondence between the two authors. In October, the press will publish Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality, edited by Kevin Simmonds and including work by Franklin Abbott, Ellen Bass, Jeffery Beam, Regie Cabico May Chowdhry, Danielle Feris, Reginald Harris, Jee Leong Koh, Jeff Mann, Kamilah Aisha Moon, D. A. Powell, Ruben Quesada, Maureen Seaton, and Megan Volpert, among others.

Next month Chelsea Station Editions will publish For the Ferryman, a memoir by psychologist Charles Silverstein and co-author of The Joy of Sex, and Personal Saviors, a new novel by Wesley Gibson, author of the memoir You Are Here. The press has also released an e-book edition of Chelsea Boy, a collection of debut poems by Craig Moreau.

This fall Lethe Press will release Night Chant, a new poetry collection by Andrew Demcak. The press has also issued a + e 4EVER, a graphic novel by Ilike Merey. Lethe has also released an e-book edition of Tom Cardamone’s The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered which includes 28 essays about gay books which are out of print.

Next Summer, 2012, Henry Holt will publish a memoir by Bravo channel’s Andy Cohen, about his growing up with a love of pop culture and landing a job in the television business, which enabled him to meet many of the stars he admired. The as-yet untitled book will also detail how Mr. Cohen, who is gay, suppressed his sexuality as a boy.

This month, Cheyenne publishing will bring back into print The Pride Pack, a series of four mysteries for LGBTQ kids penned by Ruth Sims under the pseudonym R. J. Hamilton. Alyson originally published the first two books in the series but the series was dropped when the publisher was sold. The new editions from Cheyenne will include an afterword by Wayne Gunn.

Uninvited Books has reissued a paperback version of Martyrs & Monsters by Robert Dunbar.

This month Magnus Books releases The Two Krishnas, a novel by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla and At Home With Myself, a collection of essays and stories by David Mixner.

Kensington will publish Where You Are by Janet Trumble, about a gay teacher who crosses the line of propriety with a male teen who is four months away from graduating high school.

Wayne Hoffman will be reading from his new novel, Sweet Like Sugar, on Monday September 12th, 2011 at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble at 82nd and Broadway. This event is sponsored by Tablet Magazine, and will include a Q&A with Tablet editor Alana Newhouse after the reading. Hoffman is also reading at a number of other venues. Check http://waynehoffmanwriter.com/index.php?/events/ for a full listing.

Several gay and lesbian authors and editors are participating in the West Hollywood Book Fair, October 2, 2011 in Los Angeles. Among them are: Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla, Charles Flowers, Felice Picano, Jeanne Cordova, David Francis, Claire McNab, Terrance Dean, Terry Wolverton, and Christopher Rice.

Authors Felice Picano and David Pratt will be reading from their new books at Calamus bookstore in Boston on Friday October 14, 2011 at 7 pm. Picano will also read at a SAGE sponsored event on October 12, 2011 at the Lesbian and Gay Center in Manhattan. Picano’s newest book, Contemporary Gay Romances, a collection of short stories, releases in October from Bold Strokes Books.

Chad Helder is doing a Halloween book tour for The Vampire Bridegroom: which includes an October 15, 2011 reading at the Q Center in Portland, Oregon and an October 29th event at the Village Books in Fairhaven, Washington.

The Stonewall Inn will be the site of a book launch on October 13 for Well With My Soul, a debut novel by Gregory G. Allen.

David Rakoff is among the finalists for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor for Half Empty.

Vertigo Theatre Productions in Manchester, England is planning a stage version of Matthew Rettenmund’s novel Boy Culture in 2012.

Previews begin October 5, 2011 at CAP21 Theater Company in Manhattan for Southern Comfort, a new musical based on the award-winning documentary about transgender friends in rural Georgia.

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission awarded Lambda Literary Foundation an $11,400 grant.

The Queer Foundation's annual High School Seniors English Essay Contest is now underway. Deadline is February 18, 2012. The top essayists are awarded $1,000 scholarships to attend the U.S. college or university of their choice. For more information visit http://www.queerfoundation.org/.

Open Calls: Submissions are now being accepted for the Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival’s Third Annual Short Fiction Contest. SAS Fest is seeking original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 words with GLBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.” For more details, visit www.sasfest.org.

In November 2011 Chelsea Station Editions will launch Chelsea Station, a magazine of gay writing. The magazine will be published four to six times a year and will include original and unpublished fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, memoir, humor, narrative travelogue, interviews, and reviews (books, theater, television, and film) relating to gay literature and gay men. Deadline for Issue 1 is October 1, 2011. Deadline for Issue 2 is December 1, 2011. Submissions should be sent to info@chelseastationeditions.com. Manuscripts should be emailed as Word attachments. Please include your name, address, and e-mail contact information on the first page of your document. Please also include a brief bio. Please do not send more than one prose work or more than four poems for consideration. Please query if you would like to submit work for consideration in more than one genre for an issue. For more information visit http://www.chelseastationeditions.com/ChelseaStation-ALiteraryJournal.html.

August Publishing Notes

2011-08-02T07:51:00.002-04:00

The buzz: Bear Bones Books, an imprint of Lethe Press, has released Fog, a new novel by Jeff Man. Lethe has also released From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, edited by Charles Rice Gonzalez and Charlie Vasquez, and The Abode of Bliss: Ten Stories for Adam by Alex Jeffers. Lethe has also published Amar A Alguien Gay, a Spanish translation by Ralph Seligman of Don Clark's Loving Someone Gay.

Peter Cameron’s Wallflower Press is about to embark on its third series of five books and is also introducing Wallflower Reprints. The five books in the third series are: Cora Glynn, an excerpt from a novel by Peter Cameron; The Strange Case of Catherine Hayes by Charles J. Finger, the true story of an 18th-century murder in London; Last Night in the Moon: Excerpts from the Journals of Denton Welch by Denton Welch; I Know You: A Book of Portraits by Peter Cameron; and Sincerely Yours: The Correspondence of Beatrice J. Fitzhugh, Assistant to Mr. Kindelbinder (Senior), letters by Beatrice J. Fitzhugh.

Next month, Chelsea Station Editions will publish The Gay Man’s Guide to Timeless Manners and Proper Etiquette by Corey Rosenberg and Dirty One, a collection of debut stories by Michael Graves, set in Leominster, Massachusetts.

This fall Delizon will publish Albert Mije's Homo Child, in which a baby adopted by gay parents, now an adult, searches for his origins along the remote winding mountain tracks of a meandering calendar,

Oxford University Press has published Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation by Simon LeVay.

William Morrow will publish Gregory Maguire's Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years, where The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is held under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law; and Dorothy Gale of Kansas makes something more than a cameo appearance; amidst the chaos, Elphaba's granddaughter, Rain, comes of age to take up her broom in an Oz wracked by war.

Tom Atwood is at work on a second book and exhibition of photographs: Kings & Queens in Their Castles, portraits of GLBT individuals at home, including photos of John Waters, Tommy Tune, Greg Louganis, Barney Frank, Chely Wright, George Takei, Todd Oldham, Ross Bleckner, Edward Albee, Joel Schumacher, Alison Bechdel, Simon Doonan, Carson Kressley, Michael Cunningham, Don Bachardy, Michael Musto, Ned Rorem, Junior Vasquez, John Ashbery, Charles Busch, Edmund White, Dan Savage, Felice Picano, and others.

Wayne Hoffman will be reading from his new novel, Sweet Like Sugar, on Monday September 12th, 2011 at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble at 82nd and Broadway. This event is sponsored by Tablet Magazine, and will include a Q&A with Tablet editor Alana Newhouse after the reading.

The OutWrite Book Fair will be August 6, 2011 at the DC Center, 1318 U Street NW in Washington DC, from 10 AM to 8 PM. Book readings, book vendors, book discussions, poetry readings and more are scheduled. For more information visit: http://thedccenter.org/outwritedc/.

Several gay and lesbian authors and editors are participating in the West Hollywood Book Fair, October 2, 2011 in Los Angeles. Among them are: Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla, Charles Flowers, Felice Picano, Jeanne Cordova, David Francis, Claire McNab, Terrance Dean, Terry Wolverton, and Christopher Rice.

Colm Toibin is among the finalists for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award and Alan Hollinghust is on the long list for this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Stranger’s Child.

Open Calls: Richard Labonté is seeking short fiction and erotica submissions for Uniforms Unzipped: Gay Erotic Stories. Deadline is Sept. 15, word limit 6,000. Please email submissions with 50-word bio and addresses to: uniformsunzipped@gmail.com.

Labonté is also seeking stories for Wild Boys: Gay Erotic Stories to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline is October 1, 2011, word limit 6,000. Email submissions to cleiswildboys@gmail.com.

Labonté is also editing for Cleis Showing Off, Getting Off: Erotic Tales of Exhibitionism and Voyeurism. Deadline is October 15, 2011, word limit 6,000. Email submissions with 50-word bio and address to: showingoffgettingoff@gmail.com.

The deadline for the 2011 Chapbook Contest sponsored by Bloom literary journal is September 15, 2011. Guidelines and entry form can be found at http://artsinbloom.com/chapbook.html.

Submissions are now being accepted for the Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festival’s Third Annual Short Fiction Contest. SAS Fest is seeking original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 words with GLBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.” For more details, visit www.sasfest.org.

Passages: Poet David Blair died July 23, 2011 at the age of 43. Blair was a 2010 Callaloo Fellow, a 2009 Seattle Haiku Slam Champion, and the recipient of Seattle's 2007 BENT Mentor Award for LGBT Writers. He was named Best Urban Folk Poet by Detroit's Metro Times and Best Folk Artist by Real Detroit Weekly. His first book of poetry, Moonwalking, about the life of Michael Jackson, was published in 2010.

July Publishing Notes

2011-07-07T18:45:00.002-04:00

The buzz: Simon & Schuster will publish Better Nate Than Ever, Billy Elliot kid coach and Broadway dancer Tim Federle's debut novel and a gentle coming-out story about a small-town middle-grader, who sneaks onto a Greyhound bus and spends two glorious days in New York City, where he tries out for ET: The Broadway Musical, and learns a lot about casting calls, stage mothers, unforgiving wardrobe choices, his heroic aunt... and himself.

Marshall Moore’s BookCyclone imprint has released e-book versions of Neal Drinnan’s Glove Puppet, Pussy's Bow, Quill, and Izzy and Eve; Juliet Sarkessian’s Trio Sonata; Trebor Healey’s Through It Came Bright Colors; Andy Quan’s Six Positions; Jerome Kugan and Pang Khee Teik’s Body 2 Body: A Malaysian Queer Anthology, and Moore’s The Concrete Sky and Black Shapes in a Darkened Room.

Bastille Day Films has optioned David Groff's Nobody’s Child, in which a single New York mother and a doggedly unattached gay man find their friendship rocked by her diagnosis of cancer and the needs of her young son.

Nathan Manske’s I'm From Driftwood is now a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization aimed at helping LBGT youth.

Yale University recently announced the establishment the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes, funded by the estate of the late writer.

The winner of the 2011 Atlanta Queer Literary Festival Broadside Contest chosen by poet Mark Doty is Brent Calderwood.

Author Norman Prentiss was one of the recent winners of the Bram Stoker Awards given out by the Horror Writers Association. Prentiss was honored for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for Invisible Fences.

Editor Vince Liaguno of Dark Scribe Press co-chaired the recent Stoker Awards weekend in Long Island which included a panel discussion on queer horror. Dark Scribe Press has also recently released Butcher Knives & Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, & Fun, edited by Liaguno, and Chad Helder's The Vampire Bridegroom: Poems and Tales.

Forthcoming from Lethe Press is a short story collection by Hal Duncan, a new novel by Lewis DeSimone, and the newest edition of Best Gay Stories, edited by Peter Dubé.

Next month Chelsea Station Editions will publish Jameson Currier’s new novel, The Third Buddha, set in Afghanistan post 9/11. The press will also release Michael Grave’s debut collection of short fiction, Dirty One, set in Leominster, Massachusetts.

Blue Rider Press will publish Simon Doonan's Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, a stylishly slimming discourse that proves gay men really are French women: prone to disdain, favoring cheeky underwear, convinced of their own artistic brilliance, and (of course) calorie-obsessed.

Perry Brass’s new novel, King of Angels, set in Savannah of 1963, will be published by Belhue Press in the Spring of 2012.

William Johnson is the new managing editor of the Lambda Literary Foundation Web site.

The OutWrite Book Fair will be August 6, 2011 at the DC Center, 1318 U Street NW in Washington DC, from 10 AM to 8 PM. Book readings, book vendors, book discussions, poetry readings and more are scheduled. For more information visit: http://thedccenter.org/outwritedc/.

2011-06-02T08:10:00.002-04:00

The buzz: Simon and Schuster will publish John Irving's thirteenth novel, In One Person, written from the point of view of a bisexual man.

Magnus Books will publish in 2013 Cassandra Langer's All or Nothing: The Life, Loves & Art of Romaine Brooks, repositioning Romaine Brooks, the lesbian artist, fashion icon and confidante to a cast of characters, including Jean Cocteau, Collette, Gertrude Stein, Carl Can Vechten and Radclyffe Hall as modernism rises at the beginning of the 20th century.

In July 2011 Modernist Press will release Art From Art, edited by Stephen Soucy .A special full color limited edition will also be available for purchase through the press Web site. Soucy has also written and directed a short film set in Palm Springs. The trailer can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVF_xfM55mo.

Next Spring Magnus books will publish activist Marsha Aizumi's Two Spirits, One Heart, a courageous story of unconditional love, acceptance and support during Aizumi’s daughter's struggles with her gender identity and transformation into a beloved son.

The first four chapters of Collin Kelley's forthcoming novel, Remain in Light are online at Scribd. A free sampler of Kelley's first novel, Conquering Venus, and Remain in Light at available at OmniLit. The novel, a mix of mystery, suspense and a love story between two young gay poets, will be released by Vanilla Heart Publishing in ebook format in October and in print in January 2012.

Lethe Press has released Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff. Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories, edited by Catherine Lundoff, received a Gaylactic Spectrum Award nod for "Best Other Work" as well as having three short stories picked for the finalist list. Lethe Press is issuing a new edition of the book featuring a new cover and redesign.

Jewell Gomez’s The Gilda Stories is celebrating its twentieth year in print. Gomez’s new play, Waiting for Giovanni, exploring the inner life of James Baldwin, will have its world premiere at the New Conservatory Theatre Center this fall.

Sibling Rivalry Press will publish Bryan Borland and Stephen Mills’ The Hanky Code in late 2011.

Amy Briant’s second novel Romeo Falls is forthcoming from Bella Books in February 2012.

Among the new releases coming from Bold Strokes Books: Detours, a novel by Jeffrey Ricker in November 2011; Rob Byrne’s new novel Holy Rollers in late 2011; Murder in the Irish Channel by Greg Herren December 2011; William Holden’s new book, Words to Die By, in 2012; Steve Berman’s young adult anthology, Boys of Summer in 2012.

This month Chelsea Station Editions releases Chelsea Boy, a debut collection of poetry by Craig Moreau. Moreau also begins his summer book tour, with stops in DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Iowa City, and Minneapolis. For a full list of reading dates, visit the Web site. http://www.chelseastationeditions.com/chelsea-tour.html.

Rob Rosen has launched Fierce Publishing with Good & Hot, a collection of twenty erotic shorts by the author that have appeared in Men, Freshmen, and [2] magazines.

Novelist Farzana Doctor was named this year's recipient of The Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Grant for Emerging Gay Writer. Dani Couture and Matthew J Trafford received Honours of Distinction.

Kelly Smith, Achy Objeas, Jameson Currier, Otis Fennell, and Michele Karlsberg were inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at the recent literary festival in New Orleans.

Edward Albee and Val McDermid were feted with Pioneer Awards at the 23rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards. Winners of the twenty-four book categories can be found on the Web site www.lambdaliterary.org.

Felice Picano has filmed interview segments for forthcoming documentaries on Vito Russo and Wakefield Poole.

Publisher Cecilia Tan did a live blog while on a panel titled “Publicizing Your Book” at the Saints and Sinners Literary festival which can be read at http://blog.ceciliatan.com/?p=733.

Passport magazine became the first gay magazine to be made available to Barnes and Noble’s customers on The Nook.

Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite bookstore in Atlanta, emailed that the store is “in jeopardy,” and urged customers to buy e-books from the store online; visit the coffeehouse; use the coffeehouse lounge for free for meetings of companies, businesses or organizations; volunteer to help the store in web design, bookkeeping, finance, banking, retail management, retail sales, collections and legal services; and tell others about the store.

This month the Lambda Literary Foundation is launching an online book club. The Web site also has a new managing editor: William Johnson: wjohnson@lambdaliterary.org.

After almost a decade on line, the Velvet Mafia Web site has shuttered. Edited and designed by Sean Meriwether, the Web site created a vibrant community of writers and expanded the boundaries of gay fiction and erotica.

Lambda Literary Foundation received renewal of a grant of $25,000 from Amazon.com, a continuation of Amazon's support for the Writers' Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. This year's retreat will be held August 6th through August 13th, 2011, on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles.

There will be two readings from Persistent Voices in Washington D.C. during Gay Pride Month. Wednesday, June 8th, at 8 p.m. at Bloombars (3222 11th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001) and Sunday, June 19th at 5 p.m. at Busboys & Poets (2021 14th St. NW, Washington D.C., 20009).

David Pratt will reading from his Lambda Award winning Bob the Book, comic strip artist Howard Cruse celebrates the publication of The Complete Wendel, and Steven Haas reveals George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, Wednesday June 15 at 7 pm at Housing Works bookstore and café, 126 Crosby Street in Manhattan.

David Pratt and Felice Picano will read from their new books June 23 at 7:30 pm at Books Inc in the Castro at 2275 Market Street in San Francisco.

The 2011 Atlanta Queer Literary Festival will take place June 23-25 at venues in both Atlanta and Decatur. Keynote speakers will be Sibling Rivalry Press founder and poet Bryan Borland and Women of the World Poetry Slam champion Theresa Davis.

Author Kirk Read will be doing a one man show, Computer Face, June 7 at 8 pm at The Garage.
Open Calls: Editors Eric Andrews-Katz and Vincent Kovar are seeking submissions for Gay City: Volume 4-At Second Glance~Familiar stories from different views. Either historical or fictional characters are acceptable. Deadline July 31, 2011. Send submissions to: GC Anthologies, 511 East Pike, Seattle WA 98122-3617. For questions: anthology@gaycity.org.

Passages: Joanna Russ, best known for her 1975 novel The Female Man, died April 29, 2011. Writer and direct Arthur Laurents, known for West Side Story, Gypsy and The Way We Were, died May 5, 2011. He was 93. Playwright Doric Wilson died May 7, 2011. Among his most notable plays were Street Theater and A Perfect Relationship
.

2011-05-02T19:19:00.002-04:00

The buzz: The Publishing Triangle presented Alan Hollinghurst with the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide received the Leadership Award. For info on the other literary winners, please visit the Triangle’s Web site: www.publishingtriangle.org.

Michael Alenyikov’s Ivan and Misha won the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Fiction.

Among the 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards nominees was Subtle Bodies by Peter Dubé in the novella category.

Author Michael Holloway Perrone is donating 10% of the profits of his new novel, A Time Before Us, to PFLAG New Orleans, one of the oldest organizations in New Orleans serving the LGBT Community.

In Winter 2013 Viking will publish Caroline de Margerie's American Lady, a biography of Susan Mary Alsop, descendant of John Jay and grande dame of Georgetown society, wife to both an American diplomat in Paris and to gay Washington columnist Joe Alsop.

Knopf will publish Bishop Gene Robinson's God Believes in Love: Straight Talk on Gay Marriage, in which the world's leading religious spokesperson for gay rights makes the case for gay marriage using the Bible, religious tradition, and his own life experience first in a heterosexual marriage and now a gay marriage.

Pegasus will publish Andrea Pitzer's The Secret History of Vladimir Nabakov, a shocking and revelatory examination of how the great author hid secrets involving his brother, who died in a Nazi concentration camp, and references to the infamous Soviet gulag outpost, Nova Zembla, in his work.

Knopf will publish Alan Hollinghurst’s next novel, The Stranger’s Child, due out later this year.

Next spring Hachette Book Group will publish Christopher Bram’s Eminent Outlaws, a literary history of gay writing which begins with Truman Capote and Gore Vidal and ends with Tony Kushner and Michael Cunningham.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux has released The Great Night, a new novel by Chris Adrian, an updated retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Lethe Press has just released A Body on Pine, a new A Marco Fontana mystery by Joseph R. G. DeMarco.

Magnus Books has released their debut list. http://www.magnusbooks.com/ Among the upcoming books are Edmund White’s Sacred Monsters, portraits of iconic literary and artistic figures, including John Cheever, David Hockney, John Singer Sargent, and Allen Ginsburg.

Gaylaxicon 2011 is scheduled for May 12-15, 2011 in Atlanta, GA. For details on events visit http://www.outlantacon.org/.

Rebel Satori Press has released Saints and Sinners 2011: New Fiction from the Festival, a collection of short fiction comprised of the winners and finalists of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival short story competition and other contributors.

This year’s Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans is May 12 through 15. Visit the Web site www.sasfest.org for a look at the scheduled workshops, presentations, readings, and panels.

The Golden Crown Literary Society will hold their annual convention June 8-12 in Orlando, Florida. For a look at their nominated books, visit http://goldencrown.org/literary-awards/finalists-for-the-2011-goldie-awards/.

A Different Light bookstore in San Francisco is going out of business. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that sales will determine the store's final day.

Dark Scribe Press is seeking submissions for Unspeakable Horror 2: Abominations of Desire, its follow up to their Stoker winning queer horror theater. For detailed guidelines visit: http://darkscribepress.com/pages.php?page_id=17.

Submissions are being accepted for the Second Annual LGBT Short Play Festival presented by Theatre Out, Orange County's Gay and Lesbian Theatre, located in Santa Ana, CA. Deadline is May 30, 2011. For more details visit http://www.theatreout.com.

April Publishing Notes

2011-04-03T10:13:00.006-04:00

The buzz: Elton John has given the Greenwich Theatre in London an undisclosed sum to the theatre to help fund a production of Jon Maran’s play The Temperamentals, about the relationship of activist Harry Hay and designer Rudi Gernreich and the founding of the Mattachine Society in the 1950s.

Some books which were expected to be released by Alyson have found new publishers - Magnus Books will publish Charles Rice Gonzalez’s novel Chulito in October, 2011, Cleis Press will publish Paul Russell’s novel The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov in October, 2011, and the University of Wisconsin Press will publish Bob Smith’s novel Remembrance of Things Forgotten in June 2011.

Rebel Satori Press will publish Martin Hyatt's new novel Beautiful Gravity, in which a loner, a former Nashville star, a young, anorexic Pentecostal woman, and an aging jock fall in and out of love with one another in a working class southern town.

This fall Chelsea Station Editions will publish Dirty One, a debut collection of stories by Michael Graves, Personal Saviors, a new novel by Wesley Gibson, and For the Ferryman, a memoir by Charles Silverstein. The press recently celebrated its first year.

Lethe Press is now ten years old. New and forthcoming titles include Dirty Poole, a memoir by Wakefield Poole, The German, a thriller by Lee Thomas, Mere Mortals, a new romance by Erastes, and future editions of Wilde Stories and Best Gay Stories.

HotNote Books new owner Lloyd Meeker has also seen his first novel, Traveling Light, released by MLR Press.

StarBooks Press has released The Sweeter the Juice, edited by Marcus Anthony.

Ian Titus’ short story “Stardust and Sunlight” is one of the offerings of the Spring 2011 issue of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction.

Craig Moreau has released a video trailer for Chelsea Boy, his debut collection of poems forthcoming in June. The video can be seen here. The poet also recently met with Logo TV to audition for the second season of the hit reality show The A List.

Kirk Read is going out on the road with Sister Spit on the Next Generation 2011 Spring Tour. Sister Spit is a touring vanload of multimedia, queer-centric novelists, painters, performance artists, poets and fancy scribblers, including Michelle Tea, Kirk Read Mari Naomi, Ali Liebegott Blake Nelson, Amos Mac, and Myriam Gurba. For more details visit http://radarproductions.org/.

Wednesday, April 6 at 9 pm at the Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan, there will be a benefit for Lambda Literary Foundation featuring Kate Clinton, Eddie Sarfaty, and hosted by Frank DeCaro.

Michael Alenyikov will read from Ivan and Misha on April 4 at 6:15 pm at the LGBT Community Center in Greenwich Village.

SAGE is sponsoring a reading and conversation with authors David Pratt (Bob the Book), Jameson Currier (The Wolf at the Door), and Christopher Bram (Mapping the Territory) at the LGBT Center in Greenwich Village on Tuesday April 19 at 6 pm.

The Unspeakable: A Gay Future Project, a mixed media performance featuring writings of Chicago older gay men, will be presented April 30, 2011 at the on Halsted in Chicago, 1-2 pm; and May 6th at DePaul University, 14 W. Jackson from 5-6:30 pm.

Amos Lassen has posted more than 1500 reviews of GLBT books and movies at his new website: http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/.

Michael Signorelli has been promoted to editor at HaperCollins.

Michael Cunningham has been voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Honorary members chosen included dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones.

Michael Luongo received Honorable Mention in the ASJA American Society of Journalists and Authors Donald Robinson Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism for his 2010 article "A Return to Baghdad" in Gay City News detailing the killings of gay men in Iraq.

Mark Doty is one of the recipients of this year’s awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The nominees for this year’s Publishing Triangle literary awards can be found at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/. Alan Hollinghurst is the 2011 recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in honor of the legendary editor. The awards will be presented April 28 at the New School in Manhattan.

The nominees for this year Lambda Literary awards can be found here: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/2011-finalists/. The awards will be presented May 26, 2011 in Manhattan.

The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans has announced the recipients of their annual short fiction contest. The winners can be found here: http://www.sasfest.org/. This year’s festival is May 12-15.

Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta has been named the winner of the 2011 Alumni Legacy Award by Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Rafshoon is the first openly gay person to receive the award.

Charis Books & More, the feminist bookstore in Atlanta, will move to a larger location within a year. The new location will be called the Charis Feminist Center and may be in Decatur.

Bay Windows reported that the owners of Pride & Joy LGBT bookstore in Northampton, Mass., have put the store up for sale.

The Rainbow Book Fair on March 26 drew more than fifty LGBT publishers as exhibitors and more than a hundred authors and poets as readers and presents at the Center in Manhattan. Photos and details of the event can be found here: http://rainbowbookfair.org/. Plans are underway for next year’s festival, which will also be scheduled at the LGBT Center sometime in early Spring 2012.

>Passages: The Rev. Peter J. Gomes, a Harvard minister, theologian, and author "who announced that he was gay a generation ago and became one of America’s most prominent spiritual voices against intolerance," died February 28, 2011. He was 68. Actress and activist Elizabeth Taylor died March 23, 2011. Taylor, an outspoken advocate for AIDS awareness and research, was 79. Playwright Lanford Wilson (Balm in Gilead, The Hot L Baltimore, Burn This), died March 24, 2011. He was 73.

March Publishing Notes

2011-03-01T16:38:00.002-05:00

The buzz: In September. 2011, Hyperion’s Voice will publish Glee star Jane Lynch's memoir Happy Accidents, covering her comedy career, from the Second City theater to movies Best in Show and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and dealing with "how she learned to her embrace her homosexuality and overcame alcoholism."

Also in September 2011, Magnus Books will publish Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla's The Two Krishnas, looking at infidelity and the nature of desire and faith.

Drollerie Press launches its new GLBTQ imprint, Flyleaf, with the publication of Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff. The collection features twelve fantastic tales by Connie Wilkins, Steve Berman, Jean Marie Ward and others. More details can be found here: http://drolleriepress.com/news-and-commentary/hellebore-rue-15-off/.

Raymond Luczak has uploaded a new video for his new book of poems Road Work Ahead. View it here: http://youtu.be/j2RH926KEa4.

Jee Leong Koh has just published his third book of poems, Seven Studies for a Self Portrait. You can read a poem about Frida Kahlo, from the book, on the Web site of Bench Press (http://www.benchpresspoetry.com).

Chelsea Station Editions (www.chelseastationeditions.com) has a brand new Web design up and running thanks to novelist and Web designer Andrew Beierle. Beierle, who recently moved from the east coast to the California mountains, has launched Design Serrano, a graphic and Web design initiative.

This month Chelsea Station Editions will reissue The March, Walter Holland’s 1996 novel about a group of friends impacted by AIDS, and later this year will publish For the Ferryman, a new memoir from Charles Silverstein, co-author of The Joy of Gay Sex, and Jameson Currier’s new novel The Third Buddha, set in Afghanistan post 9/11.

Speaking of new Web sites, author Felice Picano has launched www.felicepicano.net. Felice has a new memoir out this month (True Stories: Portraits from My Past) from Chelsea Station Editions.

Brent Hartinger’s new novel, Shadow Walkers, about astral projection, has just been published by Flux.

Steve Berman is now an Editorial Consultant for Bold Strokes Books, handling YA submissions.

Among the workshops scheduled for this year’s Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans, May 12-15, are "A Return to Joy-Remembering Why You Love to Write," led by Jen Voli, "Buidling Credible Worlds/Making Setting Work for your Story," with Jess Wells, and "Memoir Becomes History/History Becomes Memoir," with Felice Picano. Other authors scheduled to attend the festival are Achy Obejas, Aaron Hamburger, Aaron Anson, Farzana Doctor, Michael Thomas Ford, Tom Mendicino, and Jewelle Gomez. More details on the festival can be found at www.sasfest.org.

More than thirty independent presses have signed up as exhibitors for the Rainbow Book Fair, March 26, 2011 at the Lesbian and Gay Center in New York. The fair will also feature readings and panels. Visit http://rainbowbookfair.org/ for more details.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust have jointly acquired a collection of the prints, negatives, and letters of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Passages: Perry Moore, an executive producer of The Chronicles of Narnia film series and the author of Hero, an award-winning novel about a gay teenager with superpowers, died February 17, 2011. He was thirty-nine years old.

February Publishing Notes

2011-02-01T17:36:00.004-05:00

The buzz: Knopf will publish Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel, The Stranger’s Child, an epic story of two families across the twentieth century.

Christopher Hennessy’s debut poetry collection, Love in Idleness, will be published later this year by Brooklyn Arts Press (BAP).

In Winter 2012, St. Martins will publish Robert Leleux's new memoir The Living End, about how his grandmother's unexpectedly humorous decline into Alzheimer's became an occasion to reconcile with her daughter -- Leleux's mother.

Later this year Modernist Press will publish two editions of Art from Art, an anthology of short stories inspired by art and edited by Stephen Soucy: a four-color paperback version and special numbered hardbound limited edition of 100.

In April Cleis Press will publish Saachi Green's Lesbian Cops: Erotic Investigations. In June, the Press will publish Neil Plakcy's The Handsome Prince: Gay Erotic Romance, a mix of traditional and contemporary stories, each with its own unique fairy-tale atmosphere, and in July the Press will publish Richard Labonté's Hot Jocks: Gay Erotic Stories. In Fall 2011 Cleis Press will publish Delilah Devlin's Girls Who Bite, lesbian vampire stories in a romantic erotica anthology.

Pseudonymous founder of Outserve.org, a closed, online social network for active duty LGBT military personnel, Air Force officer JD Smith's compendium of first-person stories from gays in the military and their experiences under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," will be published by Penguin Press.

Starbooks Press has released The Last Prince from Gaul by Anton Perrick, an erotic romp through ancient Rome, Blood Dreams by Jack Stevens, a dark, erotic story, set in England, and Homo Thugs, edited by Shane Allison.

Lemon Gulch Books has released The Importance of Having Spunk: A Lesbian Couple's Comic Search for the Perfect Donor in the Scandinavian Wilderness by Donovan O'Malley

Univited Books has released Willy, a new dark psychological thriller by Robert Dunbar.

Melissa Scott has begun work on new books in the Astrient series (earlier novels are Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams, both co-written with her late partner Lisa A. Barnett). Point of Knives is a novella detailing the adventures and romance between the two male leads of Hopes and Dreams. Fairs' Point will continue the series. The books will release from Lethe Press.

Simon & Schuster Children’s will publish Cheryl Kilodavis and illustrator Suzanne DeSimone's My Princess Boy, a mom's story about a young boy who loves to dress up, the challenges he faces, and the family that supports him no matter who he becomes or what he chooses to wear.
Magnus Books will publish in January 2012 Bob Bergeron's Connecting to the Right Side of Forty: A Guide for Gay Men at Midlife, an interactive program to help readers understand how their relationships with other men throughout their lives have an impact on successfully navigating the challenges of aging.

Joel Tan and Michael Samuel have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Judith Markowitz and David McConnell have assumed the role of Co-Chairs.

In March, Sibling Rivalry Press will publish Raymond Luczak's fourth poetry collection Road Work Ahead. Luczak has just posted a brand-new trailer [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptnlhsujuOw] in which he talks about the book. Even though Luczak "speaks" in American Sign Language (ASL), the clip is subtitled in English.

Edward Field has posted a video at youtube.com/fieldinski of 93-year-old writer and editor Diana Athill reading a poem about her mother’s dying. After Alfred Chester’s death (Athill was his editor) she became friends with Field and her letters over 30 years to Field will be published next year by Granta as Letters to a Friend.

Emma Watson and Logan Lerman are in talks to co-star in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on Stephen Chbosky's novel. Chbosky will direct his own script.

Carol Rosenfeld is one of the readers at Drunken! Careening! Writers! "Four Fabulous Writers!" Thursday, February 17 at 7 p.m. at KGB, 85 East 4th Street, in New York.

David Pratt (Bob the Book) and Felice Picano (True Stories) will be reading from their new books on Tuesday, March 29, 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia.

Shaun Levin, Eric Karl Anderson, and Anthony McDonald will read from Best Gay Erotica 2011, Thursday, February 10 at 7:00 pm at Gay's the Word Bookshop in London.

The Queer Foundation's annual High School Seniors English Essay Contest is now underway. Deadline is February 28, 2011. The top essayists are awarded $1,000 scholarships to attend the U.S. college or university of their choice. For more information visit http://www.queerfoundation.org/.

Open Calls: Eric Andrews Katz is seeking submissions from writers, artists/comics/photographers for the new anthology, Gay City. Vol. 4 - At Second Glance. Deadline July 31, 2011. For more details email anthology@gaycity.org or visit here: http://libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com/2010/10/26/submission-call-gay-city-vol-4-at-second-glance

Richard Labonté is seeking submissions for Erotica Exotica: Tales of Sex, Magic, and the Supernatural to be published by Bold Strokes Books. Deadline is April 15, 2011. Submissions to: boldexotica@gmail.com, with a 50-word bio and a mailing address in the body of the email.

Labonté is also seeking submissions for Best Gay Erotica 2012 to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline: April 30, 2011. Submissions to: mailto:bge2010@gmail.com. Include real name/address/ 50-word bio.

Labonté is also seeking submissions for Best Gay Romance 2012 to be published by Cleis Press. Deadline: May 31, 2011.Submissions to mailto:bgr2011@gmail.com.

Passages: Reynolds Price, author of many novels, memoirs, poetry, essays and plays and a member of Duke University's English department faculty for more than 50 years, died January 20, 2011 in Durham, N.C. He was 77.

January Publishing Notes

2011-01-01T18:15:00.003-05:00

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.

December Publishing Notes

2010-12-01T07:24:00.002-05:00

The buzz: In January 2011, Square One Press will release Palm Trees on the Hudson: A True Story of the Mob, Judy Garland & Interior Decorating by Elliot Tiber, a prequel to the author’s Taking Woodstock.

In the Summer of 2011, Penguin will publish Sapphire's second novel, The Kid, the story of Abdul Jones, the son of Precious, the heroine of the author’s first novel, Push, as Abdul approaches manhood, alone, brutalized and with the soul of an artist.

Skyhorse Press will publish James Hormel’s Another American Dream, a memoir of the United States' first gay Ambassador, civil rights activist, and philanthropist.

Norton will publish Alysia Abbott's Fairyland, a memoir of being brought up motherless by her father, the poet Steve Abbott, in the gay, male world of 1970s San Francisco and in turn taking care of him as he dies from AIDS in the 90s.

This month Bear Bones Books will release Binding the Gods: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South by Jeff Mann.

Paul J. Bens’ debut novel Kelland is now available in multiple e-book formats through Smashwords.

Author Robert Dunbar has started Uninvited Press, which has just released Shadows: Supernatural Tales by Masters of Modern Literature.

Don Weise has announced that he is launching a new press dedicated to LGBT literature called Magnus Books. Weise was formerly of Alyson Books, Carroll & Graf, and Cleis Press. His new press plans to release 15 to 20 titles a year, fiction and nonfication.

Lambda-winning author Rakesh Satyal has been promoted to senior editor at Harper.

Philip Clark, Charles Jensen, Kim Roberts, and Dan Vera will read from the anthology Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS on December 5 at 2 pm The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

The Publishing Triangle’s Holiday Party is Thursday, December 9 at 6:30 pm at the offices of In the Life Media in Manhattan.

Jay Blotcher and Nathan Manske will read essays from the new anthology I’m from Driftwood, December 10 at 7:30 pm at the Lesbian and Gay Center in Manhattan.

The American Library Association has added the Stonewall Children and Young Adult Literature Awards, a prize for gay and lesbian literature, to its prestigious annual awards for children’s literature, which include the renowned Caldecott and Newbery medals.

James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award will now be presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation.

The Fort Lauderdale Gay and Lesbian Literary Arts Festival will be April 9-11, 2011.

Issues 1 through 8 of Diseased Pariah News, the humorous magazine about HIV/AIDS published in San Francisco from 1990-1999, have been digitized and are available at the New York Public Library.

Hot Note Books, owned by Bob Cassidy and Lloyd Meeker of Miami Beach, will be taking over ASP Wholesale, a distributor of many gay and lesbian presses, when owner Bert Hermann retires at year end.

Harvey Fierstein returns to Broadway to star as Albin in the revival of La Cage aux Folles, for which he also wrote the libretto, for twelve weeks beginning Feb. 15, 2011.

A stage production based on the short stories of John Rowell, Music of Your Life, recently premiered at the Jermyn Street Theater in London.

In a recent online roundtable discussion on queer horror literature at Dark Scribe Magazine, several writers revealed their new projects. Chad Helder recently completed a book of queer horror poetry The Vampire Bridgegroom, which will be published by Dark Scribe. Vince Liaguno is finishing up edits on a non-fiction collection of essays on the slasher film genre called Butcher Knives & Body Counts and assembling, with co-editor Chad Helder, a follow up anthology to Unspeakable Horror, and completing his second novel, Final Girl, in which a criminal psychologist, a gay film historian, and a cub reporter try to stop a serial killer who’s murdering former scream queens in grisly recreations of murder set-pieces from 80’s slasher films. Robert Dunbar is putting the finishing touches on two projects. Wood, a novella, about an HIV-positive hero who helps a runaway teen battle monsters (metaphorical and otherwise) in the slums, and Willy, a novel that takes place in a boarding school for boys with emotional problems. Lee Thomas’s novella, The Black Sun Set, was just published by Burning Effigy Press out of Canada, and a small press will be releasing a second novella, Focus (co-written with Nate Southard) in time for World Horror 2011. Lethe Press will also release his next queer-themed horror novel called The German, in March of 2011. Michael Rowe will have a vampire novel coming out next fall from ChiZine Publications called Enter, Night, and is continuing to write pieces for the Huffington Post, some of which will end up in his third essay collection, forthcoming from Cormorant Books next spring.

Stephen Bottum’s Band of Thebes blog has posted its annual survey of the year’s favorite LGBT books.

Open calls: Chelsea Station Editions is seeking short stories for an upcoming anthology of gay male fiction. Stories should be about the transition from boyhood to becoming a young adult gay man, with special emphasis on the friends and events that help guide that process. Do not send erotica, personal anecdotes, or character sketches. Stories should have fully realized plots with realistic characters. Sex scenes, if included, should be integral to the story. Original and reprints will be considered. Maximum length: 8,000. Deadline is January 15, 2011. Stories can be sent as Word documents to chelseastation@yahoo.com.

November Publishing Notes

2010-11-01T07:53:00.002-04:00

In March 2011 Dutton will publish Dan Savage and Terry Miller's It Gets Better, a collection of essays where celebrities and ordinary people in the LGBT community share their personal and inspirational stories, inspired by a series of popular YouTube videos they created that have gone viral.

David Pratt, author of Bob the Book, will read from his recent novel and discuss “What is a Gay Book?” with author Christopher Bram, Wednesday, November 3, at 7:00 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Bookstore, 82nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

Members of the Violet Quill -- Felice Picano, Edmund White, and Andrew Holleran -- are reuniting for an appearance and 192 Books in Manhattan on Tuesday, November 2 at 7 p.m. Picano has brought together new work by the surviving members of the gay writing group in the final volume of Van Gogh’s Ear.

Paul Lisicky’s collection of short prose pieces, Unbuilt Projects, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2012.

This month Handtype Press will release an ebook edition of Raymond Luczak’s Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer: 20 Years Later.

This month TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press will publish Michael Alenyikov’s first book Ivan and Misha.

This month Chelsea Station Editions is releasing Walter Holland’s collection of poems, Circuit.

This month Lethe Press will release Best Gay Stories 2010 featuring writing by Christopher Bram, Lee Thomas, D. Travers Scott, and Wayne Hoffman.

Queer Mojo and Rebel Satori Press will release The Pop-Up Book of Death, a collection poems from Chad Helder. The press will also release Playing By the Rules by Justin Crockett Elzie, the first Marine discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Bantam Dell will publish Rita Mae Brown's next four books in the Sneaky Pie Brown bestselling series, including a Twentieth Anniversary Mrs. Murphy Mystery.

Dale Peck is among one of the founders of a new press Mischief + Mayhem, and they'll operate as an imprint of OR Books.

Seventh Window Publications is actively seeking novellas and shorts. For more information visit the Web site at http://www.SeventhWindow.com.

The Queer Foundation's sixth annual High School Seniors English Essay Contest is now underway. The top essayists are awarded $1,000 scholarships to attend the U.S. college or university of their choice. For more information visit www.queerfoundation.org.

Eight emerging LGBT filmmakers will be selected to take part in a unique two-tier event in 2011: the annual film festival cruise “Pride of the Ocean” in May and a LGBT film shorts festival in the mountains of Vermont in June, known as “CineSlam.” For more details visit www.prideoftheocean.com and www.cineslam.com.

Submissions are now open for the Lambda Literary Awards. Visit the Web site for more details and guidelines.

Submissions are now open for the Publishing Triangle Awards. Visit the Web site for more details and guidelines.

October Publishing Notes

2010-10-01T19:05:00.002-04:00

The buzz: In Spring 2012, Farrar, Straus and Giroux will bring out Larry Kramer’s The American People, a 4,000 page manuscript to be published in two volumes and described as “a national history of homosexuality and AIDS."

In February 2011, White Crane Books (Lethe Press) will release Dancing in the Moonlight, a Radical Faerie reader with over fifty contributors from around the world.

Rebel Satori Press will publish Larry Closs's Beatitude, the story of two young men who meet in 1995 and find themselves irresistibly drawn together by a mutual fascination with the freethinking sensibility and freewheeling lives of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.

In 2011 Bold Strokes Soliloquy Books will publish Speaking Out, edited by Steve Berman, a GLBTQ young adult anthology of short stories of teens overcoming adversity and experiencing life after coming out.

Next Spring, Bench Press will release Jee Leong Koh’s Seven Studies for a Self Portrait.

A revised edition of The Villagers by Edward Field and Neil Derrick is now available from Bleecker Street Press. The authors have reissued the book under the pen name Bruce Ellliot, the pseudonym which was used for the first Avon edition in 1982, when the novel was titled Village.

Michael Lassell’s Metropolitan Home's Desgin 100: The Last Word on Modern Interiors is now on sale in bookstores and online.

Triton Books has reissued A Day and A Night at the Baths by Michael Rumaker. The author’s experiences at the Everard Baths in New York City was first published in 1979.

Lethe Press has released If the Spirit Moves You, Ghostly Gay Erotica by Dale Chase.

Chelsea Station Editions has released David Pratt’s debut novel, Bob the Book, a romance of gay books and bookbuyers.

STARbooks Press has released Mangames by Denis-Martin Chabot, about a sexual predator at large in Montreal during the 1980s, and Rock & Roll Over, an erotica anthology edited by Eric Summers.

Publishers Weekly reported that Alyson Books is restructuring. Editor Don Weise is leaving the company and the publisher will concentrate only on e-books, which it is expected to begin producing within 9 months to a year.

Critic Amos Lassen and poet Bryan Borland are organizing the first annual EuREADka Pride, which will take place in conjunction with Eureka Springs’ Fall Diversity Weekend. The event, which is scheduled for Saturday, October 30, 2010, at 1:30 PM, will take place at Eureka’s Carnegie Library Annex (194 Spring Street). Scheduled to participate are Paul Harris, author of Diary from the Dome, Davina Kotulski, author of Love Warriors, and Bryan Borland, author of the poetry collection My Life as Adam. Amos Lassen will read from Brock Thompson’s new book, The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South, which releases this month from the University of Arksansas Press. There will also be an Open Mic.

Among the readers and speakers participating at the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, October 13 through 16, are: Franklin Abbott, David-Matthew Barnes, Jonathan Lerner, Megan Volpert, Elliott Mackle, Collin Kelley, David Pratt, Ken Harvey, and Steven Reigns. A full schedule can be found at http://atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/p/2010-schedule.html.

The Center Voices Working Authors will present, in recognition of National Latino Heritage Month, Guillermo Castro, Jenna Risano and Francisco Aragón, Tuesday October 26 at 6:30 p.m. at the Lesbian and Gay Center in Manhattan.

Rob Stephenson will be reading from his recent novel, Passes Through, at An Unnameable Reading: Fiction Collective Two in Brooklyn, Wednesday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn, NY.

Mary, the queer literary quarterly, will celebrate the release of its fall issue October 15 at the Pearl New York Lounge in Manhattan.

Huriyah, the oldest magazine for LGBT Muslims, is shutting down. Oracle Releasing, a multimedia company, will continue to publish the magazine and blog content in book forms.

The fall issue of Icarus is now available, featuring stories by Thomas Fuchs, Jeff Mann, Viet Dinh, Troy Carlyle, and Kelly McQuain, and with an interview with Robert Dunbar.

This fall, choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones will revive Them at P.S. 122 in New York, which premiered in 1986, and features text by Dennis Cooper, and music by Chris Cochrane. Parts of the production’s rehearsal process are open to the public through seminars and discussions at the New Museum.

Clint Eastwood is directing Hoover, a bio pic of the FBI director which is set to star Leonardo DiCaprio with a script by Dustin Lance Black. Joaquin Phoenix is being considered to play J. Edgar Hoover's lover Clyde Tolson.

Kudos: The Green Carnation Prize, a new award established in Britain to be given to works of fiction or memoir by gay men, has announced their Longlist for 2010. Works include: Generation A by Douglas Coupland, Bryant and May Off the Rails by Christopher Fowler, Paperboy by Christopher Fowler, In A Strange Room by Damon Galgut, God Says No by James Hannaham, London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp, Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin, and Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer. The shortlist will be announced on November 1st and the winner on December 1st.

Open Calls: Assaracus, a new gay-themed poetry print journal, published by Sibling Rivalry Press is reading submissions. Submissions can be emailed to siblingrivalrypress@gmail.com. The submission deadline for the first issue is October 31, 2010.

Seven Kitchens Press is seeking submissions for its third annual ReBound Series. The press will publish a new edition of an out-of-print chapbook. Submissions are currently being accepted through October 15; complete guidelines are available at http://sevenkitchenspress.wordpress.com/series-guidelines/guidelines-the-rebound-series/.

A Midsummer Night's Press is reading for two poetry anthologies: Flamboyant: A Celebration of Jewish Gay Poetry, edited by Lawrence Schimel, and Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry, edited by Julie R. Enszer, to be published in Spring 2011. Submissions can be sent to queerjewishpoetry@gmail.com. Deadline: November 30, 2010.

Chelsea Station Editions is seeking original or previously published short stories for an anthology to be titled Tangled. Stories should focus on the complexities, freedoms, and foibles of gay dating, sex, friendships, lovers and other relationships. Preference will be give to delightfully plotted literary narratives with strong characters and locale. Maximum word count: 8,000. Submissions should be emailed as Word documents to chelseastation@yahoo.com. If story has been previously published, please also include publication details and confirmation that rights belong to author. Deadline is November 1, 2010.

The Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festivals Second Annual Short Fiction Contest is soliciting original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 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 $15 per story. There is no limit on the number of stories each author may enter. 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 QueerMojo, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press. There will also be a book release party held during the 9th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 12-15, 2011. The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts is November 1, 2010. For more details visit: www.sasfest.org.

Submissions are now open for the Lambda Literary Awards. Visit the Web site for more details and guidelines.

Submissions are now open for the Publishing Triangle Awards. Visit the Web site for more details and guidelines.

Passages: Jill Johnston, author of Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution and a contributor to the Village Voice, died September 18. She was 81.

September Publishing Notes

2010-09-01T16:15:00.002-04:00

The buzz: At a packed meeting of the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee last month, a motion to reconsider the party’s endorsement of Michael Nava’s candidacy for judge was defeated by a vote of 28 to 1. There is a lively account of the meeting at the Civic Center blog: http://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2010/08/michael-nava-reaffirmed.html. Nava now heads to the final round, the November 2nd election.

Armistead Maupin’s newest entry in his “Tales of the City” series will debut this November with the publication of Mary Anne in Autumn by Harper.

In the Fall of 2011 Kensington will publish Wayne Hoffman’s new novel, Sweet Like Sugar, about the unusual friendship that develops between a twentysomething gay man and an eightysomething Orthodox rabbi. Hoffman is also the editor of a new anthology that is releasing this month from The Toby Press titled What We Brought Back: Jewish Life After Birthright, a collection of essays, poems and photos by alumni of Birthright Israel trips. One of the contributors is KnuckleCrack blogger Eric Leven.

In November Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish Michael Cunningham’s new novel, By Nightfall.

Also in November Celebra will publish in both English and Spanish Grammy-winning singer Ricky Martin's memoir Me.

This month Doubleday will publish David Rakoff’s newest collection of essays, Half Empty.

David Sedaris begins a new lecture tour this fall and will appear at the Apollo Theater in New York on November 1 and 2, 2010.

In October, Chelsea Station Editions will publish Walter Holland’s new collection of poems, Circuit.

Mary Meriam has launched Lavender Review, an online literary journal devoted to poetry and art by lesbians, at http://home.earthlink.net/~marymeriam/Lavender/.

This month Rebel Satori reissues Trebor Healey’s poetry collection, Sweet Son of Pan, and publishes Shane Allison’s debut poetry collection Slut Machine.

In November, Bold Strokes Books will publish Blood Sacraments: Gay Vampire Erotica, edited by Todd Gregory.

In March 2011, Lethe will publish a new thriller by Lee Thomas, The German.

Series II of Peter Cameron’s Wallflower Press limited edition works will include five books, to be published between October 2010 and March 2011. The titles are: The Daughter of Jesus, a short story by Edward Swift; The Abridged Versions & Hearsay, prose pieces by Peter Cameron; Love, James, letters by James Lord; Have You Seen Me?, photographs by Peter Cameron, and poems by Sheila McCullough & Peter Cameron; and Animals in Distress & Pluto, two stories by James Harms.

This month Slyph Editions will publish Shaun Levin’s short story, “Trees at a Sanatorium,” alongside Bathers 1917-18 by the British painter Mark Gertler (1891-1939).

In 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish Jennifer Gennari’s Wild Pie, in which a twelve-year-old must deal with homophobia in her small Vermont town when her gay mother decides to enter into a civil union with her long-time partner.

Desire, a new musical based on the book States of Desire by Edmund White, was recently staged by the Homo Promos Theatre Company in London.

Among the participants at this year’s Decatur Book Festival in Atlanta September 3-5, 2010 are Collin Kelley, Charles Jensen, Theresa Davis, Cleo Creech, Megan Volpert, Franklin Abbott, Rigoberto Gonzalez, David Groff, Rakesh Satyal. On Saturday, September 4 at 10 a.m. at the Decatur Conference Center will be reading of selections from Persistent Voices: Poets Lost to AIDS.

Among the participants for the West Hollywood Book Fair, September 26, 2010, in Los Angeles are John Morgan Wilson, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Joe Keenan, Mark Doty, Larry Duplechan, Michael Kearns, Christopher Rice, and Terry Wolverton.

Ed Madden is the winner of the Atlanta Queer Literature Festival annual broadside competition for his poem “Jubilate.” The work will be illustrated and designed into a broadside by a noted local Atlanta artist and printed as part of the AQLF broadside series. Copies will be available at this year’s festival, October 13-16, 2010.

Author and historian Michael Henry Adams will lead “A Walking Tour of Historic Harlem Interiors” on September 11, 2010. The event is sponsored by the Leslie Lohman gallery. For more information or to reserve a spot on this limited space tour, contact Jerry Kajpust at jerry@leslielohman.org,

There will be a tribute memorial of readings, reflections, music and visual art to honor the life and work of John Stahle, writer, graphic designer and editor of the gay literary journal Ganymede, on September 18, 2010 from 2:30 pm - 4:30 p.m. at the LGBT Center at 208 West 13th Street. For more details go to http://rememberingjohnstahle.com.

Last Address, a short film by Ira Sachs about the New York artists who died of AIDS, uses the exteriors of the houses, apartment buildings, and lofts where the artists lived and worked as a remembrance and tribute, and can be viewed online at http://lastaddress.org/.

Open calls: The Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Festivals Second Annual Short Fiction Contest is soliciting original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 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 $15 per story. There is no limit on the number of stories each author may enter. 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 QueerMojo, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press. There will also be a book release party held during the 9th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 12-15, 2011. The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts is November 1, 2010. For more details visit: www.sasfest.org.

August Publishing Notes

2010-08-01T07:34:00.004-04:00

The buzz: The Arcus Foundation has given more than $400,000 to the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a California seminary, to help craft formal liturgies for the Episcopal Church to bless gay and lesbian relationships.

Philip Clark, Jaime Cortez, Judy Grahn, Philip Huang, Kevin Killian, Ali Liebegott, Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Kirk Read, and Michelle Tea will read from Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS on Thursday August 19, 2010 at 8 p.m. at Magnet, 4122 18th Street in the Castro in San Francisco.

There will be a benefit show for the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival on August 12 at 7 p.m. at Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta. The music line-up includes KenJ, Lucas Mire and Bucky Motter, plus keyboardists Andy Ditzler and Guyton Maurice, and the debut of Julia Carroll and Amy Lashley’s new band, Without a Net. The comedy line-up includes the host of comedy night at Eddie’s, Alyssa Barnett-Schott, plus Mindy Dawn Friedman and Vivian Alford, and Sanders Hulsey.

Bold Strokes Books will publish Jeffrey Ricker’s new novel, Detours in 2011.

STARbooks Press has released a new novel by Thom Nickels, Spore, a new anthology edited by Christopher Pierce, Men at Noon, Monsters at Midnight, and a new anthology edited by Eric Summers, Teammates.

Random House will publish David France’s Morning in America, a look at how AIDS went from a fatal plague to a mostly manageable medical condition as a result of the efforts of a small but fiercely dedicated group of citizen activists who took it upon themselves to master the science and confront the research establishment, pharmaceutical industry, and federal government.

Varsity Prints will publish Reece Wyman Manley’s All Gays Go To Heaven, a gay man’s reflection on past addictions and challenges overcome through a near death experience.

Stephen McCauley is at work on a seventh novel, tentatively titled My Pornographer. The author is also at work on a series of novels to be published under a penname.

Noel Ambery, along with more than 100 other authors, contributed to a remix of the old Horatio Alger rags-to-riches novel Joe’s Luck. The remix can be accessed here.

Amos Lassen is now one of the top 60 reviewers on Amazon.com.

Rebel Satori has released Chick Band, a behind the scenes rock band novel by Rakelle Valencia.

Author, activist and furniture designer Mitchell Gold and his husband, Tim Scofield were married June 19 in Des Moines, Iowa at the Des Moines Art Center.

Poet Ragan Fox will be a competitor on this year's Big Brother reality show.

Poet Bryan Borland has launched Sibling Rivalry Press which recently published Ganymede Unfinished -- A Tribute to John Stahle -- the final issue of the gay literary journal the late editor was at work on before he died earlier this year. The press has also published Fag Hag – A Scandalous Chapbook of Fabulously-Codependent Poetry, edited by Borland, featuring work by Stephen S. Mills, Jessie Carty, Patti Forehand, Ana Tun, Philip F. Clark, Leigh Binder, Val B. Russell, Joseph Harker, Tel, Elizabeth Stelling, Tau, Karen Schindler, Guy “Dhyan” Traiber, Sam Sanders, Gypsy, Victor Kondratas, Paul Andrew Russell, Loria Taylor, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Nicholas Y.B. Wong, Alana Smoot Samuelson, LaMar Johnson, and B.R. Belletryst.

Dark Scribe editor and publisher Vince Liaguno is chairing the Horror Writers Association Stoker Weekend 2011, June 16-19 on Long Island.

Author Robert Dunbar has launched a new press owned, Uninvited Books. Uninvited Books’ first title is a new novel by Greg F. Gifune called Gardens Of Night.

Fetish, a short film written by Charles Casillo which features the author and Joan Collins, will be part of a screening on August 15th at the New York City International Film Festival.

Rob Williams next project is The Mystic Chord, a film based on Jim Tushinksi’s novel Van Allen’s Ecstasy. The screenplay won the NewDraft screenwriting competition at NewFest 2010.

Open calls: Prism Comics is accepting submissions for the 2010 Queer Press Grant, with a deadline of September 15, 2010. The annual grant was established by Prism Comics to assist in the publication and promotion of LGBT comics. For guidelines, as well as for the application form, please go to prismcomics.org/grant. Questions about the grant can be directed to Justin Hall at justin@prismcomics.org.

Editor Richard Labonté is seeking short stories for the erotic anthology Daddies 2: Gay Erotic Fiction to be published by Cleis Press, Summer 2011. Max. word count 6,000 words. Deadline: Nov. 1, 2010. Submissions to: daddiestwo@gmail.com. Please put "Daddies 2" in the subject line and include a 50-word bio and a mailing address. Original stories preferred, though reprints will be considered.

Labonté is also seeking short stories for the erotic anthology Hot Jocks to be published by Cleis Press Spring 2011. Stories should have an athletic theme. Deadline is Sept. 1, 2010. Submissions to cleishotjocks@gmail.com. Please put "Hot Jocks" in the subject line, and include a 50-word bio and a mailing address. Original stories only.

Chelsea Station Editions is seeking original or previously published short stories for an anthology to be titled Tangled. Stories should focus on the complexities, freedoms, and foibles of gay dating, sex, friendships, lovers and other relationships. Preference will be give to delightfully plotted literary narratives with strong characters and locale. Maximum word count: 8,000. Submissions should be emailed as Word documents to chelseastation@yahoo.com. Please include legal name (and pseudonym if applicable), mailing address, e-mail address, and a fifty word or less bio. If story has been previously published, please also include publication details and confirmation that rights belong to author. Deadline is November 1, 2010.

RedBone Press and Vintage Entity Press are co-publishing the second edition of Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books for early fall 2010. If you have or know of a black LGBTQ/SGL book published since 2007, or an upcoming book to be published in 2010 (*it must already have an ISBN assigned*), please email info@redbonepress.com.

July Publishing Notes

2010-07-01T12:50:00.008-04:00

The buzz: Holt will publish Bill Goldstein's The World Broke in Two, a literary history of the year 1922 focusing on the intertwined lives of Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and T.S. Eliot.

Little Brown will publish agent Bill Clegg's second book, 90 Days, a memoir exploring his "blurry post-rehab days."

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has signed a biography of Barbra Streisand to be written by William Mann and to be called Hello, Gorgeous, set for fall 2012.

Actor Mark Ruffalo mentioned in an interview on MTV that he would play Ned Weeks in a film adaptation of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, to be directed by Glee’s Ryan Murphy.

Jeffrey Beam’s new book, Gospel Earth, a "big book of little poems" is now available from Skysill Press, England. http://skysillpress.blogspot.com/.

Abingdon Press will publish in 2012 Christa Allan's Edge of Grace, about a Christian woman hiding her own secrets while learning to love and accept her gay brother rather than judge him, and the turmoil it causes amongst her friends, family and church.

This fall Chelsea Station Editions will publish David Pratt’s debut novel, Bob the Book, a satirical romance of book meets book and boy finds boy.

In August Poppy Books will begin publishing books based on Fox's musical comedy series Glee, starting with The Beginning, revealing the stories behind Rachel, Kurt, Finn and others before Mr. Schuester took over the Glee Club.

Lost Library contributor and short story writer Michael Graves has published a new short story, "Fort Knox," in the summer issue of Jack magazine.

Dark Scribe Press will publish Chad Helder’s collection of poetry and prose titled The Vampire Bridegroom. The title piece first appeared in the magazine Icarus. Helder and co-editor Vince Liaguno are also planning a sequel to their Stoker-award winning anthology of gay-themed horror stories, Unspeakable Horror.

The summer issue of Icarus, a magazine devoted to gay speculative fiction, features stories by Hal Duncan, Julian Lopez, and Alex Jeffers.

Lethe has published its 2010 edition of Wilde Stories: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction ,which features short stories by Richard Bowes, Joel Lane, Simon Sheppard, Tom Cardamone, and Alex Jeffers.

This summer Lethe will publish Hot Off the Presses, a new novel by Elliot Mackle, and this fall will release A Twist of Grimm: Erotic Fairy Tales for Gay Men by William Holden.

Next fall Grand Central will publish Ellen DeGeneres's as yet untitled memoir.

Word continues to arrive on the financial dilemmas of Alyson and that the publisher has stopped paying royalties to several authors.

David McConnell and Carla Trujillo have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.

India's first online gay bookstore has launched. Based in Malad, the store is called http://www.queer-ink.com/ and has been started by Fiji-Indian Shobhna Kumar.

“Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg,” is currently on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC through September 16, 2010. Ginsberg started taking photographs as a young man, in the 1940s, and kept doing so through 1963, when his camera was left behind on a trip to India.

The newly established Over the Rainbow Committee of the GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association will create an annual bibliography of titles of interest to adult readers that reflect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) experiences. The first ALA Over the Rainbow Books list will be announced in January 2011. The new Committee is an outgrowth of the Rainbow List Committee that launched in 2008 with the aim of creating such a bibliography for readers under 18 years of age. For more information, visit: http://alaovertherainbow.wordpress.com/.

Kudos: The Queer Foundation Scholarship Recipients for 2010–11 are Brandon Lambert of Aurora, OH, and Jesus Zuniga of San Jose, CA. Each student will each receive a $1,000 scholarship for studies at the college or university of their choice. For more information visit http://queerfoundation.org/.

Open calls: The St. Sebastian Review, an LGBTQ Christian literary magazine, is seeking submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction essays, and visual art from among the LGBTQ Christian community and its allies. Topics of sexuality and faith are welcome, though they are certainly not required. For submission guidelines please visit: www.stsebastianreview.com/Submissions.html.

The Rainbow Romance Writers, the LGBT chapter of Romance Writers of America, is accepting submissions for their first annual Rainbow Awards of Excellence (RAES), which recognize the best in published LGBT romance. The contest is open to all authors published in novel or novella length romantic fiction during the 2009 publishing year as long as the story in question has an LGBT romance as its focus and fits within one of our seven categories. Contemporary; Paranormal; Romantic Suspense; Historical; Sci-fi/Fantasy; short/novella (10,000-20,000 words). All entries must be submitted electronically and will be accepted beginning June 1 2010 through August 31, 2010. The entry fee is $15 and is payable through Paypal. Entrants need not be members of either Rainbow Romance Writers or RWA. Further questions can be directed to contest coordinator, Sara Bell at: wavyscribe @ aol . com.For more information, or to submit an entry, please visit the Web site at http://www.rainbowromancewriters.com/2010/04/contest-2010-rainbow-romance-award-for-excellence-in-romantic-fiction/.

The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation has established a new annual playwriting award, providing $50,000 to an emerging writer and an additional $100,000 toward the production costs for mounting the recipient’s play. The foundation was established by director, playwright and librettist Arthur Laurents and Tom Hatcher, his partner. The first award will be presented March 15, 2011.

The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival is now accepting entries to their Short Fiction Contest, which will be judged by author John Berendt. Original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 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. Deadline: November 1, 2010 Contest website: http://sasfest.org/category/competitions Download entry form and mail entry to: Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Fiction Contest, 938 Lafayette St., Suite 514, New Orleans, LA 70113

The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in association with the Marigny Theatre Corporation and the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is now taking submissions for their 5th annual Playwright’s Competition. Previously produced plays will be considered as long as they have not been produced in the greater New Orleans area. Characters should be kept to a minimum—preferably 5 or under. Staging should be simple or adaptable to a small stage. Deadline: December 31, 2010 Contest website: http://sasfest.org/fifth-annual-playwrights-competition. Download entry form and mail entry to: Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, 938 Lafayette St., Suite 514, New Orleans, LA 70113

Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both its print and Web publications. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. The journal’s mission is to showcase queer/gay writings of artistic merit. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com. Writers whose work is accepted will be awarded a small honorarium.

Passages: American novelist and memoirist Donald Windham died May 31, 2010. He was 89 years old. Windham was known for his close friendships with Tennessee Williams, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirsten, and Truman Capote. His novels include the The Dog Star (1950), The Hero Continues (1960), Two People (1965), and Tanaquil (1972). Lost Friendships, a memoir of his friendship with Capote and Williams, was published in 1987.

June Publishing Notes

2010-05-31T17:20:00.003-04:00

The buzz: Jocques LeClair, former manager of Lambda Rising, has opened Proud Bookstore in Rehoboth Beach on the Delaware shore. The store sells new and used books, cards, gifts, CDs, movies, and clothing. The bookstore is located at 149 Baltimore Ave., Rehoboth Beach, Del. 19971.

Latino writers Emanuel Xavier and Charlie Vázquez will be reading from their new books If Jesus Were Gay and Other Poems and Contraband on Thursday, June 24 at 7:00pm at Barnes & Noble, 2289 Broadway at 82nd Street in Manhattan.

The millionth copy of Steve Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower was printed this month. The 1999 Yong Adult novel is ranked third on the list of the American Library Association's most frequently challenged books.

This summer Lethe will publish the fourth book in Mark Abramson’s Beach Reading series, Snowman.

Little Brown will publish Aaron Hartzler’s first book for young adults, the memoir Rapture Practice, in the Spring of 2011.

In the fall of 2011, the University of Texas will publish Horror After 9/11, a critical anthology co-edited by Sam J. Miller.

In August, 2010, Cleis Press will publish Neil Plakcy's Skater Boys: Gay Erotic Stories, a collection of gay erotic short stories with a focus on young men who skateboard, and Sacchi Green's Lesbian Lust: Erotic Stories, a collection of short erotic lesbian stories. That month the Press will also publish Rachel Kramer Bussel's Orgasmic: Erotica for Women, a collection of short erotic stories with an emphasis on women experiencing different types of orgasms, and Passion: Erotic Romance for Women, a collection of erotic short stories with a focus on romance and passionate encounters. In September, Cleis will publish Violet Blue's Just Watch Me: Erotica for Women, a collection of short story erotic by and for women.

Next month Dreamspinner Press will publish Counterpoint: Dylan’s Story, Ruth Sims novel set in Europe in the late 1800s which revolves around the career and loves of classical musicians.

StarBooks Press recently published Cut Hand, a novel by Mark Wildyr, about the unorthodox love affair between a white youth on the American frontier and a young Indian warrior destined for the leadership of his tribe.

Musicians Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig are depicted as gay lovers and Hall and Oates as their Satanist neighbors in the new comic book Henry & Glenn Forever. The illustrating-writing team Igloo Tornado created the 64-page comic book.

Matilda Bernstein Sycamore’s first film, All That Sheltering Emptiness, made in collaboration with Gina Carducci, will be screened June 7 at NewFest: The New York LGBT Film Festival.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez will write and direct a film adaptation of the short story “C.O.G.” by David Sedaris, about the author’s apprenticeship with a Christian clockmaker that was included in his 1997 collection Naked.

British actor Matt Smith (also known as the eleventh ‘Dr. Who’) will play Christopher Isherwood in a London stage production based on Isherwood's memoir, Christopher And His Kind.

Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, and Garrett Hedlund are expected to star in a big-screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

British actor Toby Regbo has been cast in the film adaptation of Peter Cameron’s young adult novel Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.

Kudos: D. A. Powell won the 18th annual Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Chronic.

Vestal McIntyre won the 2010 Grub Street Fiction Book Prize for his novel Lake Overturn.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Bernard Cooper, Michael Nava, Cecilia Tan, and Paul J. Willis were inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at the recent literary conference in New Orleans.

Val McDermid was presented with this year’s Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, honoring outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing.

Director Gregg Araki won the Cannes Film Festival's first Queer Palm award for his film Kaboom, about a bisexual film student.

A full list of the winners of the Lambda Literary awards can be found on the foundation web site http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.

The winners of the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the GLBT category was Torn, by Amber Lehman. Finalists included Alphabet City: My So-Called Sitcom Life by Jon Paul Buchmeyer, Possessions by Carmen de Montefiores, She’s My Dad by Iolanthe Woulff, and Tomorrow May Be Too Late by Thomas Marino. Short Plays to Long Remember, which included gay and lesbian plays compiled and edited by Francine L. Trevens, was a finalist in the Anthology category.

Open Calls: The deadline is July 1, 2010 for the anthology Queer Girls in Class: Lesbian Teachers and Students Tell Their Classroom Stories, a collection of personal narratives (1,500–3,500 words) by lesbian teachers and students who speak about sexual identity and its effects on the teaching and learning process in the high school and university setting. For more information or to submit, e-mail: queergirlsanthology@gmail.com.

The deadline is June 27 for the 9th Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award for best previously unpublished poem in English that best relates GLBT life. There is a reading fee of $5 per poem submitted, any form, style, length. Gival Press, P.O. Box 3812, Arlington, VA 22203. For complete details, e-mail givalpress@yahoo.com or visit Web site: http://www.givalpress.com/.

Passages: John Stahle, editor and designer of the literary journal Ganymede, died of a heart attack in April, 2010. Several Ganymede contributors have set up a memorial page at: http://rememberingjohnstahle.com/. Stahle was also the author of I Was Like and His Glimmering World.

Peter Orlovsky, poet, dharma-maverick, and longtime companion of Allen Ginsberg, died May 30, 2010.

May Publishing Notes

2010-05-01T11:25:00.003-04:00

The buzz: Harper Perennial will publish Evan Fallenberg's When We Danced on Water, a novel which spans more than fifty years in the life of a famed ballet dancer, whose talent saved him from the Nazis, and the relationship he begins with a middle-aged woman from his local café in Tel Aviv, whose own past in the Israeli military echoes his struggles.

STARbooks Press has released Rising Starz, a new set of porn-star interview by Owen Keehnen which features Bruno Bond, Colin Steele, Johnny Gunn, Logan Mccree, Ross Hurston , Skye Woods, Ty Lebeouf, and others.

Edmund White's Paris in the Eighties, a follow-up to City Boy, recounting the writer's life and the cultural scene in 1980s Paris, where White worked at American Vogue and befriended everyone from Yves Saint-Laurent to Michel Foucault, while the AIDS epidemic swept New York and eventually brought tragedy to his own life abroad, will be published by Bloomsbury.

Lethe Press has released Tales My Body Told Me, a new novel by Wayne Courtois, about a 45-year-old gay man who finds himself in a “reparative therapy” program for homosexuals.

The Stoker award-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, edited by Vince Liguono and Chad Helder, is now available from the InsightOut book club.

Rebel Satori Press has released Contraband, a new novel by Charlie Vazquez, set in an underground near-future America where dissidents and “lunars” seek refuge from the smoldering ruins of a nation plagued by a deadly civil war and revolution. The Press’s QueerMojo imprint has also published If Jesus Were Gay & other poems by Emanuel Xavier this month.

Doubleday will publish Bruce Duffy's Disaster Was My God, based on the colorful and untidy life of Arthur Rimbaud, the poet who set French literature on its ear with his revolutionary verse (and his proto-punk antics) before the age of twenty, only to forsake literature for a career dealing arms in Abyssinia.

Next spring Clarkson Potter will publish Thom Filicia's Hammered, both a memoir of the renovation of Thom's dream house on Lake Skaneateles in central New York state, and a how-to for interested renovators and design aficionados.

The University of Wisconsin Press has just released Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans by Philip Gambone, a collection of interviews with gay activists and artists, including David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin.

Random House will publish Seth Rudetsky's Surviving Sophomore Year, the tale of a boy who, at 15, decides to do the impossible: lose weight, become popular, and get his first kiss.

Paul G. Bens will be donating second-quarter royalties from his novel Kelland to SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a non-profit support group for women and men wounded by religious authority figures.

Beltway Poetry Quarterly has released its Spring 2010 issue, a series of essays documenting literary organizations in the greater Washington DC region. Of special interest are contributions from Julie R. Enzer on The Furies, Martin G. Murray on the Washington Friends of Walt Whitman, and Danielle Evennou on mothertongue. More details at http://www.beltwaypoetry.com/.

Frank Anthony Polito's Facebook fan page for his novel Band Fags was taken down by and then reinstated. After much speculation as to why the page had been taken down, an administrator from the social-networking site wrote to Polito that the page was deleted "erroneously."

Among the entries to name Patti LuPone's upcoming memoir were A Little Touch of Star Quality; I, Eva and Being LuPone. The winner: Patti LuPone: A Memoir, submitted by Precilla Ng of Toronto.

Perry Brass has been blogging about "Lost Gay New York" for Queer New York at http://queernewyorkblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/qny-welcomes-new-voice-perry-brass.html.

Riverdale High, the comic book home of Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead, has a new gay student, Kevin Keller.

Rufus Wainwright is composing an evening with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra based on Shakespeare's sonnets.

Alan Cumming has withdrawn from the long-delayed Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark because of a scheduling conflict.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are writing a Broadway musical called The Book of Mormon, expected to open on Broadway next March.

Playwright Terrence McNally and Tom Kirdahy were married in Washington. The Tony-winning playwright, 71, and lawyer, 46, tied the knot on the banks of the Potomac near the Kennedy Center, which is running a series of McNally's plays.

The Signature Theater Company will present The Illusion, Tony Kushner’s adaptation of L’Illusion Comique by Pierre Corneille, in the spring of 2011. The play, about a lawyer in search of his son and a magician who conjures up visions of the lost child, joins Signature’s previously announced repertory productions of Angels in America, planned for the fall, and the New York debut of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, which it is producing with the Public Theater next spring. The season will also feature a reading series of Mr. Kushner’s other plays.

The Lambda Literary Awards Reading in Chicago will be Tuesday May 4 at 7 pm at the Gerber Hart Library. Other Lambda Literary readings will be May 10 at 7 pm at Skylight Books in Los Angeles and May 15 at the Saints & Sinners Festival in New Orleans.

The 22nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards will be held May 27th, 2010 at the School of Visual Arts Theater in New York City. General Admission tickets to the Lammy Awards Ceremony, including pre-Awards reception, are $100. Tickets are available through the foundation's Web site: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.

Book launch for Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s The Big Bang Symphony is Thursday, May 6 at 7:00 pm at Diesel Books, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, CA.

Bears in the Wild, a new bearotica anthology edited by R. Jackson, will have a book signing featuring Jackson and contributor Jeff Mann during Summer Bear Week in Provincetown, Saturday, July 17th, 11:00am - 12:00 noon, 200 Commercial St, Provincetown, MA 02657.

Several bloggers have noted that fashion designer Marc Jacobs is apparently opening a bookstore in the West Village in New York City, in the longtime former site of the Biography Book Shop. The store is rumored to be called Book Marc and would be his sixth store in the area but first as a bookstore. The Biography Book Shop moved about eight blocks south on Bleecker Street last year and is now called Bookbook.

Wilton Manors, Florida, has a new GLBT bookstore -- grand opening was April 16 for The Book Nook at 2207 Wilton Drive for owner Alan Fisher. For more information please visit http://www.booknookwm.com/.

Amazon.com made a $25,000 grant to the Lambda Literary Foundation for its Writers' Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. The retreat is scheduled to be held August 8th through August 15th, 2010 at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. This year’s faculty includes Nicola Griffith, Ellery Washington, and Ellen Bass.

Gaylaxicon 2010 in Montreal has been canceled due to a breakdown in hotel negotiations. Gaylaxicon 2011 is scheduled for April 29 - May 1 2011 in Atlanta, GA.

Cleis Press is celebrating its 30th year in business this year. The press, SexIs magazine, and EdenFantasys are teaming to launch an online book club. Each month, the club will feature reviews of Cleis titles by members of EdenFantasys' online community. Participating authors include Rachel Kramer Bussel and editor Alison Tyler. Discussions are planned on the best sex writing of 2010, the best women's erotica of 2010, and other subjects. Books featured in the club will be for sale on EdenFantasys's Web site, and in SexIs. Membership in the club is free.

Monster Girl Media, a Latina-run, female-centered activist press emphasizing fiction and stories about individuals who don't have to "behave" to fit in, started by Erika Lopez and Kamala Lopez, is now distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution:

Marshall Moore is in the process of starting a publishing company in Hong Kong: Signal 8 Press.

Kudos: Anthony Bidulka’s novel Aloha, Candy Hearts, is a nominee for the Arthur Ellis Crime Writers Award for Best Crime Novel.

Among the finalists for this year’s Locus Awards, presented at the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 25-27, 2010, is “It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith in the Best Novelette category. Griffith also scored a Hugo nomination for the story.

Guests of honor at the recent Outlantacon included authors Cecilia Tan, Dariek Scott, Lee Martindale, and Greg Herren.

Among the nominees for the Shirley Jackson Awards, for outstanding achievement in literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic, are: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters for Best Novel, and “The Witnesses are Gone” for Best Novella by Joel Lane.

Among the recent Guggenheim fellows announced were performance artist Holly Hughes and author Monique Truong.

TLA has released the winners of its Gaybie awards: Among the winners are Best Gay Fiction: Diva, Las Vegas by Rob Rosen, Best Gay Non-Fiction: The Meaning of Matthew by Judy Sheppard; Best Photo Book: The Big Penis Book by Dian Hanson; Best Gay Mystery: Straight Lies by Rob Byrnes, Best Gay Comic: The Initiation #2: Higher Sex Education; and Best Erotica: Eight Inches by Sean Wolf. Awards also went to Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer of Glee and Gus Van Sant of Milk.

The winner of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Playwriting Contest is St. Louisian Jerry Rabushka for his play Brushup Ten. The winner of the Festival’s First Annual Short Fiction Contest is Wayne Lee Gay of Denton, Texas for his story “Ondine.” Runners-up are Danny Bracco of San Francisco for “Dancing Pink Roses” and James Driggers of Asheville, NC for “Jesus Is My BFF.” The winning stories, along with new stories by a few of the best names in GLBT literature, have been collected into an anthology, Saints & Sinners 2010: New Fiction from the Festival, by QueerMojo, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press. A book release party featuring readings by the winners and others will be held on Thursday, May 13 as a fundraiser for the festival.

The James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award recipients are Lee Lynch and Noel Alumit.

Arsenal Pulp Press has been shortlisted for the Small Press Publisher of the Year Libris Award by the Canadian Booksellers Association. Winners will be announced at CBA's Libris Awards ceremony in Toronto on May 29.

The Finalists in each category for the 2010 Golden Crown Literary Society Awards for lesbian literature have all been posted on the Web site at http://www.goldencrown.org/site/index.php/awards-awards/2010shortlist. Winners will be announced at the Golden Crown Literary Conference in Orlando June 5, 2010.

The Lambda Literary Foundation has named Larry Kramer and Kate Clinton as this year's recipients of its Pioneer Award, to be presented at the Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony on May 27th, 2010 in New York City.

Among the nominees for the Lucille Lortel Awards, which honors off-Broadway's best shows are The Pride (with six nominations), The Temperamentals, Yank! A WWII Love Story and A Boy and his Soul.

The winners of the Publishing Triangle literary awards are: Lesbian nonfiction: American Romances by Rebecca Brown; Gay nonfiction: The Greeks and Greek Love by James Davidson; Lesbian poetry: Zero at the Bone by Stacie Cassarino; Gay poetry: Poems of the Black Object by Ronaldo V. Wilson; Debut fiction: The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund; LGBT fiction: The Hour Between by Sebastian Stuart.

On the longlist of works eligible for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award are Gentleman’s Relish by Patrick Gale, More of This World or Maybe Another by Barb Johson, The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund, and The Haunted Heart and Other Tales by Jameson Currier.

On the shortlist for the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for fiction are: The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund, Sugarless by James Magruder, and The Torturer's Wife by Thomas Glave.

Winners of the 2009 Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Awards are: Favorite Lesbian Fiction Writer: Ali Vali, Crystal Michallet-Romero, Gerri Hill, Georgia Beers, Melissa Good, and Radclyffe. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Anthology/Story Collection: Best Lesbian Love Stories 2010 edited by Simone Thorne, Outsiders by L Ames/G Beers/JD Glass/S Meagher/S Smith, Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets edited by Radclyffe/S Seaman, Ultimate Lesbian Erotica 2009 edited by Nicole Foster, Year's Best Lesbian Fiction 2008 edited by Fran Walker. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Romance: Battle Scars by Meghan O'Brien, Breaking the Ice by Kim Baldwin, Sanctuary by I. Beacham, Secrets of the Stone by Radclyffe, The Veil of Sorrow by Crystal Michallet-Romero. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Erotica: Lesbian Cowboys Erotic Adventures edited by S Green/R Valencia, Night's Kiss: Lesbian Erotica by Catherine Lundoff. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Mystery: Death of a Dying Man by J.M. Redman, From Hell to Breakfast by Joan Opyr, The Scorpion by Gerri Hill, The Times That Bind by Andi Marquette, Thief of Always by K Baldwin/X Alexiou. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Adventure: Footsteps by Mickey Minner, Justice for All by Radclyffe, Renegade by Cheyne Curry, Stranded by Blayne Cooper, and Thief of Always by K Baldwin/X Alexiou. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Speculative Fiction/Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Barking at the Moon by Nene Adams, Goldenseal by Gill McKnight, Iron Rose Bleeding by Anne Azel, Second Nature by Jae, The High Priest and The Idol by Jane Fletcher. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Humor/Comedy: From Hell to Breakfast by Joan Opyr, The Middle of Somewhere by Clifford Henderson, The Seduction of Moxie by Colette Moody, Winds of Heaven by Kate Sweeney. Favorite Lesbian Fiction General: Beggar of Love by Lee Lynch, Footsteps by Mickey Minner, The Children of Mother Glory by C.M. Harris, The Middle of Somewhere by Clifford Henderson, The Times That Bind by Andi Marquette. Favorite Lesbian Fiction Historical: Fireweed by Micky Minner, Kicker’s Journey by Lois Cloarec Hart, The Children of Mother Glory by C.M. Harris, The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody.

Open Calls: Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submission for the third annual Robin Becker Chapbook Prize for an original, unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a Lesbian, Gay. Bisexual, Transgendered or Queer writer. Submission deadline is May 15, 2010. For more details visit: http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.

The Atlanta Queer Lit Fest is accepting entries for its Broadside Contest. Deadline is July 15th. The winner will receive $200 and 100 copies and a keynote reading invite at the festival. C. Dale Young will judge. Poetry, prose, hybrid genres all welcome, 250 word maximum. $5 per entry, max 5 entries. For more details visit http://www.atlqueerlitfest.com/.

April Publishing Notes

2010-03-31T10:01:00.003-04:00

The buzz: A production of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi, about a gay Jesus, has been canceled by Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, for “safety and security concerns for the students as well as the need to maintain an orderly academic environment,” as reported in The Austin Chronicle.

The Broadway revival of Terrence McNally’s play, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, has been postponed after actress Megan Mullaly left the show.

Tony Kushner’s latest play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, will have its New York premiere next spring in a co-production by the Public Theater and the Signature Theater Company.

The movie version of Jim Grimsley’s novel, Dream Boy, recently opened in New York and is headed for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Fort Lauderdale.

Sam J. Miller, Rob Stephenson, Stephen Greco, Timothy Young, Christopher Bram, Michael Graves, Paul Russell, and Ian Titus are among the readers of The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered, edited by Tom Cardamone, at Housing Works Bookstore, 126 Crosby Street on April 16th, at 7 p.m.

Poets Richard McCann, Kim Roberts, and Bernard Welt will join editor Philip Clark for a reading of poems from Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, with special guests Michelle Parkerson (director, A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde) and Wayson Jones (Essex Hemphill’s long-time performance partner). Wednesday, April 7th: Sumner School, 1201 17th St. NW, Washington D.C. in the Lecture Hall.

Kate Bornstein, Sam J. Miller, Seth Clark Silberman, and Kathleen Warnock will be a part of Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival, hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith, April 13 at 7 p.m. at Phoenix, 447 East 13th Street at Avenue A, New York, NY, 10009.

Untreed Reads has published an ebook edition of Ruth Sims short story “The Lawyer, The Ghost and the Cursed Chair.”

St. Martin’s will publish Ethan Mordden's Love Song: The Lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.

Rick R. Reed’s Tales from the Sexual Underground, which collects the author’s steamiest fiction and non-fiction, is now available from MLR Press in both ebook and print editions.

Harper will publish Rahul Mehta's debut story collection, Quarantine, about the cultural experience of gay men of Indian descent, from India to America and in between.

Owen Keehnen’s novel, I May Not Be Much But I'm All I Think About, is now available on line from e-gaymag.com. His forthcoming horror novel, Doorway Unto Darkness, will be released by Dancing Moon Press.

Next Spring Harper will publish Allen Ginsberg's Howl: A Graphic Novel, with art by Eric Drooker.

STARbooks Press has released The Long Way Round by Peter Apps, a sexy romp with space heroes.

Seal Press will publish Elena Azzoni's A Year Straight, a memoir in which the author, who'd identified as a lesbian for over a decade, chronicles her first year of dating men.

Author Samuel Delaney praised Rob Stephenson’s novel, Passing Through, as “the most exciting book I’ve read in some time. I don’t know exactly why, but that only makes it more so. It has something to do with his pitch-perfect mastery of the underlying logic of association. It has something to do with his polished language and an observational eye that sweeps through sex, art, death, and obsession—an obsession that may be love or that may be the desire to kill—in words that toss up lyrical juxtapositions of objects you just don’t expect, the whole impelling you at mag-lev energies.”

Paul Russell’s novel, The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, which was to be the lead title for Alyson’s spring list, has been canceled due to nonpayment of the advance.

Critic Amos Lassen has made the list of top 100 reviewers at Amazon. Lassen’s reviews focus primarily on works of interest to the GLBT community.

Details on guidelines, eligibility, and submissions for the 2010 Rainbow Awards can be found on Elisa Rolle’s blog at http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/993088.html.

The Lambda Literary Foundation has launched its revamped Web site at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/. The site is actively seeking feature essays, opinion pieces, author interviews, book reviews, and round-ups. Visit the Web site and its editorial calendar for more details.

Andrew Kirtzman, a political reporter and author of Betrayal, a book about Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, is one of the three owners/investors of FIP Ventures, LLC, which recently purchased the commercial properties near the ferry landing of Fire Island Pines.

Kudos: Among the shortlist for the Lost Man Booker Prize, honoring works published in 1970 that were not eligible for consideration for the Booker Prize at the time, are Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault, The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark, and The Vivisector by Patrick White. The winner will be announced May 19.

Vince A. Liaguno of Dark Scribe press and magazine received the President’s Richard Laymon Service Award given by the Horror Writers Association.

Among the finalists of the Indies Choice Book Awards is Brooklyn by Colm Toibin for Book of the Year (Adult Fiction).

Among the winners of the National Book Critic Circle awards was Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life.

Among the nominees on the Orange Prize shortlist are The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

Among the Oscar winners was The New Tenants, for Live Action Short, with a screenplay by David Rakoff.

The 2009 Tiptree Award winners are Greer Gilman, Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales, and Fumi Yoshinaga, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, volumes 1 & 2. Among the honor list was Maureen F. McHugh, for “Useless Things.”

TLA has launched its first Gaybies Awards, a voter’s choice award for movies and books in 18 categories. Among the book categories are Best Gay Non-fiction, Best Gay Mystery, Best Gay Fiction, Best Gay Erotica, Best Gay Comic, and Best Photo Book. Nominees and voting instructions can be found at http://www.tlavideo.com/gaybies/a-2.

Blanche Wiesen Cook will receive the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award from the Publishing Triangle. The Leadership Award will presented to Michele Karlsberg. Literary finalists for lesbian nonfiction are: Rebecca Brown, American Romances; Mary Cappello, Called Back; and Joan Schenkar, The Talented Miss Highsmith. For gay nonfiction are James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love; Chap Heap, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940; and David Plante, The Pure Lover. Finalists for lesbian poetry are Stacie Cassarino, Zero at the Bone; Kristin Naca, Bird Eating Bird; Lee Ann Roripaugh, On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year. Finalists for the gay poetry are Brent Goodman, The Brother Swimming Beneath Me; D.A. Powell, Chronic; and Ronaldo V. Wilson, Poems of the Black Object. Finalists for debut fiction are Elise Moser, Because I Have Loved and Hidden It; Lori Ostlund, The Bigness of the World; and Rakesh Satyal, Blue Boy. Finalists for LGBT fiction are G. Winston James, Shaming the Devil; Barb Johnson, More of This World or Maybe Another; Eleanor Lerman, The Blonde on the Train; Vestal McIntyre, Lake Overturn; Jill Malone, A Field Guide to Deception; and Sebastian Stuart, The Hour Between. The awards will be presented Thursday, April 29, at 7 p.m. at the Tishman Auditorium, New School University, 66 West 12th Street, New York City. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.

The Lambda Literary Awards will be presented Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at the School of Visual Arts Theater in New York City. A complete list of the finalists can be found on the Foundation’s Web site at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.

Passages: H. M. Koutoukas, a playwright who helped create the Off Off Broadway theater movement in the 1960s with a wildly surreal style of drama, died on March 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 72. Among his plays, many which were presented at the Caffe Cino and La MaMa and which the author called “camps,” were Medea in the Laundromat, The Last Triangle, and Awful People Are Coming Over So We Must Be Pretending to Be Hard at Work and Hope They Will Go Away. Koutoukas also acted in many productions of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company.

March Publishing Notes

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The buzz: Little, Brown and Company will release David Sedaris's next book this October, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, a book of animal fables, with cover and interior artwork by Ian Falconer.

This month, the University of Arkansas Press will publish Harm’s Way, Eric Leigh’s first book of poetry. The collection was a finalist for the inaugural Miller Williams Prize. More details can be found here: http://www.uapress.com/titles/sp10/leigh.html.

A Midsummer Night's Press is publishing two new books in April as part of its Body Language imprint of queer poetry: Handmade Love by Julie R. Enszer, a first collection from the founder of the lesbianpoetryarchive.org and Mute by Raymond Luczak, a collection exploring deaf gay experience. The Press is offering free shipping on US orders via its website: www.amidsummernightspress.com.

OR Books will publish Eileen Myles's The Inferno, a poet’s novel.

QNY will publish Laurie Rubin’s Do You Dream in Color, a blunt take on being blind by a thirty-year-old Jewish lesbian who sings opera around the world and designs her own jewelry line.

This spring Rebel Satori press will publish a new collection of poetry from Emanuel Xavier and reissue Trebor Healey's poetry collection Sweet Son of Pan, as well as bringing out new titles by jj hastain, Chad Helder, and Dennis Mahagin. On the fiction front are works by Stephen Beachy, Kevin Killian, Rob Stephenson¦ and others. Also up for the press are Chick Band by Rakelle Valencia, winner of the Project QueerLit, Contraband by Charlie Vazquez and Slut Machine by Shane Allison.

This month the University of Wisconsin Press will publish Jerry Rosco’s Glenway Wescott Personally, a biography of the author of The Pilgrim Hawk and other novels.

This Spring Chelsea Station Editions will publish The Wolf at the Door by Jameson Currier, a novel set in a haunted gay-owned guesthouse in New Orleans.

Out this month from Fiction Collective 2 is Rob Stephenson’s new novel, Passes Through.

This Spring Alyson will publish Ken O'Neill's The Marrying Kind, about a couple whose decision to boycott weddings until all couples can get married.

In June Cleis will publish James Lear's Sticky End: A Mitch Mitchell Mystery, the third erotic novel in series about a murder mystery.

Out this month from Bear Bones Books, an imprint of Lethe Press, is Bears in the Wild, an anthology of erotic stories edited by R. Jackson. Lethe will also publish Marshall Moore’s forthcoming novel, An Ideal for Living.

This October Agate Bolden will publish Terrance Dean's Straight, From Your Gay Best Friend, a humorous and soulful advice guide for straight women from the vantage point of a gay man.

Teachers College Press will publish Mollie Blackburn's LGBTQ Students Reading the Word and the World in the Fall of 2011.

Among the new gay literary Fan pages launched recently on Facebook are ones for literary journal Bloom, Amos Lassen’s Literary Pride, and GLBT Bookshelf.

The sixth issue of Bloom, the literary journal for queer writers, readers and artists will debut next month at the AWP conference in Denver.

Creating a lot of blog traffic recently was a publisher’s decision to cancel a proposed book of gay zombie stories. Editor Vince Liaguno weighed in on the controversy on his blog at http://vinceliaguno.blogspot.com/2010/02/of-zombies-and-stupidity.html.

Reports have surfaced that London’s gay bookshop, Gay's the Word, is again facing a rent increase. The bookstore is located in busy shopping street in the Bloomsbury neighborhood.

New York’s Second Annual Rainbow Book Fair will take place March 27, 2010, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Concourse of the City University of New York headquarters at 34th Street. The Second Annual Rainbow Book Fair is hosted by CLAGS, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY. For more details visit: http://rainbowbookfair.org.

Among upcoming events are OutlantaCon 2010 April 30-May 2 in Atlanta; Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, May 13-16 in New Orleans; and Gaylaxicon 2010, an international science fiction, fantasy and horror convention, in Montreal October 20-31.

The Lambda Literary Awards will take place Thursday, May 27 in Manhattan. Over 430 books have been submitted for consideration for the awards.

The Publishing Triangle awards will be presented Thursday, April 29 in Manhattan.

TnT Classic Books has published Short Plays to Long Remember, compiled and edited by Francine L. Trevens, featuring 27 plays by 14 American authors including Perry Brass, Jane Chambers, Michael Devereaux, Paul Dexter, Victor Gluck, David Brendan Hopes, David Johnston, David J. Mauriello, Sidney Morris, William F. Poleri, Daniel P. Quinn, Francine L. Trevens, Doric Wilson and George Zarr.

Broadway diva Patti Lupone is running a contest on her Web site pattilupone.com to come up with a name for her memoir. The New York Times reported the winner will get an autographed copy of the book, two tickets to Lupone’s next Broadway show (or major show in a city near you), and the actress will congratulate the winner personally at the theater. Contest ends March 30, 2010.

Patrick Dennis’s novel, Auntie Mame, has become an unlikely bestseller in Italy. The novel was published in 1955 and penned by Edward Everett Tanner III, an idiosyncratic social observer and satirist who wrote under several pseudonyms. The Italian director Luca Guadagnino is reportedly interested in a film remake that would star the British actress Tilda Swinton in the title role.

Jon Robin Baitz is currently at work on a new play about Hollywood figure Robert Evans. The play is expected to premier on Broadway within the next year. Baitz will also make his Broadway playwriting debut with Love and Mercy.

Monday night performances of Jon Marans’ off-Broadway play The Temperamentals, based on Harry Hay and the founding of the Mattachine Society, will be followed by post-show discussions with special guests including Larry Kramer, Paul Rudnick, Derek and Romaine, Bill C. Davis, Tom Viola, Charles Kaiser, John Loughery, Elizabeth Ashley and Michael Wilson. For schedules, see the Web site: www.thetemperamentals.com.

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have joined the producing team of the upcoming Off Broadway show My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, written by and starring Leslie Jordan, with performances beginning April 14.

Kate Clinton will join Lily Tomlin for Back 2 Back on April 17 and 18 at the St. George Theatre in Staten Island, NY.

Portia de Rossi’s forthcoming book will detail her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres and her battle with bulimia. Her partner Ellen DeGeneres will become a comic book next month. Bluewater Productions’ Female Force is releasing a biographical comic book on the star.

Kudos: D.A. Powell was awarded the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Powell’s poetry collection, Chronic, is also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Among the nominees for the 2009 Strand Magazine Critics Awards, recognizing excellence in mystery fiction, is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters for Best Novel.

Among the finalists for the Bram Stoker awards given by the Horror Writers Association are Martyrs and Monsters by Robert Dunbar and In the Closet, Under the Bed by Lee Thomas, both in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

Among the finalists for the 2009 Nebula Awards from the SFWA are “I Needs Must Part, The Policeman Said,” by Richard Bowes for Best Novelette; The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak for Best Novel, and Ash by Malindo Lo for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The 2010 Alice B. Medals were presented to Catherine Friend, JM Redmann, and Kate Sweeney and the 2010 Lavender Certificates to D.L. Line for On Dangerous Ground, Colette Moody for The Sublime & Spirited Voyage of Original Sin, Carsen Taite for truelesbianlove.com.

Among the winners of the Black Quill Awards, given by Dark Scribe Magazine, are Kelland by Paul G. Bens Jr. for Best Small Press Chill-Editors' Choice, and The Haunted and Other Tales by Jameson Currier for Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection-Editors' Choice.

Finalists for the annual fiction and playwrighting contests sponsored by the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival include: For fiction: Danny Bracco, Nathan Burgoine, Emily M. Danforth, James Driggers; Jack Fritscher, Wayne Lee Gay, William Holden, James Nolan, Steve Scott, and Shawn Syms. For playwriting: Suzanne Bachner, Fengar Gael, Jewelle Gomez, John Greenwell, , Kim Hanna, Joseph M. Paprzycki, Felice Picano, Jim Provenzono and Jerry Rabushka.

February Publishing Notes

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The buzz: Anthony Bidulka’s Date With a Sheesha, the seventh Russell Quant mystery, has been moved up from May to March, 2010. The home town launch at McNally Robinson Saskatoon has been booked for Thursday, April 15th.

This spring, Kensington will publish Robin and Ruby, by K.M. Soehnlein, a sequel to the author’s bestselling The World of Normal Boys.

Now out in bookstores is Elliott Mackle’s new novel, Captain Harding's Six Day War, published by Alyson books.

Forthcoming from Alyson this spring is Why Are You Telling Me This? Christopher Isherwood's Commonplace Book, 1940–1985, edited by Don Bachardy and James White, which publishes for the first time the novelist's record of his personal readings over 45 years; and Once a Marine: A Memoir of Coming Out Under Fire by Eric Alva with Sam Gallegos. Alva, the first casualty of the Iraq War, risked his hero status and challenged “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” by coming out as gay. Also forthcoming is For the Love of the Dead, gay zombie erotica by Hal Bodner.

Other new books on the horizon this year includes My Queer War by James Lord, published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux, about the author’s experiences during World War II; The Bucolic Plague: From Drag Queen to Goat Farmer: An Unconventional Memoir by Josh Kilmer Purcell, author of I Am Not Myself These Days, published by Harper Collins; Insignificant Others, a new novel by Stephen McCauley, published by Simon & Schuster; and a reissue of Native, a novel by William Haywood Henderson, published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Paul Lisiky’s new novel, The Burning House, will be published in 2011 by Etruscan Press.

This fall Globe Pequot will publish former assistant to Jimmy Carter and Zell Miller social historian Rick Hutto's A Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder and Madness in the Heart of Georgia, the chronicle of a tenuous last link to a proud Southern aristocracy, and the murder of his wife, the secret of his love affair with his male black chauffeur, and his stunning Pyrrhic end.

In 2012, Farrar, Straus, Giroux will publish Francesco Pacifico's The Story of My Purity, the first translated novel by this Italian writer, about an unhappily married Roman intellectual who falls under the spell of Jews, gays, MDMA, and beautiful women in nightclubs (and not exactly in that order).

In 2011, Atlas will publish Sigrid Nunez's Susan, an intimate portrait of Susan Sontag by a novelist who lived with Sontag's son, the writer David Rieff, in the 1970s, and saw herself as a disciple, observantly noting the influential critic's passage through the hazards of New York literary life.

Howl, a movie based on the infamous Howl trial, starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, had its premiere at the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival. The film is directed by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and also stars David Strathairn, Alan Alda, and Jeff Daniels. Howl and Other Poems remains City Lights Press’s bestselling title.

Ashe Journal 8.2 has been released and features an essay by Mitch Shenassa on “The Occult William S. Burroughs.”

Several items from William Burrough’s “Bunker” at the YMCA in the Bowery are part of photographer Peter Ross’s Web portfolio at http://heypeterross.com/.

This spring Haiduk Press will publish The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered, edited by Tom Cardamone, which includes appreciations by 28 contemporary writers of significant books long out of print on the gay experience during the 20th century.

Ryan Richardson has collected an archive of gay paperback artwork from the 1950's and 60's at http://www.gayontherange.com/.

Author Peter Cameron has launched Wallflower Press, a small private press that will publish limited-edition chapbooks featuring the work of Cameron, as well as the work of authors he admires. Each book will be edited, designed, and crafted by Cameron in editions limited to ten copies. Five books will be included in the Series I: 2010. The first to appear will be Dog Stories: Homework & The Secret Dog. These two early stories were written by Cameron in the early 1980s and first published in The New Yorker and The Kenyon Review. The signed limited editions are available for $100 each. For more information or to reserve a copy, please email: info@wallflowerpress.com or visit wallflowerpress.com.

Christopher Sieber will appear in The New Group's Off-Broadway musical The Kid, based on a book by Dan Savage, based on Savage's book The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. Previews begin in April. Music is by Andy Monroe, book by Michael Zam, and lyrics by Jack Lechner.

The White Horse Theater Company will be staging Tennessee Williams’s Clothes for a Summer Hotel, which depicts an ethereal meeting between the restless ghosts of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. Performances begin Feb. 5 at the Hudson Guild Theater and run through Feb. 21.

On the Late Show with David Letterman Robert Downey, Jr. hinted at a homoerotic subtext in the relationship between his Sherlock Holmes character and Jude Law's Dr. Watson. The comments reportedly infuriated Andrea Plunket, who controls the remaining U.S. copyrights to the Holmes story, and she has threatened to withdraw permission for a sequel if the detective becomes more than just friends with his sidekick.

Velvet Mafia has launched its 8th anniversary issue with prose by Eric Karl Anderson, Tina Anderson, Donald Webb, Mykola Dementiuk, Shane Allison, Nathan Sims, Jennifer Greidus; poetry by Jeff Mann and Brian Brown; an interview with Dennis Cooper by Craig Gidney, and an excerpt from Dancing with the Devil by Taylor Siluwé.

The winter issue of Mary, a quarterly literary magazine showcasing queer writing and art, is scheduled to be published March 2010, and is still accepting submissions up until Feb 30, 2010. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com.

The Fresh Fruit Festival is now accepting submissions for the Seventh Annual Fresh Fruit Festival. The deadline is February 6, 2010. The Eighth Annual Fresh Fruit Festival will be held in NYC in July, 2010. The Festival’s goal is to present the whole spectrum of LGBT lives as expressed in performance, dance, theatre, video, film, spoken word, visual and music arts. Full-length pieces will be presented a minimum of four performances. Shorter performance works will have a minimum of one or two performances. For details and application: http://www.freshfruitfestival.com/.

Tony Valenzuela has been named the Executive Director of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Antonio Gonzalez is the new Web Producer.

Author Michael Nava hopes to make history in 2010 by becoming the first openly gay Latino judge ever elected to a California court. Donations can be made to his campaign website at http://www.navaforjudge.com/.

Kudos: Among the nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards were Edmund White for City Boy in Autobiography; and Blake Bailey for Cheever: A Life and Brad Gooch for Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor in Biography.

The 2010 Stonewall Awards from the American Library Association are: Barbara Gittings Literature Award to Stray Dog Winter by David Francis; Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award to The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd; the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award to Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America by Nathaniel Frank. The Stonewall Honor Books in Children & Young Adult are 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert; Daddy, Papa, and Me by Lesléa Newman; Gay America: Struggle for Equality by Linas Alsenas; Mommy, Mama, and Me by Lesléa Newman, and Sprout by Dale Peck. The Stonewall Honor Books in Literature are God Says No by James Hannaham and Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin. The Stonewall Honor Books in Non-Fiction are Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman By Stuart E. Weisberg; Black Bull, Ancestors and Me by Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde; The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece by James Davidson; and I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd.

Ash by Malinda Lo was an honor book for the William C. Morris Award, administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association.

GLAAD does not present book awards during their annual fetes, but they do recognize several writing categories. Among the nominees for Outstanding Comic Book are Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Jane Espenson, Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Z. Greenberg, Jim Krueger, Doug Petrie, Joss Whedon; Detective Comics by Greg Rucka; Madame Xanadu by Matt Wagner; Secret Six by Gail Simone ; and X-Factor by Peter David . For Outstanding Los Angeles Theater, the nominees are 40 is the New 15, book and lyrics by Larry Todd Johnson, music by Cindy O'Connor; Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins by Brian Christopher Williams; Battle Hymn by Jim Leonard; Bingo with the Indians by Adam Rapp; and Lydia by Octavio Solis. The nominees for Outstanding New York Theater are A Boy and His Soul by Colman Domingo; The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney; Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts; Soul Samurai by Qui Nguyen; and The Temperamentals by Jon Marans. The off-off Broadway nominees are Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party by Aaron Loeb; Devil Boys From Beyond by Buddy Thomas; The Lily’s Revenge by Taylor Mac; She Like Girls by Chisa Hutchinson; Wickets, created and conceived by Clove Galilee and Jenny Rogers, adapted from Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes.

Among the 2009-2010 Isherwood Fellows is Tennessee Jones, who received the James C. McCormick Fellowship.

Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn won the Costa Novel of the Year award.

Val McDermid won the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger award for outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. She was also inducted into the Crime Writers' Hall of Fame and elected to an honorary fellowship at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Passages: J. Frederic "Fritz" Lohman, the partner of 48 years of Charles W. Leslie, died on December 31, 2009. In lieu of other remembrances, expressions of sympathy be sent to the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (LLGAF) referencing the new Fritz Lohman Museum Fund. As the co-founder of The Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation and Gallery, Lohman’s name will now grace a new fund dedicated to the next significant growth phase-the establishment of the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Contributions can be sent to LLGAF, 26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013, Attn: Fritz Lohman Museum.

January 2010 Publishing Notes

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The buzz: This year Penguin will publish Mehmet Murat Somer's Wig Murders, a new installment about the transvestite detective from Istanbul.

Broadway books will publish Meredith Baxter's memoir of her personal and professional life, including her fight with breast cancer, her 19 years of sobriety, and her recent announcement that she is gay.

Doubleday has released Union Atlantic, a first novel by Adam Haslett.

This April Scribner will publish The Moonlit Earth, a new novel by Christopher Rice, a thriller about a woman who must try to save her brother's reputation and life when he is accused of a terrorist act.

StarBooks Press has released Nerdvana, edited by Fred Towers, an erotic collection of stories about men who wear glasses, and Unmasked II: More Erotic Tales of Gay Superheroes.

Lethe Press has reissued Alex Jeffers's novel, Safe as Houses. Lethe also has plans to reissue Jeff Mann’s collection of erotica A History of Barbed Wire.

Next month InsightOut book club will publish a hardcover edition The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of gay-themed ghost stories by Jameson Currier (the author of this blog).

Later this year Alyson will publish Frank Browning's Spirits of Desire: Conversations With My Priest, describing the author's sexual encounters and deep dialogues with a Dominican monk about faith, sin, sex, love and the eternal body.

This spring Alyson Books will publish David McConnell’s new novel, The Silver Hearted. The author is also currently at work on a non-fiction project, Gay Panic: True Stories of Straight Men Who Kill Gay Men.

Stephen Greco takes a hard look at "faking it" inside New York's media and art worlds in his new novel The Culling. The novel is one of three which the author has releasing soon. Others include Dreadnought, a novel in the form of six stories, about what happens when young consumers and creative talent are stalked by a Big Brand of unprecedented power, and Other People’s Prayers, a sequel to The Culling, which will be published in March, 2010.

Michael Alenyikov’s Ivan & Misha: A Novel in Stories, will be published by Northwestern University Press this fall. The stories explore the lives of a Russian immigrant family in New York City, circa 2000. The title story appeared in Descant and was anthologized in Best Gay Stories, 2008.

Lev Raphael, author of 19 books, including the Nick Hoffman mystery series, the short story collection Dancing on Tisha B'Av, and, most recently, the memoir My Germany, has donated 89 boxes of handwritten and typed manuscripts, annotated drafts, letters, diaries and book tour journals and other research material to the Michigan State University Libraries.

Perry Brass will lead a workshop on the topic of his new book, The Manly Art of Seduction, with Jerry Kajpust, Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in NY, 208 West 13th Street, 7:30 to 10 pm.

The newest issue of the gay speculative fiction magazine Icarus is out, featuring fiction by Tanith Lee, Robert Joseph Levy, Chaz Brenchley and Rodello Santos.

Charis Books in Atlanta recently celebrated its 35th birthday.

Lambda Rising, Dupont Circle’s LGBT bookstore since 1974, is set to close in January 2010, along with the bookstore located in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Owner Deacon Maccubbin has sold the storefront located at 1625 Connecticut Ave NW in Washington, D.C. to an undisclosed buyer.

This spring Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan are the subject of a new multi-author play, The Really Big Once, produced by the Target Margin theater company. The play covers the years 1948 to 1953, when the two men collaborated on Camino Real. Performances April 15 for a limited engagement at The Ontological at St. Mark’s.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the new Tony Kushner play, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism & Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, would not be arriving in New York this spring as expected, to allow the playwright to make revisions to the script. Kushner is also the writer-in-residence at the Signature Theatre in New York, which is dedicating its 2010-11 season to the playwright, including a revival of Angels in America.

Kudos: Lucy Jane Bledsoe was awarded the 2009 Arts & Letters Prize for fiction as well as the Fiction Award from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation.

Recipients of the United States Artists grants included poet and novelist Sapphire, whose book was recently made into the film Precious.

Among the nominees on the long list of the Irish IMPAC Dublin Literary Award were The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer; Pilcrow by Adam Mars-Jones; The Black Tower by Louis Bayard; Child 44 by Tom Robb Smith; and The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine.

Maida Tilchen won the 2009 New Mexico Book Award in the LGBT Category for her novel, Land and Beyond Maps; other finalists were Keith Pyeatt (Struck) and A.C. Katt (The Sarran Plague).

Among the LGBT nominees for the Black Quill Awards given by Dark Scribe Magazine are The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Dark Genre Novel of the Year); Kelland by Paul G. Bens Jr. (Best Small Press Chill); Martyrs & Monsters by Robert Dunbar (Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection); Pumpkin Teeth by Tom Cardamone (Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection); The Haunted Heart and Other Tales by Jameson Currier (Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection and Best Cover Art and Design); and Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper (Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection). Icarus magazine also received a nod for Best Dark Scribble for publishing the short story “The Man in the Mirror.”

Among the winners of the World Fantasy Award was Richard Bowes for his novelette “If Angels Fight.” Originally published in the February 2008 issue of The Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, the story was reprinted in Best Gay Stories 2009.

Among the nominations for the 15th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards were honors for Precious and A Single Man. The Broadcast Film Critics Association nominated each film for best picture. The nominations for the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards included Precious receiving a nomination for best dramatic film and Colin Firth garnering a nomination for best actor in a drama for his role in A Single Man.

Open Calls: Hors-micro / Off-mic, a new gay literary e-zine organized and edited by Dominic Ambrose and a group of writers in Paris, is looking for poetry, fiction, prose, photos, and artwork in English or French with the cross-cultural life of Paris as its theme. Submissions can be sent to off_micparis@yahoo.fr. “Edition Zero” of the e-zine is viewable at http://issuu.com/hors-micro/docs/notre_magazine_lgbtnov3/32.

The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the three winners of its 2010-11 High School 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 26, 2010. For more information, a printable flyer, or an application form, please visit http://queerfoundation.org/Documents/essay_contest.html.

Passages: Robin Wood, an influential British film critic who published the first serious critique on Alfred Hitchcock in Cahiers du Cinéma, died on December 18, 2002 at his home in Toronto. He was 78. His essay "Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic," originally a speech at the National Film Theater and later printed in Film Comment magazine in 1978, was also included in the revised edition of his book Personal Views.

Favorites of the Year

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Favorite Gay Novel: I’m usually behind in reading new books — often by a year or more — unless I’m asked to review a specific title or I am judging an awards category. The best gay-themed novel I read in 2009 was John Weir’s What I Did Wrong — which was published in 2006. I’d avoided reading the book in part, because I knew there was a character based on David Feinberg, a mutual friend I shared with Mr. Weir, and in part, because I had enjoyed Andrew Holleran’s novel on the same theme, Grief, but felt that Holleran was often repeating himself too much in all his writings — he keeps writing the same story over and over, even though they are always gorgeously written and insightful and terrific reads — and I was worried that Weir’s novel might be a re-tread of his first novel The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, which I admired a great deal. What I Did Wrong was much better than I had expected it to be. I thought Weir’s novel captured David with uncanny precision in the character of Zack, but it also vividly captured the narrator Tom’s grief and imbalance following Zack’s death. Tom’s “lost boy adrift” sort of life mirrors the lasting affect that AIDS has had on friends and survivors — in a way that doesn’t go away with aging and the passing of years. This is also a deeply felt book about having a New York relationship and the experiences of a certain generation living in the city, in the same way that Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Bright Lights, Big City or Slaves of New York are about New York experiences. My only qualm was that I wished Mr. Weir had written a little more about his and David’s ACT UP experiences as activists — but of course that is me projecting my knowledge of some of the facts of both men and the events of their lives and not necessarily what Mr. Weir wanted to include in his novel — or should have included in it. But this was a profoundly good and satisfying read for me; in many passages of this novel Weir’s prose is stellar and lush, particularly in its last, glorious paragraphs.

Favorite Gay Memoir/Autobiography: I fell in love with Joel Derfner’s Swish immediately on opening it and I couldn’t put it down. Derfner writes narrative essays about himself, and about learning knitting, making friendships, dating, dating, and dating, being a cheerleader, and his love of musical theater. He has the kind of engaging, talky, campy personality that you hope your best friend has. What sets this memoir apart from a lot of similar comic, gay essay books is Derfner’s intelligence and seriousness coupled with a delightful sense of irony and bewilderment of who he is and what he wants. I’ve been recommending this book ever since I finished it.

Favorite Short Story by a Gay Author: Later this year Lee Thomas has a collection In the Closet, Under the Bed being published by Dark Scribe Press and I had a chance to read an advance copy of this. These are fifteen horror tales, many of which find gay male protagonists battling supernatural forces. I think that this will be a classic horror collection because Thomas does the kind of “guy fiction” that Stephen King does, only he is doing it with gay characters and themes. The best story in the collection has no paranormal gimmicks to it at all to it — “Crack Smokin’ Grandpa” — just a mounting sense of dread as the clues and truths behind the evolving relationship of a gay man and an older one come to light. It’s a powerful and unsettling story.

Favorite Discovery: I’ve blogged about this before, but I think that more readers need to know of these books — 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).

Favorite Re-Discovery: I sometimes pull down from my shelves a favorite book that I had read years before—sometimes for enjoyment, sometimes to study an author’s technique. This year I had the joy of rediscovering Allan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming Pool Library. I remember when I first read the book in 1989 I was awed by the author’s prose style and his unabashed depiction of gay life in London. It was a marvelously sexy book. I had always been hesitant about revisiting this book, in part because I was probably one of the few people who had been disappointed by The Line of Beauty. But I will only say this: my rediscovery of this book was as magnificent as my first reading of it.

Favorite Guilty Pleasure: I have developed a tremendous affection for ghost stories and this year I spent a lot of time reading both new and old ones — literary short fiction — in an attempt to compile an historical and chronological list of ghost stories that feature gay characters and which were written by gay authors (i.e. “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio” by Tennessee Williams, “Dr. Woolacott” by E.M. Forster, and “The Circular Valley” by Paul Bowles). So I was particularly enthralled by Ken Summers’ Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay and Lesbian Ghosts which came out in October. This is a non-fiction guide/reference work of gay and lesbian ghosts and locations haunted by queer spirits. Summers also maintains a Web site at Moonspenders.com which details queer paranormal events and locations.

For a glance at what other gay authors have revealed as their favorite reads of the year, visit Stephen Bottum's terrific blog, Band of Thebes.

December Publishing Notes

2009-11-30T15:06:00.002-05:00

The buzz: In collaboration with the Weinstein Company, the University of Minnesota Press is publishing a tie-in edition of A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood to coincide with the film adaptation of the novel directed by Tom Ford. The Press has a launched a Web site at http://www.asingleman-book.com/ with a goal of introducing Isherwood to a new generation of readers.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Gina Carducci have collaborated on a film titled All That Sheltering Emptiness…, a meditation on elevators, hotel lobbies, hundred dollar bills, the bathroom, a cab, chandeliers, cocktails, the receptionist, arousal, and other routines in the life of a New York City callboy. The film premiered in New York in November.

Gwyneth Paltrow has joined Nicole Kidman in the cast of The Danish Girl, a film adaptation of David Ebershoff's novel.

Fremantle has acquired the television rights to Frank Bruni’s Born Round, about a man struggling with a lifelong eating disorder who lands the most influential job in the food world as chief restaurant critic for the New York Times.

Actor and author Alan Cumming received an Order of the British Empire, one of the United Kingdom’s highest honors, for his work as an entertainer and LGBT rights activist.

Kaylie Jones, the daughter of author James Jones, noted on The Daily Beast that a gay story line was cut from her father’s 1951 novel From Here to Eternity. The publisher forced Jones to omit passages in which the character Maggio (played by Frank Sinatra in the movie version) made extra money by providing sexual favors to older gay men.

In 2010 and 2011, there were be a two-volume memoir forthcoming by composer Stephen Sondheim: Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat.

The New York Public Library will become the permanent home of the personal papers of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist E. Annie Proulx.

Farrar, Straus, Giroux will publish David Levithan's first adult novel, The Lover’s Dictionary, an alphabetically episodic narrative that traces the ups and downs of an urban romance.

Ganymede recently issued Ganymede Poets, One, its first annual anthology of the 38 poets published in the first six issues of the gay literary journal. Among the poets included are David Bergman, Brian Brown, Edward Field, Walter Holland, Jee Leong Koh, Jeff Mann, and Gregg Shapiro.

Authors Eric Arvin and Pat Nelson Childs have started a new LGBT publishing company Young Offenders Media. More details can be found at: http://www.youngoffendersmedia.com/.

This month Alyson releases Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, edited by David Groff and Philip Clark. The anthology features work by 45 poets who died of AIDS.

“All The Way Through Evening,” Perry Brass’s collaboration with composer Chris DeBlasio, who died of AIDS in 1994, will be part of the program of Gilles Denisot and Mimi Stern-Wolfe on December 6th at the Benson AIDS Concert at St. Marks in the Bowery, 131 East 10th Street in Manhattan.

Queer Mojo Press releases this month Love Hard: Stories 1989 – 2009 by D. Travers Scott, collecting the author’s short fiction from the past twenty years which originally appeared in anthologies, underground queer ‘zines, erotica magazines, and live performance, along with several new stories.

This month Dark Scribe Press will release In the Closet, Under the Bed, a collection of fifteen horror stories by Lee Thomas.

In a recent post at Gay Writers (http://gaywriters.ning.com/forum/topics/we-must-be-aware-that-we-have), book critic Amos Lassen protested the decision of a lesbian Arkansas judge.

The Minneapolis Star reported that Out Word Bound Book Store, the gay and lesbian bookstore in Indianapolis, is closing after Christmas.

The Publishing Triangle's annual holiday party will be Friday, December 11: from 6:30–9:30 p.m., at the offices of In the Life at 184 Fifth Avenue (between. 22nd and 23rd Sts), fifth floor. Members pay $20, guests $25 (includes one drink).

November Publishing Notes

2009-11-01T05:59:00.003-05:00

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.

October Publishing Notes

2009-10-01T18:03:00.003-04:00

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.

September Publishing Notes

2009-08-31T19:11:00.004-04:00

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.

August Publishing Notes

2009-07-31T10:22:00.002-04:00

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.

July Publishing Notes

2009-06-28T10:43:00.004-04:00

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.

June Publishing Notes

2009-05-31T19:50:00.003-04:00

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.

May Publishing Notes

2009-04-30T10:02:00.007-04:00

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.

April Publishing Notes

2009-03-31T18:59:00.003-04:00

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.

March Publishing Notes

2009-02-28T07:59:00.003-05:00

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.

February Publishing Notes

2009-01-31T08:34:00.005-05:00

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.

January 2009 Publishing Notes

2008-12-31T17:27:00.005-05:00

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.

December Publishing Notes

2008-11-30T10:52:00.000-05:00

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.

A Bookstore Tourist

2008-11-13T07:24:00.001-05:00

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.

November Publishing Notes

2008-10-31T10:32:00.001-04:00

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.

October Publishing Notes

2008-09-30T17:10:00.000-04:00

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.

Market News

2008-09-09T13:22:00.000-04:00

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.

September Publishing Notes

2008-08-29T18:57:00.008-04:00

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: 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.

August Publishing Notes

2008-07-31T21:59:00.001-04:00

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.

July Publishing Notes

2008-06-29T15:59:00.003-04:00

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.

June Publishing Notes

2008-05-30T07:13:00.002-04:00

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.

May Publishing Notes

2008-04-30T11:12:00.004-04:00

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.

April Publishing Notes

2008-04-01T12:54:00.000-04:00

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.

March Publishing Notes

2008-03-02T11:05:00.002-05:00

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. **

February Publishing Notes

2008-02-01T10:12:00.001-05:00

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.

January Publishing Notes

2008-01-01T14:17:00.000-05:00

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.

December Publishing Notes

2007-11-30T14:02:00.000-05:00

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.

November Publishing Notes

2007-10-31T10:14:00.000-04:00

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.