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/.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
March Publishing Notes
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.
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.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
February Publishing Notes
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.
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.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
January 2010 Publishing Notes
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Favorites of the Year
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.
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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
December Publishing Notes
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).
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).
Sunday, November 01, 2009
November Publishing Notes
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.
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.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
October Publishing Notes
The buzz: In 2011, Barrett Books will publish Chaz Bono's memoir Coming Clean: The Truth About Becoming a Man, chronicling the physical, emotional, and relational aspects of his decision to transition from a female to male, told in a day by day account of the process, exploring the 12-month period that will be the bulk of his transformation from his decision to take male hormones and how they affect him, to surgical procedures, through the end result, and also covering his father's death and his foray into prescription drug addiction.
Next fall Flux will re-issue John Donovan’s 1969 YA novel I’ll Get There: It Better Be Worth the Trip, widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality. The book centers on a 13-year-boy whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy.
In 2010, Hansen will publish John DiLeo's Tennessee Williams and Company: The Essential Screen Actors, looking at eleven screen actors in Tennessee Williams' films and explores their artistic connections, some of them flat-out failures, between these screen actors and their Tennessee Williams roles.
Alyson will publish a new installment of Neil Plakcy’s Hawaiian detective series featuring a gay police detective, titled Mahu Blood.
Rebel Satori Press has released The Elijah Tree, a novel by Cynthea Masson, about a young boy who is birthed in the fire of a mystical vision.
Cleis will publish Christopher Pierce's Biker Boys: Gay Erotica Stories in July 2010. Next summer Cleis will also publish Elizabeth Ozar's The Big Gay Breakup Book, a guide to getting over him or her and moving on to a highly successful relationship, offering her own thoughtful and insightful to one of the hardest of life's passages - the end of a relationship.
Seal Press will publish Tina Fakhrid-Deen’s Colage’s The LGBTQ Family Handbook, a resource for kids of gay, lesbian, trans, and queer parents -- full of invaluable questions and answers from kids living in all varieties of alternative family situations.
Simon Pulse will publish Brian Farrey's Chasers, about two teens who join a group called 'chasers' which promises them in-depth lessons about gay history and a place where they'll be accepted; but when the group's lessons morph into violent encounters and dangerous sexual pursuits, the young men must decide if their lives are really worth it.
In June 2010, Simon Spotlight will publish Tim Gunn's Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life's Little Instructions for Making It Work, applying old-world values to modern situations, from the lost art of etiquette to practical advice, showing how to navigate life and unflappably rise to any occasion, to Patrick Price at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, for publication in June 2010, by Peter Steinberg at The Steinberg Agency (world).
Lethe Press has released its second annual edition of Wilde Stories: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction featuring stories by Sven Davisson, Alex Jeffers, and Lee Thomas. Lethe has also released the nonfiction book Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay & Lesbian Ghosts, a guidebook by Ken Summers of gay and lesbian ghosts and haunted gay places.
Wayne Courtois will be signing copies of Report from Winter on October 3 at 1:00 pm at Barnes & Noble, at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Lester Srong and David Waggoner will be signing copies of their book XY on XY on October 6 at 8 pm at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 26 Wooster Street, in Manhattan.
Paul Bens and Ann Somerville will read at A Different Light in San Francisco on October 30 at 7:30pm.
The newest issue of Icarus, the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, has been released and features work by authors Jeff Mann, Lee Thomas, Alex Jeffers, and Chad Helder.
Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse was runner up for Best Bookstore on Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta list.
Fire & Ink III: Cotillion, a festival for LGBTQ writers of African descent, will happen Oct. 8-11, 2009 in Austin, TX at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th St. in downtown Austin, with additional Cotillion events at the Blanton Museum and the Historic Victory Grill, among others. A complete listing of presenters can be found at http://2009.fireandink.org/.
The 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 13th through 16th in New Orleans. Among the authors slated to attend are Ann Bannon, Michael Nava, and Tim Miller.
Christopher Rice has resigned as President of the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Katherine Forrest has stepped into the role on an interim basis. Alyson publisher Don Weise has also joined the Board of Trustees of the literary organization. Tony Valenzuela has been appointed as interim Executive Director, replacing outgoing Charles Flowers, while the Foundation continues its search for candidates for the position. Richard Labonté is the administrator for the Lambda Literary awards. The organization’s revised mission statement and awards guidelines have been posted to the Web site.
The Publishing Triangle has published their award guidelines for books published in 2009 at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp.
A staged reading of The Age of Innocence, a musical co-created by Walter Holland and Ted Kociolak, will be held at the York Theater in Manhattan on October 20th at 7:30PM. For details and reservations visit. http://www.yorktheatre.org/New%20Pages/Readings.html.
The theater department at the University of Wyoming at Laramie will stage a reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later on Oct. 12, an epilogue to the Tetonic Theater Project play, joining more than 120 theaters across the nation and overseas that will have readings on the same day.
The new season line up for the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs includes Candy and Dorothy by David Johnston, Dudes by Dan Clancy, Two Married Men by Arch Brown, Mensky’s Burlyesque conceived by Larry Lazzaro, and A Perfect Relationship by Doric Wilson. More details at: http://www.thornytheater.com/
As part of its 2010-11 season dedicated to the work of Tony Kushner, Manhattan’s Signature Theater Company will mount the first New York revival of Angels in America.
Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, returns to Broadway next spring with Dame Edna: It’s All About Me.
Nicole Kidman will star in a film adaptation of David Ebershoff’s novel, The Danish Girl, about painter Einar Wegener, the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Leopardrama Limited has optioned the film rights of Richard McCann's Mother of Sorrows.
Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are partnering to adapt Augusten Burrough’s novel Sellevision for NBC.
Kudos: On the shortlist for the Booker prize is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire received the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Topp Twins, a film about the New Zealand lesbian sister singing-comedy duo of the same name, received the audience award for best documentary.
Colin Firth took the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of a gay professor in A Single Man, the new film from Tom Ford based on the Christopher Isherwood novel. A Single Man also won the Queer Golden Lion, an award independent of the official festival, for films with gay themes or content.
Among the inductees to the new Canadian Queer Hall of Fame was Janine Fuller, Little Sister’s bookstore manager and author.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is looking for fiction and memoir for Beautiful Boys: New Gay Fiction, to be published by Cleis Press in Fall 2010. Deadline is February 1, 2010. Payment: $50-$75 plus two contributor copies. Word length: 6,000 maximum. Submissions can be sent to: cleisbeautifulboys@gmail.com, in .doc or .rtf format. Include real name/address/50-word bio.
Labonté is also seeking submissions Best Gay Erotica 2011 to be guest judged by Kevin Killian. Deadline is April 1, 2010. Payment $50-$75, plus two contributor copies. Queries and submissions to: mailto:bge2010@gmail.com.
Labonté is also seeking fiction for Best Gay Romance 2011. Deadline is May 1, 2010. Payment is $50 to $75 plus two contributor copies. Include real name/ address/ 50-word bio, to bgr2011@gmail.com.
Gayfest NYC is accepting submissions for the Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City next year. Deadline is October 31, 2009. For more details visit: Gayfest.com.
Next fall Flux will re-issue John Donovan’s 1969 YA novel I’ll Get There: It Better Be Worth the Trip, widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality. The book centers on a 13-year-boy whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy.
In 2010, Hansen will publish John DiLeo's Tennessee Williams and Company: The Essential Screen Actors, looking at eleven screen actors in Tennessee Williams' films and explores their artistic connections, some of them flat-out failures, between these screen actors and their Tennessee Williams roles.
Alyson will publish a new installment of Neil Plakcy’s Hawaiian detective series featuring a gay police detective, titled Mahu Blood.
Rebel Satori Press has released The Elijah Tree, a novel by Cynthea Masson, about a young boy who is birthed in the fire of a mystical vision.
Cleis will publish Christopher Pierce's Biker Boys: Gay Erotica Stories in July 2010. Next summer Cleis will also publish Elizabeth Ozar's The Big Gay Breakup Book, a guide to getting over him or her and moving on to a highly successful relationship, offering her own thoughtful and insightful to one of the hardest of life's passages - the end of a relationship.
Seal Press will publish Tina Fakhrid-Deen’s Colage’s The LGBTQ Family Handbook, a resource for kids of gay, lesbian, trans, and queer parents -- full of invaluable questions and answers from kids living in all varieties of alternative family situations.
Simon Pulse will publish Brian Farrey's Chasers, about two teens who join a group called 'chasers' which promises them in-depth lessons about gay history and a place where they'll be accepted; but when the group's lessons morph into violent encounters and dangerous sexual pursuits, the young men must decide if their lives are really worth it.
In June 2010, Simon Spotlight will publish Tim Gunn's Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life's Little Instructions for Making It Work, applying old-world values to modern situations, from the lost art of etiquette to practical advice, showing how to navigate life and unflappably rise to any occasion, to Patrick Price at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, for publication in June 2010, by Peter Steinberg at The Steinberg Agency (world).
Lethe Press has released its second annual edition of Wilde Stories: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction featuring stories by Sven Davisson, Alex Jeffers, and Lee Thomas. Lethe has also released the nonfiction book Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay & Lesbian Ghosts, a guidebook by Ken Summers of gay and lesbian ghosts and haunted gay places.
Wayne Courtois will be signing copies of Report from Winter on October 3 at 1:00 pm at Barnes & Noble, at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Lester Srong and David Waggoner will be signing copies of their book XY on XY on October 6 at 8 pm at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 26 Wooster Street, in Manhattan.
Paul Bens and Ann Somerville will read at A Different Light in San Francisco on October 30 at 7:30pm.
The newest issue of Icarus, the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, has been released and features work by authors Jeff Mann, Lee Thomas, Alex Jeffers, and Chad Helder.
Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse was runner up for Best Bookstore on Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta list.
Fire & Ink III: Cotillion, a festival for LGBTQ writers of African descent, will happen Oct. 8-11, 2009 in Austin, TX at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th St. in downtown Austin, with additional Cotillion events at the Blanton Museum and the Historic Victory Grill, among others. A complete listing of presenters can be found at http://2009.fireandink.org/.
The 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 13th through 16th in New Orleans. Among the authors slated to attend are Ann Bannon, Michael Nava, and Tim Miller.
Christopher Rice has resigned as President of the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Katherine Forrest has stepped into the role on an interim basis. Alyson publisher Don Weise has also joined the Board of Trustees of the literary organization. Tony Valenzuela has been appointed as interim Executive Director, replacing outgoing Charles Flowers, while the Foundation continues its search for candidates for the position. Richard Labonté is the administrator for the Lambda Literary awards. The organization’s revised mission statement and awards guidelines have been posted to the Web site.
The Publishing Triangle has published their award guidelines for books published in 2009 at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp.
A staged reading of The Age of Innocence, a musical co-created by Walter Holland and Ted Kociolak, will be held at the York Theater in Manhattan on October 20th at 7:30PM. For details and reservations visit. http://www.yorktheatre.org/New%20Pages/Readings.html.
The theater department at the University of Wyoming at Laramie will stage a reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later on Oct. 12, an epilogue to the Tetonic Theater Project play, joining more than 120 theaters across the nation and overseas that will have readings on the same day.
The new season line up for the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs includes Candy and Dorothy by David Johnston, Dudes by Dan Clancy, Two Married Men by Arch Brown, Mensky’s Burlyesque conceived by Larry Lazzaro, and A Perfect Relationship by Doric Wilson. More details at: http://www.thornytheater.com/
As part of its 2010-11 season dedicated to the work of Tony Kushner, Manhattan’s Signature Theater Company will mount the first New York revival of Angels in America.
Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, returns to Broadway next spring with Dame Edna: It’s All About Me.
Nicole Kidman will star in a film adaptation of David Ebershoff’s novel, The Danish Girl, about painter Einar Wegener, the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Leopardrama Limited has optioned the film rights of Richard McCann's Mother of Sorrows.
Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are partnering to adapt Augusten Burrough’s novel Sellevision for NBC.
Kudos: On the shortlist for the Booker prize is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire received the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Topp Twins, a film about the New Zealand lesbian sister singing-comedy duo of the same name, received the audience award for best documentary.
Colin Firth took the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of a gay professor in A Single Man, the new film from Tom Ford based on the Christopher Isherwood novel. A Single Man also won the Queer Golden Lion, an award independent of the official festival, for films with gay themes or content.
Among the inductees to the new Canadian Queer Hall of Fame was Janine Fuller, Little Sister’s bookstore manager and author.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is looking for fiction and memoir for Beautiful Boys: New Gay Fiction, to be published by Cleis Press in Fall 2010. Deadline is February 1, 2010. Payment: $50-$75 plus two contributor copies. Word length: 6,000 maximum. Submissions can be sent to: cleisbeautifulboys@gmail.com, in .doc or .rtf format. Include real name/address/50-word bio.
Labonté is also seeking submissions Best Gay Erotica 2011 to be guest judged by Kevin Killian. Deadline is April 1, 2010. Payment $50-$75, plus two contributor copies. Queries and submissions to: mailto:bge2010@gmail.com.
Labonté is also seeking fiction for Best Gay Romance 2011. Deadline is May 1, 2010. Payment is $50 to $75 plus two contributor copies. Include real name/ address/ 50-word bio, to bgr2011@gmail.com.
Gayfest NYC is accepting submissions for the Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City next year. Deadline is October 31, 2009. For more details visit: Gayfest.com.
Monday, August 31, 2009
September Publishing Notes
The buzz: The schedule for the 2009 Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, November 3-8, 2009, has been posted at http://www.atlqueerlitfest.com/. Events include readings by Andrew Beierle, Catherine Lundoff, Collin Kelley, Franklin Abbott, Stacyann Chin, and Manil Suri, workshops with Regie Cabico, Kit Yan, Marty McConnell, and Ami Mattison, and an exhibition of photographs and ephemera featured in the book Gay and Lesbian Atlanta with comments by co-author Wesley Chenault. The AQLF's partnership with the Decatur Book Festival takes place over Labor Day Weekend, September 4-6, in Decatur, GA. Featured authors includes Sharon Sanders, Franklin Abbott, Z Egloff, Shawn Stuart Ruff, Collin Kelley, Megan Volpert, Amy King, C. Dale Young, James Allen Hall, Radclyffe, Kim Baldwin and J.M. Redmann.
The Lambda Literary Foundation will hold a Read-a-Thon Set November 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia to benefit both the Foundation and the bookstore. LGBT authors will read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes total for each author.
Charles Flowers, the Executive Director of The Lambda Literary Foundation will leave his position in the fall.
Broward County in Florida is proposing to balance its budget by slashing 30% of its cultural grants, a move that could impair Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall Library & Archives. The Stonewall Library & Archives houses over 18,000 LGBT-related books and audio-visual materials, as well as 5,000 historical LGBT items, many focusing on the history of gays in the South.
A West Bend, Illinois couple has asked that certain books be moved to a restricted section of the West Bend Community Memorial Library community library and that the Library Board balance its collection of books about homosexuality with books that affirm traditional “heterosexual perspectives.” A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays recently issued a statement condemning the library for continuing to neglect books by ex-gay authors. On June 2, members of the West Bend Library Board voted unanimously not to move or restrict any of the books. Meanwhile, the terms of four Library Board members were not renewed. Four men subsequently filed a lawsuit, stating certain books caused them pain, and called for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned.
Greenwood Press has issued a two-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
The Outer Alliance, a new organization, has been set up in support of LGBT advocacy in the Sci Fi/Fantasy community. More details can be found at http://outeralliance.wordpress.com/.
Kensington will publish Michael Salvatore's Between Boyfriends in June 2010.
Country Valley Press has just published a limited edition hand-sewn chapbook by Jeffery Beam of a long poem entitled, An Invocation.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Michael Cunningham is working on his latest novel, his first in four years, titled Olympia. Olympia follows an art dealer who is drawn increasingly toward his wife’s younger brother, who reminds him of the couple’s younger years.
In October, Belhue Press will publish The Manly Art of Seduction by Perry Brass.
This fall, Rebel Satori Press will publish D. Travers Scott new story collection, Love Hard.
In 2010 It Books will publish RuPaul's Workin’ It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style!, a style guide and confidence manifesto.
Queerty noted that there are reportedly two finished scripts of Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris’s first novel -- one which focuses on the college years and the other on the New York City years of characters Raymond, Nicole and Basil. The late author was in Los Angeles meeting with producers shortly before he died. Several of Harris’s friends — including Eric Jerome Dickey and Kimberla Lawson Roby — will meet with local book clubs in his place this fall.
Mike Nichols will direct Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.
Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly in talks with Universal Pictures to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice’s popular trilogy of novels The Vampire Chronicles.
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cages Aux Folles is headed to Broadway and will open in a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater on April 18, 2010.
Kudos: Among with recipients of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honor writers of exceptional talent, was Chris Adrian who received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for his short story collection A Better Angel. Among the writers receiving 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships were Chris Adrian and Stacey D’Erasmo.
Open Calls: Candace Walsh and Laura Andre are seeking submissions for And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men For Women to be published by Seal Press in 2010. Deadline is December 1, 2009. More details can be found at andthenitshifted@gmail.com and http://sites.google.com/site/andthenitshifted
Applications are now being accepted for the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award awarded annually at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. The awards, in their fourth year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each will be made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Authors may nominate themselves or another candidate by midnight October 31, 2009. For more details visit: http://www.sasfest.org/.
Also of Note: Copies of The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of my gay-themed ghost stories, published by Lethe Press, is now available through your favorite bookseller.
The gorgeous cover painting was done by Richard Taddei, a painter I have long admired. If you want to see more of Richard’s work, you can find him online at http://www.richardtaddei.com/.
Vince Liaguno, co-editor of the Stoker-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, has posted his generous review on line at Dark Scribe Magazine, which he edits and publishes. Read it at: http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/
And I am also doing a reading on October 29th in Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore with two other talented writers (and friends) who have new books coming out -- Tom Cardamone, author of Pumpkin Teeth: Stories, and Sean Meriwether, author of The Silent Hustler. Here’s the details on the event.
Tricks and Treats: Gays, Ghosts, and Goblins
Thursday, October 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Admission is free and all book sales proceeds benefit people living with HIV.
The Lambda Literary Foundation will hold a Read-a-Thon Set November 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia to benefit both the Foundation and the bookstore. LGBT authors will read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes total for each author.
Charles Flowers, the Executive Director of The Lambda Literary Foundation will leave his position in the fall.
Broward County in Florida is proposing to balance its budget by slashing 30% of its cultural grants, a move that could impair Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall Library & Archives. The Stonewall Library & Archives houses over 18,000 LGBT-related books and audio-visual materials, as well as 5,000 historical LGBT items, many focusing on the history of gays in the South.
A West Bend, Illinois couple has asked that certain books be moved to a restricted section of the West Bend Community Memorial Library community library and that the Library Board balance its collection of books about homosexuality with books that affirm traditional “heterosexual perspectives.” A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays recently issued a statement condemning the library for continuing to neglect books by ex-gay authors. On June 2, members of the West Bend Library Board voted unanimously not to move or restrict any of the books. Meanwhile, the terms of four Library Board members were not renewed. Four men subsequently filed a lawsuit, stating certain books caused them pain, and called for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned.
Greenwood Press has issued a two-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
The Outer Alliance, a new organization, has been set up in support of LGBT advocacy in the Sci Fi/Fantasy community. More details can be found at http://outeralliance.wordpress.com/.
Kensington will publish Michael Salvatore's Between Boyfriends in June 2010.
Country Valley Press has just published a limited edition hand-sewn chapbook by Jeffery Beam of a long poem entitled, An Invocation.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Michael Cunningham is working on his latest novel, his first in four years, titled Olympia. Olympia follows an art dealer who is drawn increasingly toward his wife’s younger brother, who reminds him of the couple’s younger years.
In October, Belhue Press will publish The Manly Art of Seduction by Perry Brass.
This fall, Rebel Satori Press will publish D. Travers Scott new story collection, Love Hard.
In 2010 It Books will publish RuPaul's Workin’ It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style!, a style guide and confidence manifesto.
Queerty noted that there are reportedly two finished scripts of Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris’s first novel -- one which focuses on the college years and the other on the New York City years of characters Raymond, Nicole and Basil. The late author was in Los Angeles meeting with producers shortly before he died. Several of Harris’s friends — including Eric Jerome Dickey and Kimberla Lawson Roby — will meet with local book clubs in his place this fall.
Mike Nichols will direct Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.
Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly in talks with Universal Pictures to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice’s popular trilogy of novels The Vampire Chronicles.
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cages Aux Folles is headed to Broadway and will open in a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater on April 18, 2010.
Kudos: Among with recipients of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honor writers of exceptional talent, was Chris Adrian who received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for his short story collection A Better Angel. Among the writers receiving 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships were Chris Adrian and Stacey D’Erasmo.
Open Calls: Candace Walsh and Laura Andre are seeking submissions for And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men For Women to be published by Seal Press in 2010. Deadline is December 1, 2009. More details can be found at andthenitshifted@gmail.com and http://sites.google.com/site/andthenitshifted
Applications are now being accepted for the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award awarded annually at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. The awards, in their fourth year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each will be made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Authors may nominate themselves or another candidate by midnight October 31, 2009. For more details visit: http://www.sasfest.org/.
Also of Note: Copies of The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of my gay-themed ghost stories, published by Lethe Press, is now available through your favorite bookseller.
The gorgeous cover painting was done by Richard Taddei, a painter I have long admired. If you want to see more of Richard’s work, you can find him online at http://www.richardtaddei.com/.
Vince Liaguno, co-editor of the Stoker-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, has posted his generous review on line at Dark Scribe Magazine, which he edits and publishes. Read it at: http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/
And I am also doing a reading on October 29th in Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore with two other talented writers (and friends) who have new books coming out -- Tom Cardamone, author of Pumpkin Teeth: Stories, and Sean Meriwether, author of The Silent Hustler. Here’s the details on the event.
Tricks and Treats: Gays, Ghosts, and Goblins
Thursday, October 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Admission is free and all book sales proceeds benefit people living with HIV.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
July Publishing Notes
The buzz: Screen Gems has acquired the rights to Beautiful Girl by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham, a story that "concerns a shy but brainy high school girl who returns for senior year after having slimmed down six dress sizes. She finds herself flirting with the handsome English lit teacher, but the mutual crush turns deadly when the teacher's obsession with the student compels him to exact maniacal revenge on everyone who was cruel to her."
Keith Orr, co-owner of the Common Language Bookstore, the GLBTQ bookstore in Ann Arbor, sent an email to customers saying that the store was not making enough sales to support itself and needed help from customers and the community. Orr and his partner Martin Contreras have been subsidizing the store with the personal savings and with money from another business they own the aut Bar.
Writer Patrick Gale will be reading from his 2009 novel The Whole Day Through and answering questions from the audience at the Dutch Bookshop Vrolijk, Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam: July 11th at 5 p.m. More details at www.vrolijk.nu/homo-boek/book-patrick-gale-whole-day-through.html.
Alyson will publish Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right in the Spring of 2010.
Alyson will also publish Ryan Field's An Officer and His Gentleman, a gay erotic romance about a small-town aspiring chef and his military lover, and EM Lynley's Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells, a gay erotic romance about a New York reporter who travels to Texas to cover the story of a real-life "runaway bride," only to fall in love with the groom and discover the bride's shocking secret.
Here Networks has completed a merger with PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Holdings include the Advocate magazine, Here Studios and Here Films. Other assets include a television company and online properties Gay.com and Planetout.com.
Kudos: Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, an anthology of queer horror tales edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology from the Horror Writers of America.
Jade Donigan of Ponderay, ID, Hannah Kapp-Klote of Lawrence, KS, and Calen Winn of Vashon, WA, are the Queer Foundation Scholors for 2009-2010. Each student received a $1,000 scholarship for study at the college of their choice.
Nicola Griffith and Scott Cranin have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Open Calls: Todd Gregory is accepting submissions for an anthology of erotic gay vampire tales titled Blood Sacraments, to be published by Bold Strokes Books in October 2010. Deadline is October 1, 2009. Submissions must be mailed to: Todd Gregory, c/o Greg Herren, 5500 Prytania Street #215, New Orleans, LA 70115. Questions can be emailed to gregwrites@gmail.com.
Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both print and web versions. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations. For more details visit: http://www.maryliterary.blogspot.com/
The Queer Foundation Scholar, an electronic newsletter published in March and August, is looking for essays from undergraduate or graduate students. Photographs and graphic art are also welcome if they are part of a creative work. If accepted, authors of submissions will receive $100 paid toward tuition and fees at their college or university. Submissions may be sent to the editor at any time to rverzasconi@msn.com.
“The Man in the Mirror” in Icarus: My ghost story, “The Man in the Mirror,” is in the first issue of Icarus, a new gay speculative fiction magazine, edited by Steve Berman, which also featuring work by Jeff Mann, Joel Lane, and Tom Cardamone. Icarus is a full-color quarterly, devoted to tales of gay fantasy, horror, science-fiction, and “everything else weird that falls through the cracks.” Craig Gidney is the assistant editor, Toby Johnson is the graphic designer, and Steve Berman and Lethe Press are the publishing forces behind the new magazine.
The single issue price of Icarus is $13 plus postage at http://lethepress.magcloud.com/. To order a year's subscription (4 issues), send $50 via Paypal to lethepress@aol.com. Subscription price includes free shipping and subscribers will receive a gratis copy of the latest edition of Wilde Stories, Lethe’s annual anthology of the year's best gay speculative fiction, with their 2nd issue of Icarus. Electronic editions of Icarus are also available. Contact lethepress@aol.com for more information.
Keith Orr, co-owner of the Common Language Bookstore, the GLBTQ bookstore in Ann Arbor, sent an email to customers saying that the store was not making enough sales to support itself and needed help from customers and the community. Orr and his partner Martin Contreras have been subsidizing the store with the personal savings and with money from another business they own the aut Bar.
Writer Patrick Gale will be reading from his 2009 novel The Whole Day Through and answering questions from the audience at the Dutch Bookshop Vrolijk, Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam: July 11th at 5 p.m. More details at www.vrolijk.nu/homo-boek/book-patrick-gale-whole-day-through.html.
Alyson will publish Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right in the Spring of 2010.
Alyson will also publish Ryan Field's An Officer and His Gentleman, a gay erotic romance about a small-town aspiring chef and his military lover, and EM Lynley's Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells, a gay erotic romance about a New York reporter who travels to Texas to cover the story of a real-life "runaway bride," only to fall in love with the groom and discover the bride's shocking secret.
Here Networks has completed a merger with PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Holdings include the Advocate magazine, Here Studios and Here Films. Other assets include a television company and online properties Gay.com and Planetout.com.
Kudos: Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, an anthology of queer horror tales edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology from the Horror Writers of America.
Jade Donigan of Ponderay, ID, Hannah Kapp-Klote of Lawrence, KS, and Calen Winn of Vashon, WA, are the Queer Foundation Scholors for 2009-2010. Each student received a $1,000 scholarship for study at the college of their choice.
Nicola Griffith and Scott Cranin have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Open Calls: Todd Gregory is accepting submissions for an anthology of erotic gay vampire tales titled Blood Sacraments, to be published by Bold Strokes Books in October 2010. Deadline is October 1, 2009. Submissions must be mailed to: Todd Gregory, c/o Greg Herren, 5500 Prytania Street #215, New Orleans, LA 70115. Questions can be emailed to gregwrites@gmail.com.
Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both print and web versions. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations. For more details visit: http://www.maryliterary.blogspot.com/
The Queer Foundation Scholar, an electronic newsletter published in March and August, is looking for essays from undergraduate or graduate students. Photographs and graphic art are also welcome if they are part of a creative work. If accepted, authors of submissions will receive $100 paid toward tuition and fees at their college or university. Submissions may be sent to the editor at any time to rverzasconi@msn.com.
“The Man in the Mirror” in Icarus: My ghost story, “The Man in the Mirror,” is in the first issue of Icarus, a new gay speculative fiction magazine, edited by Steve Berman, which also featuring work by Jeff Mann, Joel Lane, and Tom Cardamone. Icarus is a full-color quarterly, devoted to tales of gay fantasy, horror, science-fiction, and “everything else weird that falls through the cracks.” Craig Gidney is the assistant editor, Toby Johnson is the graphic designer, and Steve Berman and Lethe Press are the publishing forces behind the new magazine.
The single issue price of Icarus is $13 plus postage at http://lethepress.magcloud.com/. To order a year's subscription (4 issues), send $50 via Paypal to lethepress@aol.com. Subscription price includes free shipping and subscribers will receive a gratis copy of the latest edition of Wilde Stories, Lethe’s annual anthology of the year's best gay speculative fiction, with their 2nd issue of Icarus. Electronic editions of Icarus are also available. Contact lethepress@aol.com for more information.
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