June Publishing Notes

The buzz: The twenty-six year old North Carolina gay newspaper The Front Page has been bought by the Charlotte based Q Notes. Former editor and publisher Jim Baxter will continue to work out of the back office of the White Rabbit bookstore in Raleigh and write for the expanded Q Notes. One of San Francisco’s best bookstores, Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, is looking for a buyer. Creative Visions, the former Greenwich Village bookstore, is now open in cyberspace at http://www.gaypleasures.com/. Everybody Reads, a new bookstore in Lansing, Michigan, that opened in May, carries general books, but owner Scott Harris focuses on "what he calls underserved groups, such as single parents, minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and children," the Lansing State Journal reported. The store offers a free meeting space and a book exchange. A grand opening is scheduled for Saturday, June 17. Everybody Reads is located at 2019 E. Michigan Ave., Lansing, Mich. 48912; 517-346-9900. The Minnesota-based Graywolf Press, which has published many distinguished queer writers and books, is opening a Manhattan office. Here! Networks bought H.I.M. (Hyperion Interactive Media) which runs a collection of more than 20 portals and Web sites, including LesbiaNation.com and GayWired.com. The gay cable channel Q Television has gone dark. Queen Latifah has signed to play an AIDS Activist in the upcoming movie Life Support, which focuses on the impact of HIV in the African American community. Author Keith Boykin is now a host of the BET television show My Two Cents. Simon and Schuster will publish Bil Wright’s new young adult title, When the Black Girl Sings. An author’s note now appears in the paperback edition of My Friend Leonard, James Frey’s gay friendly sequel to A Million Little Pieces. (“To call this book pure nonfiction would be inaccurate," the author writes. "It is a combination of fact and fiction, real and imagined events.") DC Comics is resurrecting Batwoman as a lesbian. The Color Purple: A Memory Book, an illustrated companion to the Broadway musical, with a foreward by Oprah Winfrey, will be published by Carroll & Graf this fall. The opera version of Angels in America will make its American debut in June in Boston. Terence McNally, who has the gay-themed play Some Men on the Manhattan horizon, is also writing the book for a musical version of the film Catch Me If You Can. The Broadway Lestat is dust, but Elton John is adapting Pedro Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as a musical. And Andrew Davies has adapted Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty for BBC TV.

Pink Ink: The Publishing Triangle’s Pink Ink gets underway in Manhattan on June 10th and 11th. For a full listing of workshops, panel discussions, readings, and book fairs, visit the Triangle’s Web site at www.publishingtriangle.org.

Kudos: Lee Lynch, Steven Saylor, J.M. Redmann, and the Harrington Park Press were inaugurated into the annual Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame during the literary festival in May in New Orleans. Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City was the winner of Britain’s Big Gay Read. The winners of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation grants in playwriting are: First Prize ($1,000): David Alan Moore of Chicago IL for In Times of War and David Brendan Hopes of Asheville, NC for St. Patrick’s Well and Anna Livia: Lucky in her Bridges; Second Prize ($500): Jordan Harrison of Bainbridge Island, WA for Act a Lady. Third Prize ($250): Anton Dudley of Brooklyn, NY for The Lake’s End, Brian Quirk of New York, NY for Mapplethorpe: The Opening, James Still of Venice, CA for Iron Kisses, and Brian Sloan of New York, NY for WTC View. Richard McCann’s novel, Mother of Sorrows, was the winner of Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. Among the nominees for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play was Lisa Kron for Well. And in May the Obies presented playwright Eric Bentley with a Lifetime Achievement award.

Publishing Triangle Awards: The 18th Annual Publishing Triangle Awards, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in 2005, were presented May 11th at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Historian Karla Jay received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the longtime independent bookstore in Greenwich Village, received a special Leadership Award. The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction went to Tania Katan for My One-Night Stand with Cancer (Alyson Books). The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction went to Martin Moran for The Tricky Part (Beacon Press). The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry went to Richard Siken for Crush (Yale University Press). The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry went to Jane Miller for A Palace of Pearls (Copper Canyon). The Ferro-Grumley Awards for Gay Men’s Fiction went to Barry McCrea for The First Verse (Carroll & Graf). The Lesbian Fiction Award went to Patricia Grossman for Brian in Three Seasons (Permanent Press). This year the Publishing Triangle inaugurated a new literary award, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Mack Friedman was the winner for Setting the Lawn on Fire (University of Wisconsin Press). And the Robert Chesley Foundation presented a Lifetime Achievement Award to Megan Terry and an Emerging Artist award to Kathleen Warnock.

Lambda Literary Awards: The 18th Annual Lambda Literary Awards were presented May 18th in Washington, D.C. The winners were: Anthology: Freedom in the Village: 25 Years of Black, Gay Men's Writing, ed. E. Lynn Harris (Carroll & Graf). Belles Lettres: The Tricky Part by Martin Moran (Beacon Press) . Biography: February House by Sherrill Tippins (Houghton Mifflin). Children's/Young Adult: Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai (Tundra Books). Erotica: Stolen Moments: Erotic Interludes 2, edited by Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe (Bold Strokes). Gay Men's Debut Fiction: You Are Not the One by Vestal McIntyre (Carroll & Graf). Gay Men's Fiction: The Sluts by Dennis Cooper (Carroll & Graf). Gay Men's Mystery: One of These Things is Not Like the Others by D. Travers Scott (Suspect Thoughts). Gay Men's Poetry: Crush by Richard Siken (Yale). Humor: Don't Get too Comfortable by David Rakoff (Doubleday). Lesbian Debut Fiction: The Beautifully Worthless by Ali Leibegott (Suspect Thoughts). Lesbian Fiction: Babyji by Abha Dawesar (Anchor Books) and Wild Dogs by Helen Humphreys (W. W. Norton). Lesbian Mystery: Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders by Alicia Gaspar de Alba (Arte Publico). Lesbian Poetry: Directed by Desire: Collected Poems by June Jordan (Copper Canyon). LGBT Studies: When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David by Susan Ackerman. Nonfiction: Words to Our Now by Thomas Glave (Minnesota). Romance: Silent Thunder by Radclyffe (Bold Strokes). Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror: Daughters of an Emerald Dusk by Katherine Forrest (Alyson Books). Spirituality: Qu(e)erying Evangelism by Cheri DiNovo (The Pilgrim Press). Transgender/GenderQueer: Choir Boy by Charlie Anders (Soft Skull Press). Congressman Barney Frank received the Bridge Builder Award, but because of voting during the last session of Congress, he was unable to attend. His legislative aide, Joseph Racalto, accepted on his behalf.

Open calls: Chroma, the queer British literary journal, is sponsoring an International Short Story and Poetry Competition. Deadline is September 10, 2006. For more details visit the Web site chromajournal.co.uk. RedBone Press seeks well-written personal stories by black lesbians on the subject of coming out while married to a man. Deadline is November 3, 2006. E-mail redbonepress@yahoo.com for more details. Amie M. Evans and Trebor Healey are editing an anthology on being Queer and Catholic for Haworth Press scheduled for mid-2007. Deadline for submissions is November 1, 2006 and should be sent to Amie M. Evans/Trebor Healey, 33 Campbell Street, Woburn, Ma 01801. Lorie Selke is looking for stories for Tough Girls: Down and Dirty Dyke Erotica Volume 2. Deadline is October 1, 2006. E-mail selk@io.com for more details. Lynn Jamneck of New Zealand is looking for stories for her anthology of lesbian sleuths and the supernatural. Submission period is through November 2006. Query superantho@gmail for more details. JoSelle Vanderhooft is looking for stories for Tiresias Revisited: Magical Tales for Transfolk. Deadline is October 1, 2006. Mail stories to: Tiresias Revisited, c/o JoSelle Vanderhooft, PO Box 1921, Sandy, Utah 84091-1921. Yaoi Press is currently looking for comic book scripts for their adults only Hentai series. For more details visit www.yaoipress.com.

Passages: Jay Presson Allen, who wrote the screen adaptation of Cabaret as well as the play Tru, the one-man show about Truman Capote, died May 1, 2006, of a stroke, at her home in New York City. She was 84. Her other screenplays include Deathtrap, Marnie, Travels with My Aunt, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Forty Carats, and Funny Lady. She was married to producer Lewis Allen from 1955 to 2003.