February Publishing Notes

The buzz: The New York Daily News reported Elton John is interested in bringing an Australian stage musical version of the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to Broadway and London theaters. Tea and Sympathy, the Robert Anderson play about a lonely, misunderstood boarding-school boy that opened on Broadway in 1953, will be revived for a limited engagement run by the off-Broadway Keen Company in March. Author and actor Alan Cumming married his American boyfriend, illustrator Grant Shaffer, in a civil ceremony in London in January. Lily Tomlin will star in a comedy series for HBO titled 12 Miles of Bad Road, which will also feature author and actor Leslie Jordan as Tomlin’s cousin. The cable channel Logo is releasing a full-length theatrical film based on its hit series Noah's Arc. Author and blogger Andrew Sullivan has left the Time building and is now blogging for The Atlantic, where he is also now a senior editor. Dina Matos McGreevey, the estranged wife of former New Jersey governor James E. McGreevey, is writing a memoir titled Silent Partner, scheduled to be published this spring by Hyperion Books. STARbooks Press will be carving an erotic horror niche with two upcoming books by new gay authors: The Werewolves of Central Park by Tom Cardamone and Closet Monsters by Daniel W. Kelly. Author Kirk Read will be blogging about his adventures with the 31-city tour of the Sex Workers Art Show at http://www.queercity.com/news/columnists/details/9. Bantam Dell has acquired Eden Bradley's The Principles of Lust, about a sociology professor who teaches a course in Alternative Sexuality, but never dares to explore her own desires until she begins an affair with one of her students; along with Exotica: Seven Days of Kama Sutra & Nine Days of Arabian Nights, about two women who reaffirm an old friendship while they each explore their most secret desires at an exclusive fantasy resort for women And in the wake of the AMS bankruptcy filing, Avalon Publishing Group, which includes Carroll & Graf, will be acquired by the Perseus Book Group. Perseus is also offering distribution deals to the former PGW clients, several of which are independent GLBT publishers.

Kudos: Naomi Alderman was a finalist for the new $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, administered by the Jewish Book Council, for her novel Disobedience. Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Robert Trachetenberg, Esera Tuaolo, Wayne Hoffman, and Kate Bornstein made the “Favorite Authors List” of Derek & Romaine’s Queer Favorite Awards on Sirius satellite radio’s GLBT station OutQ. Raymond Luczak is the winner of the Project QueerLit II contest for his novel Men with Their Hands. The finalists were My Hero: A Wild Boy’s Tale by Tristram Burden, Initiate’s Rise by Debra Hyde, Mono No Aware (The Sorrow of Things) by Bianca Jarvis, The Fluidity of Angels by Jeff Leavell, and Loop by Scott Waller. Louis Bayard has been nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel by the Mystery Writers of America for The Pale Blue Eye. Among the National Book Critics Circle finalists for Memoir/Autobiography are Alison Bechdel for Fun Home, Daniel Mendelsohn for The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, and Teri Jentz for Strange Piece of Paradise. Bruce Bawer was nominated in the Criticism category for While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within. The American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards are: Barbara Gittings Literature Award: Andrew Holleran, Grief; Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic; The Stonewall honor books in literature are: The Manny Files by Christian Burch, The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, Rose of No Man's Land: A Novel by Michelle Tea, A Scarecrow's Bible by Martin Hyatt. The Stonewall honor books in non-fiction are: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino, Gay Power: An American Revolution by David Eisenbach, Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships by William Benemann, Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son: A Memoir by Kevin Jennings. And Melissa Etheridge is an Oscar nominee for the song “I Need to Wake Up” from the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Open calls: Brad Nichols is editing the next edition of Alyson’s Best Gay Love Stories. The theme is “Summer Flings.” Length is 4000 words. Deadline is March 15, 2007. Submit all original stories as a Word document attachment to lovestories@alyson.com. ** Simone Thorne is editing Alyson’s Best Lesbian Love Stories. The theme is also “Summer Flings.” Deadline is March 15, 2007 and submissions should be sent to lovestories@alyson.com. ** Editor Sassafras Lowrey is looking for submissions for BIG & little: An Anthology of Age Play Dynamics, to be published by Nazca Plains Corporation. Word limit is 2500 words. Deadline is May 1, 2007. E-mail submissions to: BIGandlittle_anthology@yahoo.com. ** Submissions are being sought for the anthology ’Tinting the Lens’ in "Trans" Communities to be published by Homofacturs Press. Deadline is May 1, 2007. Submissions can be sent to meforreal@homofactuspress.com. ** Jim McDonough, who runs the Web site http://www.queerwriters.com/, has begun posting links of GLBT writers and writing resources. E-mail him your URL at info@queerwriters.com to post. ** Deadline for the Rauxa Prize is August 15, 2007. The prize honors the best erotic short story published between August 2006 and July 2007. To nominate stories, e-mail submissions to: rauxaprize@yahoo.com.

Book drive: Waltham House, an LGBT group home for youth ages 14-18 in Boston is in need of books. They are looking specifically for books by, about and/or for intersex, transgender, and LGB folks. This includes fiction and non-fiction, chapbooks, biographies, how-to, magazines, comics, zines, films (can only be G, PG or PG-13), cds (spoken word and music). They welcome everything from art and photography books to sex manuals. Contact: Ariel Berman, aberman@thehome.org.