October Publishing Notes

The buzz: Rosie O’Donohue has made a few more headlines by deciding not to do any interviews to promote her new book Celebrity Detox. Jonathan Plummer, the man who helped author Terry McMillian find her grove and then announced his own, has had his tell-all novel, Balancing Act, banned from an Oakland, California bookstore. The new season of Project Runway, beginning in November, has four openly gay designers in the cast, one who is HIV-positive and penning his memoirs. Dale Peck’s new novel Body Surfing, a dark literary thriller about a race of demons who possess their prey, moving from body to body via sexual release, and the female hunter bent on destroying them, will be published by Atria. Pecan Grove Press has just published playwright David Brendan Hopes’ book of poetry, A Dream of Adonis. Author Dale Lazarov and illustrator Delic Van Loond have launched Fancy, a fantasy adult Web comic at Adultwebcomics.com. The Hourglass Group and New York Theater Workshop is presenting The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, adapted from the 1950s lesbian pulp novels by Ann Bannon. The production runs through October 20th in New York City at The Fourth Street Theater. San Francisco’s Theater Rhinoceros, the nation’s “longest-running professional queer theater company,” is celebrating its thirtieth season this year. The Menier Chocolate Factory Theater in London plans to revive the musical La Cage au Folles as its Christmas show. Sean Penn and Matt Damon are both attached to Gus Van Sant’s film of Harvey Milk, based on Randy Shilt’s book The Mayor of Castro Street.

Cleveland Just Got a Lot Cooler: Greg Wharton and Ian Philips, the fearless duo behind the Suspect Thoughts Press and Web site, have left the Bay Area behind and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where this month they are opening a bookstore at 4903 Clark Avenue. Suspect Thoughts Books will carry books from Suspect Thoughts Press as well as those from other independent and small presses. The new store will be open from 11 am to 7 pm Wednesdays through Sundays and a companion on-line bookstore has also been launched at http://www.alternaqueerbooks.com/. Greg and Ian have also launched a new editorial service to help queer writers, Leonard & Virginia Editorial. More details can be found at http://www.leonardandvirginia.com/.

Kudos: Ed Radtke’s The Speed of Life, a coming-of-age story about a group of youths who steal video cameras and make a film from the pilfered tapes, won the first Queer Lion Award from the Venice Film Festival.

And the Nominees Are: Nominations are now being accepted for the 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards for books published during 2007. New guidelines and a nomination form are available at the Lammy Web site: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/. Deadline is December 1, 2007. The winners will be announced Thursday May 29 in West Hollywood.

Open Calls: Blair Mastbaum and Will Fabro are looking for submission for Cool Thing: Fiction by Gay Writers Under 30 to be published by Running Press in the Fall of 2008. Word limit is 10,000 words. Deadline is November 1, 2007. Send Word documents to: fictionanthology@gmail.com. ** White Crane Books is seeking essays and short fiction for Idol Thoughts: Gay Men and Their Heroes, an anthology to be edited by Bo Young and Steve Berman. Essays should be between 500-1,500 words in length. Fiction submitted should be between 1,000-3,500 words in length. Submissions can be emailed to sberman8@yahoo.com. Deadline is February 1, 2008. ** Rebel Satori Press is seeking poetry and prose for Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism. Deadline is October 31, 2007. Send submissions to: Peter Dubé, PO Box 643, Succ. Place du Parc, Montreal, Quebec H2X 4A6, Canada. ** Eric Summers is looking for submissions for Ride Me Cowboy: Erotic Tales of the West to be published by Starbooks Press. Deadline is February 15, 2008. For more details e-mail eric@starbookspress.com. Shane Allison is looking for stories for Fire Men: Hot Gay Erotic to be published by Cleis Press. Stories should be between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Deadline is February 1, 2008. For more details e-mail sdallison01@hotmail.com. The British queer literary journal Chroma is sponsoring its second International Queer Writing Competition in Poetry, Short Story, and Transfabulous categories. Deadline is September 1, 2008. For more details visit the Chroma Web site. ** Chroma is also sponsoring its first Queer Writing Residential in association with the Arvon Foundation to be held February 25 to March 1 in Devon, England. The course will be tutored by Betsy Warland and Thomas Glave and is devised to suit poets, prose-writers, and those interested in cross-genre writing. There are fourteen subsidised places. Course fees for the week will be £290 (which includes tuition, accommodation and food). For more details, see the Chroma Web site and newsletter. ** A contest called The Open Door Project, a five-day publishing introduction in New York City, is open to gay men writing fiction with queer content who have not yet published a book of fiction. Accommodations and transportation will be provided to an out of town winner. The judges include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Samuel R. Delany, Dennis Cooper, Robert Gluck, E. Lynn Harris, Scott Heim, Andrew Holleran, David Leavitt, Stephen McCauley, Dale Peck, and John Weir. Submit stories or stand-alone novel excerpts of up to 8,000 words by March 1, 2008. Submissions can be mailed to: Don Weise, Open Door Project, c/o Oscar Wilde Bookshop, 15 Christopher St, New York, NY 10014. Queries can be sent to dweised@aol.com. ** The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Writing Competition for the Foundation’s 2007 writing grants will be for Short Stories, One-act Plays or short film or video projects. All works must present the gay and lesbian lifestyle in a positive manner and be based on, or directly inspired by, a historic person or event. All works must be unpublished, original, and in English. Adaptations or translations of other works of fiction are not acceptable. All submissions must be postmarked by midnight November 30, 2007 and can be sent to: The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, 2500 N. Palm Canyon Drive #A4, Palm Springs, CA 92262. Visit the Web site for more details.