June Publishing Notes

The buzz: St. Martin’s Press will publish Thomas Beatie’s memoir, Love Makes A Family: A Memoir of Hardship, Healing and an Extraordinary Pregnancy, about the author’s transformation from a girl scout and beauty queen to a legal and recognized man with a black belt in marital arts and a loving wife — and their controversial decision to have Thomas — who underwent gender reassignment surgery but kept his female reproductive organs — get pregnant and carry their child. Book packager LifeTime Media will start their own publishing program with Pressure Is A Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Live and the Battle of the Sexes by tennis legend Billie Jean King. In the fall of 2009, Doubleday will publish Joseph Papp and Kenneth Turan’s Free For All, the definitive oral history of The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater. Gival Press will publish Chip Livingston’s poetry collection, The Museum of False Starts. Lethe Press is reissuing Salvatore Sapienza’s novel, Seventy Times Seven. Cambridge House will publish in the fall of 2009 Jeffrey Duban's Sappho of Lesbos: Contemporary Translations in Archaic Greek Love Lyric, a translation of poems and fragments by Sappho and her contemporaries, with detailed introductions, poem-by-poem commentary, and incisive discussion of the art of translation. JoSelle Vanderhooft's The Memory Palace, a growing up gay memoir structured around the Renaissance mnemonic device of a building with rooms populated by thoughts and objects, will be published in January 2009. And Tango Makes Three, the 2005 picture book that features a baby penguin with two dads, held the top spot as the American Library Association's most challenged book in public schools and libraries for the second year in a row. Author Chuck Palahniuk gave a revealing interview to Austin Bunn for the Advocate, which is available online at the magazine’s Web site. Author Anne Rice donated an authentic Chinese wedding dress for a special ebay auction to benefit the Lambda Literary Foundation and its Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers. Jim McDonough’s popular Web site Queerwriters.com has migrated to a Ning community. Sapphic Planet, a group for authors who write lesbian fiction, now has a Web site, a MySpace and Glee page. New York’s LGBT film festival, NewFest is showing film adaptations of Sarah Waters' Affinity and Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy. Wayne Hoffman’s short story “Sucker,” an excerpt from his novel Hard, has been adapted into a short film, and is also having its NYC premiere at the festival as part of a program of sexy short films called “Sweat.” Sigourney Weaver has signed to star in a Lifetime movie adaptation of Leroy Aaron’s Prayers for Bobby, about a devout Christian woman who questions her faith after her gay son commits suicide. And Nicole Kidman will play singer Dusty Springfield in a movie being written by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham.

Things to add to your calendar: Queer Women Reading Poetry, hosted by Alix Olson at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery, June 12 at 6:30 pm, 26 Wooster Street, NYC. Poets include Sini Anderson, Kate Broad, Cheryl Burke, Staceyann Chinn, r. erica doyle, Stephanie Gray, Tracy Grinnell, Sue Landers, Sara marcus, Marty McConnell, Lenelle Moise and Elizabeth Redddin. A limited edition chapbook containing work from the poets scheduled to read will be available for purchase. ** That's Revolting!: Radical queer activism — past, present, and future. Thursday, June 5, 6pm, San Francisco Main Library Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room (downstairs), 100 Larkin Street. With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Carol Queen, Bo Brown, Ralowe T. Ampu, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Eric Stanley, and Gina de Vries. ** This is the Thing by Kirk Read, an evening of stories about sex work, hallucinations and the apocalypse, with music by Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, video by Liz Singer, props and design by Doug Hansen and Kirk Read, at the Garage, 975 Howard @ 6th Street, San Francisco, June 10-14, 2008 Tuesday through Saturday, 8pm. Tickets: $12-15, 1-800-838-3006.

Kudos: Author, editor and journalist Michael T. Luongo was awarded the Reporting Award at the Society for Professional Journalist's New York Deadline Club Awards for his November 2007 story “Our Man in Baghdad,” which was published in the New York City weekly Gay City News. The story focuses on the hidden gay life in Iraq, with Luongo meeting some of the hundreds of Iraqi men with Gaydar profiles, both to his and their great peril. ** Ken Anderson was the winner of the 2008 Saints & Sinners Playwriting Contest for Someone Bought the House on the Island. ** IPPY Awards (Independent Publisher Book Awards) in the Gay/Lesbian category went to: Gold: First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far), ed. Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel, Silver: Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire, by Lisa M. Diamond, and Bronze: The Brides of March, by Beren de Motier; Carnal Sacraments, by Perry Brass; A Hint of Homosexuality? by Bruce H. Joffe. A Gold Award in the Erotica category went to Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games, edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman. A Gold Award went to Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, by Carrie Jones in the Juvenile/Young Adult Fiction category.

Lamba Literary Winners: LGBT ANTHOLOGY: First Person Queer, edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel ; LGBT ARTS & CULTURE: The View From Here by Matthew Hays; LGBT CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT: Hero by Perry Moore; LGBT DRAMA/THEATER: Return to the Caffe Cino, edited by Steve Susoyev and George Birimisa; LGBT EROTICA: Homosex, Simon Sheppard; LGBT NONFICTION: Gay Artists in Modern American Culture, Michael S. Sherry; LGBT POETRY: Blackbird and Wolf, Henri Cole; LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR: The Dust of Wonderland, Lee Thomas; LGBT STUDIES: Between Women, Sharon Marcus; BISEXUAL: Split Screen, Brett Hartinger; TRANSGENDER: Transparent, Cris Beam; LESBIAN DEBUT FICTION: Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, Aoibheann Sweeney; GAY DEBUT FICTION: A Push and a Shove, Christopher Kelly; WOMEN'S FICTION: The IHOP Papers, Ali Leibegott; WOMEN'S ROMANCE: Out of Love, KG MacGregor; WOMEN'S MYSTERY: Wall of Silence, Gabrielle Goldsby; WOMEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY: And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, Nicola Griffith; MEN'S FICTION: Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman; MEN's ROMANCE: Changing Tides, Michael Thomas Ford; MEN's MYSTERY: Murder in the Rue Chartres, Greg Herren; MEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY: Mississippi Sissy, Kevin Sessums.

Open Calls: New Town Writers is sponsoring the Swell Fiction Contest. Deadline is September 30, 2008 for unpublished stories of up to 5000 words. There is an $8 entry fee. For more details visit http://www.swellzine.com/. ** Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book, is looking for lesbian, bisexual and queer women couples who have you been together for more than five years for research for a new sex guide for lesbian couples. Confidential interviews (via telephone) will be done with couples who enjoy a satisfying sexual relationship. Inquiries can be sent to felice@felicenewman.com. ** Subaru and the Logo Channel are teaming up to produce a series of short portrait documentaries called “Real Momentum Profiles,” featuring Subaru owners. The producers are seeking gay men and women who own Subarus. Singles and couples are encouraged to submit a photograph along with a short questionnaire available from subarulogocasting@gmail.com.

Passages: Nuala O'Faolain, author and former Irish Times columnist, died of lung cancer on May 9, 2008 at the age of 68 in Dublin. She had been living in County Clare and New York City. She was the author of the 1996 memoir, Are You Somebody?, an unblinking and unsentimental description of Irish life in the 1940s and '50s. ** Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him a reputation as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture, and dance, died May 12, 2008. He was 82. Rauschenberg, born in 1925, met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist became lovers and influenced each other's work. According to the book Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists, Rauschenberg told biographer Calvin Tomkins that ''Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, 'I've got a terrific idea for you,' and then I'd have to find one for him.'' In recent years Rauschenberg founded the organization Change Inc., which helps struggling artists pay medical bills.