July Publishing Notes

The buzz: Greenwood Press will publish a three-volume encyclopedia titled LGBTQ America Today in November 2008. According to an article written by Guy Trebay in The New York Times, the book that pregnant father Thomas Beatie was contracted to write, has been shelved. Simon Spotlight Entertainment will publish Christopher Ciccone's Life With My Sister Madonna, based on his life and forty-seven years of growing up with and working with his sister, written with Wendy Leigh. University of Wisconsin Press will publish The Diva Complex: Gay Men on the Women Who Shaped Their Lives, an anthology edited by Michael Montlack, and including writers such as David Trinidad, Lloyd Schwartz, and Wayne Kostenbaum, paying passionate homage to a wide range of divas — among them Julia Child, Wonder Woman, Virginia Woolf, and Margaret Cho. Keith Stern's Queers in History, a reference book of the hundreds of prominent people throughout history who were gay, lesbian, or bisexual, will be published by BenBella Books. Alyson will publish Out Traveler Atlanta by Jordan McCauley with Matt Burkhalter. Del Ray will publish Michael Thomas Ford's Jane Bites Back, a novel about Jane Austen as a modern-day vampire and her frustration with her inability to get another novel published. Senator Larry Craig has announced that he is writing a book. Savannah Knoop, who played the role of JT Leroy in public, is writing a book about the charade for Seven Stories titled Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy. Harmony Books will publish a memoir by Tony winner Patti LuPone, for release in 2010. Novelist Philip Galanes is writing a new etiquette column for The New York Times. Matthew Bourne is choreographing an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray that will premiere in Edinburgh in August. The New York City Opera has commissioned an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the Annie Proulx short story that became the basis for the Oscar-winning movie. Charles Wuorinen will compose the opera, which is set to premiere in the spring of 2013. Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, which had announced plans to close at the end of June has a new owner and will stay in business, according to the Star Tribune. Ruta Skujins, a St. Paul native, will become the first sole owner of the bookshop that was started 38 years ago as a workers' cooperative. OutLoud Bookstore in Nashville has been put up for sale by co-owners Ted Jensen and Kevin Medley. Lambda Literary Foundation now has a MySpace page. The Foundation’s 2nd annual Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers will be held August 10 - 17, 2008. The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival is set for October 15-19, 2008. For more details visit: http://www.atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/. A three part video of the Fellow Travelers project, a collection of images of Gay male liberation pioneers taken by Mark Thompson, can be found on YouTube. Julio Vasconcellos and the online Experience Project, have compiled video, photographic, and written testimonials of the recent gay weddings in California. http://www.experienceproject.com/topics/gay_lesbian.php?r=g1. And Metaversal Village is releasing a new video game based on the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

David, David, and more David: Hachette Book Group USA is offering a digital download of the audiobook version of David Sedaris's new When You Are Engulfed in Flames for sale via their Web site — the first time the company has sold directly to consumers from their site. The Observer noted that the book has been characterized as fiction by Barnes & Noble in their weekly bestseller lists. Sedaris told The New York Times, "I've always been a huge exaggerator, but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn't true." Sedaris also brought a crowd of over 500 people to Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, setting a new record at the store for staying power—Sedaris, after reading to fans, stayed and signed books for nine and a half hours.

Events of Note: The Lavender Library: The House of Homosexual Culture, Tuesday July 15, 2008, 7.30 p.m., Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. A special festival event celebrating queer literature. Julian Clary, Dave McAlmont, Andy Bell, Maureen Duffy, Stella Duffy, Paul Burston, Karen Mcleod, and Rupert Smith champion their favorite books, and reveal how they've inspired their life and work. More details here: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/calendar/productions/the-lavender-library-40977. ** Michael Luongo will be conducting a special photo lecture at the Smithsonian Institute on Buenos Aires, Argentina on Thursday July 17, 2008 in Washington, DC. 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m., The Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, SW (near 12th Street, SW). (This location is on the Mall next to the Smithsonian Castle.) Metro: Smithsonian Mall Exit (Blue/Orange) Event Code: CODE: 1M2-370. http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=198536.

Kudos: Canadian poet Rachel Zolf received the Trillium book prize for best poetry book for Human Resources. The Trillium Awards, awarded by the Ontario government, is the province's leading award for literature. Robin Blaser received the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize, the world’s most lucrative poetry award for a single book. Blaser won for his collection The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, which includes poems written over 50 years. Poet John Ashbery received the international Griffin poetry prize for Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems. Both awards carry a $50,000 prize. Manuel Muñoz was among the writers awarded a fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Fay Jacobs’ book Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach won the Delaware Press Association’s 2008 First Place Award for non-fiction humor. Two of her columns from the magazine Letters from Camp Rehoboth were also singled out for prizes. Woof! A Gay Man's Guide to Dogs by Andrew De Prisco was awarded the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Gay/Lesbian category. Claude J. Summers, general editor of glbtq.com, received the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award at the Lambda Literary Foundation Awards ceremony in West Hollywood, California. The Monette-Horwitz Trust Awards were established in the will of the late novelist Paul Monette to recognize his relationship with the late Roger Horwitz and to honor individuals and organizations for their significant contributions toward eradicating homophobia. The Queer Foundation has announced the recipients of its college scholarships for 2008–2009. They are Christopher Chavez of Phoenix, AZ, Geoffrey Mino of Newtown, PA, and Ericka Sokolower-Shain of Berkeley, CA. Chavez, whose award-winning essay is titled "In or Out," will attend the University of Chicago. Mino's essay is titled "New Youth Rising." He will attend Brown. Sokolower-Shain, who will study at Wesleyan, was recognized for her essay "Beyond the Line." Read more about 2008–2009 recipients at queerfoundation.org.

Golden Crown Finalists: The Golden Crown Literary Society, a literary and educational organization for the study, discussion, enjoyment, and enhancement of lesbian literature will have their 2008 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, from July 31 - August 3, 2008. The Fourth Annual GCLS Literary Awards will be presented on August 2, 2008 at the Wild Horse Pass Resort. Finalists have been announced in eleven categories, including Debut Author, Trailblazer, Popular Choice, Poetry, Dramatic Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Erotica, Speculative Fiction, Anthology, and Short Story, Collection, and can be found on the Society’s Web site: http://www.gclscon.com/2008GCLSAwards-Finalists.html.

Open Calls: Wendell Ricketts, who edited Everything I Have Is Blue, an anthology of writing by working class queers, is seeking fiction, memoir, and poetry submissions for the online Still Blue Project: More Writing By (For or About) Working-Class Queers. Working-class writers of all genders are welcome to submit. There are no limits on subject matter, other than that erotica is not eligible for submission. More details can be found at the Web site: http://www.everythingihaveisblue.com/still_call.html.

Passages: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar Paula Gunn Allen, whose work cleared the path for many Native writers, particularly Native Two-Spirit/GLBTQ folks and Native feminists, died May 29, 2008. She was the author of numerous books and editor of several collections, including Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995 and The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Her writing was inspired by Pueblo tales and is noted for its strong political streak. Her novel, The Woman Who Owned The Shadows, was published in 1983. The story revolves around Ephanie, a mixed-blood like Allen herself, and her struggle to express herself creatively. Allen was awarded a 2007 Lannan Foundation Fellowship and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas in 2001. In 2004 she received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her book Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. ** Jonathan Williams, the founder of the Jargon Society, the small publishing house in the western mountains of North Carolina, died on March 16, 2008 in Highlands, N.C. He was 79 and lived and worked in Scaly Mountain, N.C. The cause was pneumonia. Williams authored more than 25 books during his lifetime. Williams was also an accomplished photographer whose images of writers, artists, gravestones and natural landscapes are housed at Yale University. Williams founded The Jargon Society at age 21 and published 113 books during his lifetime. Guided by his quixotic mission — "To keep afloat the Ark of Culture in these dark and tacky times" — it spotlighted talented but neglected poets, writers and artists, including Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Guy Davenport, Louis Zukofsky, Paul Metcalf, Mina Loy and Lorine Niedecker. Among his awards were a Guggenheim fellowship and NEA grants. Williams is survived by his partner of 40 years, Thomas Meyer. ** Michael Jon Shernoff, a psychotherapist for more than 30 years, a prodigious writer, a professor, and an LGBT, AIDS, and environmental activist, died on June 17, 2008 at his home in New York City at the age of 57. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, according to his partner of nine years, John Goodman. Gay City News reported that Shernoff published more than 60 articles, mostly related to mental health issues involving gay men, sexuality, and mental health. He edited seven anthologies, including Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner. In 2006, Routledge published Shernoff's book, Without Condoms: Unprotected Sex, Gay Men and Barebacking. Donations in his memory can be made to the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York 10011; The Nature Conservancy, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, Virginia, 22203; and Lambda Legal, 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500, New York 10005.