November Publishing Notes

The buzz: Charles Busch’s new play, The Third Story, will debut off-Broadway January 14, 2009 at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village. ** The inaugural production of the Shameless Theater Company, a new theater company in London which will focus on works with gay themes, will be American Briefs, a series of short works by US-based playwrights, followed by Busted Jesus Comix, based on the real-life story of a Florida minor prosecuted on obscenity charges for writing a comic book, and The Choir by Australian playwright Errol Bray, about the castration of young boys.

Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia, Pa. celebrated its 35th anniversary in October. Ed Hermance is the store’s co-owner. Giovanni's has 12,000 titles in its active inventory. It holds 50 readings a year and a photograph of the author James Baldwin, who once visited the store, hangs behind the front counter. Giovanni's is the second-oldest gay-and-lesbian bookstore in the country, behind only New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop. ** The 38-year-old feminist bookstore Amazon Bookstore Coop is changing its name to True Colors Bookstore. Ruta Skujins is the store’s new owner. According to the terms of an out-of-court settlement reached in a 1999 trademark infringement lawsuit brought against online retailer Amazon.com by the feminist bookstore, rights to the Amazon name reverted to the Internet retailer if ownership of the 2,800-square-foot bricks-and-mortar store in south Minneapolis changed hands.

A Missoula, Montana, library board voted to keep The Joy of Gay Sex on its shelves after a resident requested that it be removed. ** Towleroad reported that the Time Out Gay and Lesbian London guide book was refused for sale at the Historic Royal Palace bookshops, including the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew Gardens and the Banqueting House, bookshops. A list of books was 'censored' by management at Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity which manages the sites on behalf of the Queen.

The city of West Hollywood donated a former storage garage to the ONE Archives for a museum of gay history, which opened in October. The inaugural exhibit looks at Los Angeles' gay pride parades from its inception. The president of the board and curator of the collection is Joseph Hawkins, a professor of gender studies and anthropology at USC. Future exhibits will be devoted to lesbian pulp fiction and photographs of nude musclemen. Starting small, the space is 600 square feet and is open for four hours three days a week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and is located at 626 N. Robertson Blvd. Admission is free.

Viking will publish Colm Toibin's new novel, Brooklyn, about a young woman who emigrates from a small Irish town to Brooklyn in the 1950s, in May 2009. Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s novel The Mere Future in October 2009. Fourth Estate has acquired Michael Cunningham's new novel, set in New York. Ecco will publish designer, artist, and actress Gloria Vanderbilt’s OBSESSION: An Erotic Tale, in July 2009. Chronicle will publish Jack Kerouac's You’re a Genius All the Time: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, comprised of the thirty maxims Kerouac penned to define his spontaneous prose style, providing inspiration for all creative types. Norton will release a paperback edition of Luc Montagnier's 1999 book VIRUS: The Co-discoverer of HIV Tracks its Rampage and Charts the Future. Montagnier received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, and the book provides his first-hand account of that discovery process.

Author Gore Vidal was injured in a fall and cancelled an appearance at an Ohio library, and is recuperating at home. The 83-year-old author told the AP he's working on a new novel about the U.S.-Mexican war in the 1840s.

There will be a fundraiser for Stuart Timmons, author of The Trouble With Harry and Gay LA, who suffered a stroke in January, on Saturday, November 15, 3 to 5 p.m. at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at 909 West Adams Blvd. in Los Angeles. There will be readings by Malcolm Boyd, Chris Freeman, Trebor Healey, Michael Kearns, Felice Picano, Derek Ringold, Terry Wolverton, and others. There is a $25 suggested contribution.

Australian writer Geoff Knight has launched a GayWriters Web site as a ning community at http://gaywriters.ning.com/.

AfterElton is sponsoring a Vote for the Best Gay Books at http://www.afterelton.com/print/2008/10/booksurvey_voting).

Kudos: Till Kleinert's Cowboy, a 35-minute film about a city dweller and a country lad's terrible price for love, won the £25,000 first prize at the Iris Prize Festival in Cardiff, which the organizers call the world's biggest gay and lesbian film festival. The German director’s film also won him a £500 travel award to help him return to the UK to make his next film. James Bolton and Dream Boy, a love story between teenagers in the American South in the 1970s, won the festival’s award for best feature film. The feature film is selected by the Friends of Iris, individuals who open their homes to the makers of films shortlisted for the festival. ** Among the finalists for the National Book Awards were: Frank Bidart for Watching the Spring Festival, Mark Dotyfor Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems, Reginald Gibbons for Creatures of a Day, Richard Howard for Without Saying, and Patricia Smith for Blood Dazzler. ** The winners of the 2008 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are: Best Novel: Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale. Best Short Fiction: "Ever So Much More than Thirty" by Joshua Lewis from the anthology So Fey. ** Manuel Muñoz was one of the 10 recipients of the 2008 Whiting Writers' Awards.

And the Nominees Will Be: The Publishing Triangle is now accepting submissions for its 2009 debut fiction, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry awards, given for books published in 2008. Details and forms can be found at the Web site http://www.publishingtriangle.org/. ** Submissions for the next cycle of the Lambda Literary Awards are now being accepted, for books published during 2008. Awards are given in twenty-two (22) categories. For more details visit the Lambda Literary Foundation at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.

Open Calls: Editor Stephen Soucy is looking for short stories for the anthology ART from ART, about stories that are connected directly to—or inspired by—a work of art, to be published by Modernist Press. Deadline is 12/01/08. Submit your story and a brief bio via email to shsoucy@modernistpress.com. ** Queerphilosophy is looking for essays and pieces of creative non-fiction for an anthology slotted for 2009. Pieces should explore how individuals navigate through current ideas of sexuality and gender identity when faced with traditional philosophies and religions. Submit work that is at least 1000 words to queerphilosophy@gmail.com . For more details visit the Web site at http://www.queerphilosophy.com/. ** Knockout Literary Magazine is sponsoring a 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize. Three prizes will be awarded: $300, $50, and $25 gift certificates to Powell's Books and publication of prize-winning poems in Knockout. Submission deadline: 8/1/09. Details and entry guidelines: www.knockoutlit.org/rsprize.htm. ** The Eric Rofes Center for Multi-cultural Queer Studies plans to house the largest collection of LGBT/Queer/SGL chapbooks. Submissions can be sent to: HSU- Multicultural Center, c/o Eric Rofes Center Chapbook Archive, 1 Harpst Street, Arcata, CA 95521.

Passages: Ron Hanby, director of gay and lesbian sales at Bookazine, died in October. Shelf Awareness reported that the company called him "a passionate bookseller and an advocate for each and every one of his accounts. He worked hard to make sure that our booksellers had a level of personal service unparalleled in this industry." Before joining Bookazine, Hanby worked at Waldenbooks, B. Dalton Bookseller and Encore Books. In 1997 Hanby received a Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award.