February Publishing Notes

The buzz: Anthony Bidulka’s Date With a Sheesha, the seventh Russell Quant mystery, has been moved up from May to March, 2010. The home town launch at McNally Robinson Saskatoon has been booked for Thursday, April 15th.

This spring, Kensington will publish Robin and Ruby, by K.M. Soehnlein, a sequel to the author’s bestselling The World of Normal Boys.

Now out in bookstores is Elliott Mackle’s new novel, Captain Harding's Six Day War, published by Alyson books.

Forthcoming from Alyson this spring is Why Are You Telling Me This? Christopher Isherwood's Commonplace Book, 1940–1985, edited by Don Bachardy and James White, which publishes for the first time the novelist's record of his personal readings over 45 years; and Once a Marine: A Memoir of Coming Out Under Fire by Eric Alva with Sam Gallegos. Alva, the first casualty of the Iraq War, risked his hero status and challenged “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” by coming out as gay. Also forthcoming is For the Love of the Dead, gay zombie erotica by Hal Bodner.

Other new books on the horizon this year includes My Queer War by James Lord, published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux, about the author’s experiences during World War II; The Bucolic Plague: From Drag Queen to Goat Farmer: An Unconventional Memoir by Josh Kilmer Purcell, author of I Am Not Myself These Days, published by Harper Collins; Insignificant Others, a new novel by Stephen McCauley, published by Simon & Schuster; and a reissue of Native, a novel by William Haywood Henderson, published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Paul Lisiky’s new novel, The Burning House, will be published in 2011 by Etruscan Press.

This fall Globe Pequot will publish former assistant to Jimmy Carter and Zell Miller social historian Rick Hutto's A Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder and Madness in the Heart of Georgia, the chronicle of a tenuous last link to a proud Southern aristocracy, and the murder of his wife, the secret of his love affair with his male black chauffeur, and his stunning Pyrrhic end.

In 2012, Farrar, Straus, Giroux will publish Francesco Pacifico's The Story of My Purity, the first translated novel by this Italian writer, about an unhappily married Roman intellectual who falls under the spell of Jews, gays, MDMA, and beautiful women in nightclubs (and not exactly in that order).

In 2011, Atlas will publish Sigrid Nunez's Susan, an intimate portrait of Susan Sontag by a novelist who lived with Sontag's son, the writer David Rieff, in the 1970s, and saw herself as a disciple, observantly noting the influential critic's passage through the hazards of New York literary life.

Howl, a movie based on the infamous Howl trial, starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, had its premiere at the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival. The film is directed by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and also stars David Strathairn, Alan Alda, and Jeff Daniels. Howl and Other Poems remains City Lights Press’s bestselling title.

Ashe Journal 8.2 has been released and features an essay by Mitch Shenassa on “The Occult William S. Burroughs.”

Several items from William Burrough’s “Bunker” at the YMCA in the Bowery are part of photographer Peter Ross’s Web portfolio at http://heypeterross.com/.

This spring Haiduk Press will publish The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered, edited by Tom Cardamone, which includes appreciations by 28 contemporary writers of significant books long out of print on the gay experience during the 20th century.

Ryan Richardson has collected an archive of gay paperback artwork from the 1950's and 60's at http://www.gayontherange.com/.

Author Peter Cameron has launched Wallflower Press, a small private press that will publish limited-edition chapbooks featuring the work of Cameron, as well as the work of authors he admires. Each book will be edited, designed, and crafted by Cameron in editions limited to ten copies. Five books will be included in the Series I: 2010. The first to appear will be Dog Stories: Homework & The Secret Dog. These two early stories were written by Cameron in the early 1980s and first published in The New Yorker and The Kenyon Review. The signed limited editions are available for $100 each. For more information or to reserve a copy, please email: info@wallflowerpress.com or visit wallflowerpress.com.

Christopher Sieber will appear in The New Group's Off-Broadway musical The Kid, based on a book by Dan Savage, based on Savage's book The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. Previews begin in April. Music is by Andy Monroe, book by Michael Zam, and lyrics by Jack Lechner.

The White Horse Theater Company will be staging Tennessee Williams’s Clothes for a Summer Hotel, which depicts an ethereal meeting between the restless ghosts of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. Performances begin Feb. 5 at the Hudson Guild Theater and run through Feb. 21.

On the Late Show with David Letterman Robert Downey, Jr. hinted at a homoerotic subtext in the relationship between his Sherlock Holmes character and Jude Law's Dr. Watson. The comments reportedly infuriated Andrea Plunket, who controls the remaining U.S. copyrights to the Holmes story, and she has threatened to withdraw permission for a sequel if the detective becomes more than just friends with his sidekick.

Velvet Mafia has launched its 8th anniversary issue with prose by Eric Karl Anderson, Tina Anderson, Donald Webb, Mykola Dementiuk, Shane Allison, Nathan Sims, Jennifer Greidus; poetry by Jeff Mann and Brian Brown; an interview with Dennis Cooper by Craig Gidney, and an excerpt from Dancing with the Devil by Taylor Siluwé.

The winter issue of Mary, a quarterly literary magazine showcasing queer writing and art, is scheduled to be published March 2010, and is still accepting submissions up until Feb 30, 2010. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com.

The Fresh Fruit Festival is now accepting submissions for the Seventh Annual Fresh Fruit Festival. The deadline is February 6, 2010. The Eighth Annual Fresh Fruit Festival will be held in NYC in July, 2010. The Festival’s goal is to present the whole spectrum of LGBT lives as expressed in performance, dance, theatre, video, film, spoken word, visual and music arts. Full-length pieces will be presented a minimum of four performances. Shorter performance works will have a minimum of one or two performances. For details and application: http://www.freshfruitfestival.com/.

Tony Valenzuela has been named the Executive Director of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Antonio Gonzalez is the new Web Producer.

Author Michael Nava hopes to make history in 2010 by becoming the first openly gay Latino judge ever elected to a California court. Donations can be made to his campaign website at http://www.navaforjudge.com/.

Kudos: Among the nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards were Edmund White for City Boy in Autobiography; and Blake Bailey for Cheever: A Life and Brad Gooch for Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor in Biography.

The 2010 Stonewall Awards from the American Library Association are: Barbara Gittings Literature Award to Stray Dog Winter by David Francis; Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award to The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd; the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award to Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America by Nathaniel Frank. The Stonewall Honor Books in Children & Young Adult are 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert; Daddy, Papa, and Me by Lesléa Newman; Gay America: Struggle for Equality by Linas Alsenas; Mommy, Mama, and Me by Lesléa Newman, and Sprout by Dale Peck. The Stonewall Honor Books in Literature are God Says No by James Hannaham and Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin. The Stonewall Honor Books in Non-Fiction are Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman By Stuart E. Weisberg; Black Bull, Ancestors and Me by Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde; The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece by James Davidson; and I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd.

Ash by Malinda Lo was an honor book for the William C. Morris Award, administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association.

GLAAD does not present book awards during their annual fetes, but they do recognize several writing categories. Among the nominees for Outstanding Comic Book are Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Jane Espenson, Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Z. Greenberg, Jim Krueger, Doug Petrie, Joss Whedon; Detective Comics by Greg Rucka; Madame Xanadu by Matt Wagner; Secret Six by Gail Simone ; and X-Factor by Peter David . For Outstanding Los Angeles Theater, the nominees are 40 is the New 15, book and lyrics by Larry Todd Johnson, music by Cindy O'Connor; Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins by Brian Christopher Williams; Battle Hymn by Jim Leonard; Bingo with the Indians by Adam Rapp; and Lydia by Octavio Solis. The nominees for Outstanding New York Theater are A Boy and His Soul by Colman Domingo; The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney; Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts; Soul Samurai by Qui Nguyen; and The Temperamentals by Jon Marans. The off-off Broadway nominees are Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party by Aaron Loeb; Devil Boys From Beyond by Buddy Thomas; The Lily’s Revenge by Taylor Mac; She Like Girls by Chisa Hutchinson; Wickets, created and conceived by Clove Galilee and Jenny Rogers, adapted from Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes.

Among the 2009-2010 Isherwood Fellows is Tennessee Jones, who received the James C. McCormick Fellowship.

Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn won the Costa Novel of the Year award.

Val McDermid won the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger award for outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. She was also inducted into the Crime Writers' Hall of Fame and elected to an honorary fellowship at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Passages: J. Frederic "Fritz" Lohman, the partner of 48 years of Charles W. Leslie, died on December 31, 2009. In lieu of other remembrances, expressions of sympathy be sent to the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (LLGAF) referencing the new Fritz Lohman Museum Fund. As the co-founder of The Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation and Gallery, Lohman’s name will now grace a new fund dedicated to the next significant growth phase-the establishment of the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Contributions can be sent to LLGAF, 26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013, Attn: Fritz Lohman Museum.