April Publishing Notes

The buzz: Elton John has given the Greenwich Theatre in London an undisclosed sum to the theatre to help fund a production of Jon Maran’s play The Temperamentals, about the relationship of activist Harry Hay and designer Rudi Gernreich and the founding of the Mattachine Society in the 1950s.

Some books which were expected to be released by Alyson have found new publishers - Magnus Books will publish Charles Rice Gonzalez’s novel Chulito in October, 2011, Cleis Press will publish Paul Russell’s novel The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov in October, 2011, and the University of Wisconsin Press will publish Bob Smith’s novel Remembrance of Things Forgotten in June 2011.

Rebel Satori Press will publish Martin Hyatt's new novel Beautiful Gravity, in which a loner, a former Nashville star, a young, anorexic Pentecostal woman, and an aging jock fall in and out of love with one another in a working class southern town.

This fall Chelsea Station Editions will publish Dirty One, a debut collection of stories by Michael Graves, Personal Saviors, a new novel by Wesley Gibson, and For the Ferryman, a memoir by Charles Silverstein. The press recently celebrated its first year.

Lethe Press is now ten years old. New and forthcoming titles include Dirty Poole, a memoir by Wakefield Poole, The German, a thriller by Lee Thomas, Mere Mortals, a new romance by Erastes, and future editions of Wilde Stories and Best Gay Stories.

HotNote Books new owner Lloyd Meeker has also seen his first novel, Traveling Light, released by MLR Press.

StarBooks Press has released The Sweeter the Juice, edited by Marcus Anthony.

Ian Titus’ short story “Stardust and Sunlight” is one of the offerings of the Spring 2011 issue of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction.

Craig Moreau has released a video trailer for Chelsea Boy, his debut collection of poems forthcoming in June. The video can be seen here. The poet also recently met with Logo TV to audition for the second season of the hit reality show The A List.

Kirk Read is going out on the road with Sister Spit on the Next Generation 2011 Spring Tour. Sister Spit is a touring vanload of multimedia, queer-centric novelists, painters, performance artists, poets and fancy scribblers, including Michelle Tea, Kirk Read Mari Naomi, Ali Liebegott Blake Nelson, Amos Mac, and Myriam Gurba. For more details visit http://radarproductions.org/.

Wednesday, April 6 at 9 pm at the Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan, there will be a benefit for Lambda Literary Foundation featuring Kate Clinton, Eddie Sarfaty, and hosted by Frank DeCaro.

Michael Alenyikov will read from Ivan and Misha on April 4 at 6:15 pm at the LGBT Community Center in Greenwich Village.

SAGE is sponsoring a reading and conversation with authors David Pratt (Bob the Book), Jameson Currier (The Wolf at the Door), and Christopher Bram (Mapping the Territory) at the LGBT Center in Greenwich Village on Tuesday April 19 at 6 pm.

The Unspeakable: A Gay Future Project, a mixed media performance featuring writings of Chicago older gay men, will be presented April 30, 2011 at the on Halsted in Chicago, 1-2 pm; and May 6th at DePaul University, 14 W. Jackson from 5-6:30 pm.

Amos Lassen has posted more than 1500 reviews of GLBT books and movies at his new website: http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/.

Michael Signorelli has been promoted to editor at HaperCollins.

Michael Cunningham has been voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Honorary members chosen included dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones.

Michael Luongo received Honorable Mention in the ASJA American Society of Journalists and Authors Donald Robinson Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism for his 2010 article "A Return to Baghdad" in Gay City News detailing the killings of gay men in Iraq.

Mark Doty is one of the recipients of this year’s awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The nominees for this year’s Publishing Triangle literary awards can be found at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/. Alan Hollinghurst is the 2011 recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in honor of the legendary editor. The awards will be presented April 28 at the New School in Manhattan.

The nominees for this year Lambda Literary awards can be found here: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/2011-finalists/. The awards will be presented May 26, 2011 in Manhattan.

The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans has announced the recipients of their annual short fiction contest. The winners can be found here: http://www.sasfest.org/. This year’s festival is May 12-15.

Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta has been named the winner of the 2011 Alumni Legacy Award by Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Rafshoon is the first openly gay person to receive the award.

Charis Books & More, the feminist bookstore in Atlanta, will move to a larger location within a year. The new location will be called the Charis Feminist Center and may be in Decatur.

Bay Windows reported that the owners of Pride & Joy LGBT bookstore in Northampton, Mass., have put the store up for sale.

The Rainbow Book Fair on March 26 drew more than fifty LGBT publishers as exhibitors and more than a hundred authors and poets as readers and presents at the Center in Manhattan. Photos and details of the event can be found here: http://rainbowbookfair.org/. Plans are underway for next year’s festival, which will also be scheduled at the LGBT Center sometime in early Spring 2012.

>Passages: The Rev. Peter J. Gomes, a Harvard minister, theologian, and author "who announced that he was gay a generation ago and became one of America’s most prominent spiritual voices against intolerance," died February 28, 2011. He was 68. Actress and activist Elizabeth Taylor died March 23, 2011. Taylor, an outspoken advocate for AIDS awareness and research, was 79. Playwright Lanford Wilson (Balm in Gilead, The Hot L Baltimore, Burn This), died March 24, 2011. He was 73.