The buzz: In 2011, Barrett Books will publish Chaz Bono's memoir Coming Clean: The Truth About Becoming a Man, chronicling the physical, emotional, and relational aspects of his decision to transition from a female to male, told in a day by day account of the process, exploring the 12-month period that will be the bulk of his transformation from his decision to take male hormones and how they affect him, to surgical procedures, through the end result, and also covering his father's death and his foray into prescription drug addiction.
Next fall Flux will re-issue John Donovan’s 1969 YA novel I’ll Get There: It Better Be Worth the Trip, widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality. The book centers on a 13-year-boy whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy.
In 2010, Hansen will publish John DiLeo's Tennessee Williams and Company: The Essential Screen Actors, looking at eleven screen actors in Tennessee Williams' films and explores their artistic connections, some of them flat-out failures, between these screen actors and their Tennessee Williams roles.
Alyson will publish a new installment of Neil Plakcy’s Hawaiian detective series featuring a gay police detective, titled Mahu Blood.
Rebel Satori Press has released The Elijah Tree, a novel by Cynthea Masson, about a young boy who is birthed in the fire of a mystical vision.
Cleis will publish Christopher Pierce's Biker Boys: Gay Erotica Stories in July 2010. Next summer Cleis will also publish Elizabeth Ozar's The Big Gay Breakup Book, a guide to getting over him or her and moving on to a highly successful relationship, offering her own thoughtful and insightful to one of the hardest of life's passages - the end of a relationship.
Seal Press will publish Tina Fakhrid-Deen’s Colage’s The LGBTQ Family Handbook, a resource for kids of gay, lesbian, trans, and queer parents -- full of invaluable questions and answers from kids living in all varieties of alternative family situations.
Simon Pulse will publish Brian Farrey's Chasers, about two teens who join a group called 'chasers' which promises them in-depth lessons about gay history and a place where they'll be accepted; but when the group's lessons morph into violent encounters and dangerous sexual pursuits, the young men must decide if their lives are really worth it.
In June 2010, Simon Spotlight will publish Tim Gunn's Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life's Little Instructions for Making It Work, applying old-world values to modern situations, from the lost art of etiquette to practical advice, showing how to navigate life and unflappably rise to any occasion, to Patrick Price at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, for publication in June 2010, by Peter Steinberg at The Steinberg Agency (world).
Lethe Press has released its second annual edition of Wilde Stories: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction featuring stories by Sven Davisson, Alex Jeffers, and Lee Thomas. Lethe has also released the nonfiction book Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay & Lesbian Ghosts, a guidebook by Ken Summers of gay and lesbian ghosts and haunted gay places.
Wayne Courtois will be signing copies of Report from Winter on October 3 at 1:00 pm at Barnes & Noble, at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Lester Srong and David Waggoner will be signing copies of their book XY on XY on October 6 at 8 pm at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 26 Wooster Street, in Manhattan.
Paul Bens and Ann Somerville will read at A Different Light in San Francisco on October 30 at 7:30pm.
The newest issue of Icarus, the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction, has been released and features work by authors Jeff Mann, Lee Thomas, Alex Jeffers, and Chad Helder.
Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse was runner up for Best Bookstore on Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta list.
Fire & Ink III: Cotillion, a festival for LGBTQ writers of African descent, will happen Oct. 8-11, 2009 in Austin, TX at the Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th St. in downtown Austin, with additional Cotillion events at the Blanton Museum and the Historic Victory Grill, among others. A complete listing of presenters can be found at http://2009.fireandink.org/.
The 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival will be May 13th through 16th in New Orleans. Among the authors slated to attend are Ann Bannon, Michael Nava, and Tim Miller.
Christopher Rice has resigned as President of the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Katherine Forrest has stepped into the role on an interim basis. Alyson publisher Don Weise has also joined the Board of Trustees of the literary organization. Tony Valenzuela has been appointed as interim Executive Director, replacing outgoing Charles Flowers, while the Foundation continues its search for candidates for the position. Richard Labonté is the administrator for the Lambda Literary awards. The organization’s revised mission statement and awards guidelines have been posted to the Web site.
The Publishing Triangle has published their award guidelines for books published in 2009 at http://www.publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp.
A staged reading of The Age of Innocence, a musical co-created by Walter Holland and Ted Kociolak, will be held at the York Theater in Manhattan on October 20th at 7:30PM. For details and reservations visit. http://www.yorktheatre.org/New%20Pages/Readings.html.
The theater department at the University of Wyoming at Laramie will stage a reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later on Oct. 12, an epilogue to the Tetonic Theater Project play, joining more than 120 theaters across the nation and overseas that will have readings on the same day.
The new season line up for the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs includes Candy and Dorothy by David Johnston, Dudes by Dan Clancy, Two Married Men by Arch Brown, Mensky’s Burlyesque conceived by Larry Lazzaro, and A Perfect Relationship by Doric Wilson. More details at: http://www.thornytheater.com/
As part of its 2010-11 season dedicated to the work of Tony Kushner, Manhattan’s Signature Theater Company will mount the first New York revival of Angels in America.
Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, returns to Broadway next spring with Dame Edna: It’s All About Me.
Nicole Kidman will star in a film adaptation of David Ebershoff’s novel, The Danish Girl, about painter Einar Wegener, the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Leopardrama Limited has optioned the film rights of Richard McCann's Mother of Sorrows.
Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer are partnering to adapt Augusten Burrough’s novel Sellevision for NBC.
Kudos: On the shortlist for the Booker prize is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire received the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Topp Twins, a film about the New Zealand lesbian sister singing-comedy duo of the same name, received the audience award for best documentary.
Colin Firth took the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of a gay professor in A Single Man, the new film from Tom Ford based on the Christopher Isherwood novel. A Single Man also won the Queer Golden Lion, an award independent of the official festival, for films with gay themes or content.
Among the inductees to the new Canadian Queer Hall of Fame was Janine Fuller, Little Sister’s bookstore manager and author.
Open Calls: Editor Richard Labonté is looking for fiction and memoir for Beautiful Boys: New Gay Fiction, to be published by Cleis Press in Fall 2010. Deadline is February 1, 2010. Payment: $50-$75 plus two contributor copies. Word length: 6,000 maximum. Submissions can be sent to: cleisbeautifulboys@gmail.com, in .doc or .rtf format. Include real name/address/50-word bio.
Labonté is also seeking submissions Best Gay Erotica 2011 to be guest judged by Kevin Killian. Deadline is April 1, 2010. Payment $50-$75, plus two contributor copies. Queries and submissions to: mailto:bge2010@gmail.com.
Labonté is also seeking fiction for Best Gay Romance 2011. Deadline is May 1, 2010. Payment is $50 to $75 plus two contributor copies. Include real name/ address/ 50-word bio, to bgr2011@gmail.com.
Gayfest NYC is accepting submissions for the Festival of New Plays and Musicals to be presented in New York City next year. Deadline is October 31, 2009. For more details visit: Gayfest.com.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
September Publishing Notes
The buzz: The schedule for the 2009 Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, November 3-8, 2009, has been posted at http://www.atlqueerlitfest.com/. Events include readings by Andrew Beierle, Catherine Lundoff, Collin Kelley, Franklin Abbott, Stacyann Chin, and Manil Suri, workshops with Regie Cabico, Kit Yan, Marty McConnell, and Ami Mattison, and an exhibition of photographs and ephemera featured in the book Gay and Lesbian Atlanta with comments by co-author Wesley Chenault. The AQLF's partnership with the Decatur Book Festival takes place over Labor Day Weekend, September 4-6, in Decatur, GA. Featured authors includes Sharon Sanders, Franklin Abbott, Z Egloff, Shawn Stuart Ruff, Collin Kelley, Megan Volpert, Amy King, C. Dale Young, James Allen Hall, Radclyffe, Kim Baldwin and J.M. Redmann.
The Lambda Literary Foundation will hold a Read-a-Thon Set November 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia to benefit both the Foundation and the bookstore. LGBT authors will read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes total for each author.
Charles Flowers, the Executive Director of The Lambda Literary Foundation will leave his position in the fall.
Broward County in Florida is proposing to balance its budget by slashing 30% of its cultural grants, a move that could impair Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall Library & Archives. The Stonewall Library & Archives houses over 18,000 LGBT-related books and audio-visual materials, as well as 5,000 historical LGBT items, many focusing on the history of gays in the South.
A West Bend, Illinois couple has asked that certain books be moved to a restricted section of the West Bend Community Memorial Library community library and that the Library Board balance its collection of books about homosexuality with books that affirm traditional “heterosexual perspectives.” A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays recently issued a statement condemning the library for continuing to neglect books by ex-gay authors. On June 2, members of the West Bend Library Board voted unanimously not to move or restrict any of the books. Meanwhile, the terms of four Library Board members were not renewed. Four men subsequently filed a lawsuit, stating certain books caused them pain, and called for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned.
Greenwood Press has issued a two-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
The Outer Alliance, a new organization, has been set up in support of LGBT advocacy in the Sci Fi/Fantasy community. More details can be found at http://outeralliance.wordpress.com/.
Kensington will publish Michael Salvatore's Between Boyfriends in June 2010.
Country Valley Press has just published a limited edition hand-sewn chapbook by Jeffery Beam of a long poem entitled, An Invocation.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Michael Cunningham is working on his latest novel, his first in four years, titled Olympia. Olympia follows an art dealer who is drawn increasingly toward his wife’s younger brother, who reminds him of the couple’s younger years.
In October, Belhue Press will publish The Manly Art of Seduction by Perry Brass.
This fall, Rebel Satori Press will publish D. Travers Scott new story collection, Love Hard.
In 2010 It Books will publish RuPaul's Workin’ It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style!, a style guide and confidence manifesto.
Queerty noted that there are reportedly two finished scripts of Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris’s first novel -- one which focuses on the college years and the other on the New York City years of characters Raymond, Nicole and Basil. The late author was in Los Angeles meeting with producers shortly before he died. Several of Harris’s friends — including Eric Jerome Dickey and Kimberla Lawson Roby — will meet with local book clubs in his place this fall.
Mike Nichols will direct Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.
Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly in talks with Universal Pictures to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice’s popular trilogy of novels The Vampire Chronicles.
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cages Aux Folles is headed to Broadway and will open in a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater on April 18, 2010.
Kudos: Among with recipients of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honor writers of exceptional talent, was Chris Adrian who received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for his short story collection A Better Angel. Among the writers receiving 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships were Chris Adrian and Stacey D’Erasmo.
Open Calls: Candace Walsh and Laura Andre are seeking submissions for And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men For Women to be published by Seal Press in 2010. Deadline is December 1, 2009. More details can be found at andthenitshifted@gmail.com and http://sites.google.com/site/andthenitshifted
Applications are now being accepted for the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award awarded annually at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. The awards, in their fourth year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each will be made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Authors may nominate themselves or another candidate by midnight October 31, 2009. For more details visit: http://www.sasfest.org/.
Also of Note: Copies of The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of my gay-themed ghost stories, published by Lethe Press, is now available through your favorite bookseller.
The gorgeous cover painting was done by Richard Taddei, a painter I have long admired. If you want to see more of Richard’s work, you can find him online at http://www.richardtaddei.com/.
Vince Liaguno, co-editor of the Stoker-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, has posted his generous review on line at Dark Scribe Magazine, which he edits and publishes. Read it at: http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/
And I am also doing a reading on October 29th in Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore with two other talented writers (and friends) who have new books coming out -- Tom Cardamone, author of Pumpkin Teeth: Stories, and Sean Meriwether, author of The Silent Hustler. Here’s the details on the event.
Tricks and Treats: Gays, Ghosts, and Goblins
Thursday, October 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Admission is free and all book sales proceeds benefit people living with HIV.
The Lambda Literary Foundation will hold a Read-a-Thon Set November 21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at Giovanni's Room bookstore in Philadelphia to benefit both the Foundation and the bookstore. LGBT authors will read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes total for each author.
Charles Flowers, the Executive Director of The Lambda Literary Foundation will leave his position in the fall.
Broward County in Florida is proposing to balance its budget by slashing 30% of its cultural grants, a move that could impair Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall Library & Archives. The Stonewall Library & Archives houses over 18,000 LGBT-related books and audio-visual materials, as well as 5,000 historical LGBT items, many focusing on the history of gays in the South.
A West Bend, Illinois couple has asked that certain books be moved to a restricted section of the West Bend Community Memorial Library community library and that the Library Board balance its collection of books about homosexuality with books that affirm traditional “heterosexual perspectives.” A group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays recently issued a statement condemning the library for continuing to neglect books by ex-gay authors. On June 2, members of the West Bend Library Board voted unanimously not to move or restrict any of the books. Meanwhile, the terms of four Library Board members were not renewed. Four men subsequently filed a lawsuit, stating certain books caused them pain, and called for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned.
Greenwood Press has issued a two-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
The Outer Alliance, a new organization, has been set up in support of LGBT advocacy in the Sci Fi/Fantasy community. More details can be found at http://outeralliance.wordpress.com/.
Kensington will publish Michael Salvatore's Between Boyfriends in June 2010.
Country Valley Press has just published a limited edition hand-sewn chapbook by Jeffery Beam of a long poem entitled, An Invocation.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Michael Cunningham is working on his latest novel, his first in four years, titled Olympia. Olympia follows an art dealer who is drawn increasingly toward his wife’s younger brother, who reminds him of the couple’s younger years.
In October, Belhue Press will publish The Manly Art of Seduction by Perry Brass.
This fall, Rebel Satori Press will publish D. Travers Scott new story collection, Love Hard.
In 2010 It Books will publish RuPaul's Workin’ It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style!, a style guide and confidence manifesto.
Queerty noted that there are reportedly two finished scripts of Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris’s first novel -- one which focuses on the college years and the other on the New York City years of characters Raymond, Nicole and Basil. The late author was in Los Angeles meeting with producers shortly before he died. Several of Harris’s friends — including Eric Jerome Dickey and Kimberla Lawson Roby — will meet with local book clubs in his place this fall.
Mike Nichols will direct Deep Water, an adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.
Robert Downey Jr. is reportedly in talks with Universal Pictures to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice’s popular trilogy of novels The Vampire Chronicles.
The Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cages Aux Folles is headed to Broadway and will open in a yet-to-be-announced Shubert theater on April 18, 2010.
Kudos: Among with recipients of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which honor writers of exceptional talent, was Chris Adrian who received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for his short story collection A Better Angel. Among the writers receiving 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships were Chris Adrian and Stacey D’Erasmo.
Open Calls: Candace Walsh and Laura Andre are seeking submissions for And Then It Shifted: Women Open Up About Leaving Men For Women to be published by Seal Press in 2010. Deadline is December 1, 2009. More details can be found at andthenitshifted@gmail.com and http://sites.google.com/site/andthenitshifted
Applications are now being accepted for the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award awarded annually at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. The awards, in their fourth year, recognize and promote LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. They are made possible by James Duggins, PhD, a retired educator who taught history at San Francisco State University. Two annual cash awards of $5,000 each will be made to one man and one woman. Eligibility is open to any author who has written and published at least three novels, or at least two novels and substantial additional literary work, including poems, short stories, or essays. Authors may nominate themselves or another candidate by midnight October 31, 2009. For more details visit: http://www.sasfest.org/.
Also of Note: Copies of The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, a collection of my gay-themed ghost stories, published by Lethe Press, is now available through your favorite bookseller.
The gorgeous cover painting was done by Richard Taddei, a painter I have long admired. If you want to see more of Richard’s work, you can find him online at http://www.richardtaddei.com/.
Vince Liaguno, co-editor of the Stoker-winning anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, has posted his generous review on line at Dark Scribe Magazine, which he edits and publishes. Read it at: http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/reviews/
And I am also doing a reading on October 29th in Manhattan at Housing Works Bookstore with two other talented writers (and friends) who have new books coming out -- Tom Cardamone, author of Pumpkin Teeth: Stories, and Sean Meriwether, author of The Silent Hustler. Here’s the details on the event.
Tricks and Treats: Gays, Ghosts, and Goblins
Thursday, October 29, 2009
7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Admission is free and all book sales proceeds benefit people living with HIV.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
July Publishing Notes
The buzz: Screen Gems has acquired the rights to Beautiful Girl by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham, a story that "concerns a shy but brainy high school girl who returns for senior year after having slimmed down six dress sizes. She finds herself flirting with the handsome English lit teacher, but the mutual crush turns deadly when the teacher's obsession with the student compels him to exact maniacal revenge on everyone who was cruel to her."
Keith Orr, co-owner of the Common Language Bookstore, the GLBTQ bookstore in Ann Arbor, sent an email to customers saying that the store was not making enough sales to support itself and needed help from customers and the community. Orr and his partner Martin Contreras have been subsidizing the store with the personal savings and with money from another business they own the aut Bar.
Writer Patrick Gale will be reading from his 2009 novel The Whole Day Through and answering questions from the audience at the Dutch Bookshop Vrolijk, Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam: July 11th at 5 p.m. More details at www.vrolijk.nu/homo-boek/book-patrick-gale-whole-day-through.html.
Alyson will publish Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right in the Spring of 2010.
Alyson will also publish Ryan Field's An Officer and His Gentleman, a gay erotic romance about a small-town aspiring chef and his military lover, and EM Lynley's Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells, a gay erotic romance about a New York reporter who travels to Texas to cover the story of a real-life "runaway bride," only to fall in love with the groom and discover the bride's shocking secret.
Here Networks has completed a merger with PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Holdings include the Advocate magazine, Here Studios and Here Films. Other assets include a television company and online properties Gay.com and Planetout.com.
Kudos: Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, an anthology of queer horror tales edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology from the Horror Writers of America.
Jade Donigan of Ponderay, ID, Hannah Kapp-Klote of Lawrence, KS, and Calen Winn of Vashon, WA, are the Queer Foundation Scholors for 2009-2010. Each student received a $1,000 scholarship for study at the college of their choice.
Nicola Griffith and Scott Cranin have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Open Calls: Todd Gregory is accepting submissions for an anthology of erotic gay vampire tales titled Blood Sacraments, to be published by Bold Strokes Books in October 2010. Deadline is October 1, 2009. Submissions must be mailed to: Todd Gregory, c/o Greg Herren, 5500 Prytania Street #215, New Orleans, LA 70115. Questions can be emailed to gregwrites@gmail.com.
Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both print and web versions. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations. For more details visit: http://www.maryliterary.blogspot.com/
The Queer Foundation Scholar, an electronic newsletter published in March and August, is looking for essays from undergraduate or graduate students. Photographs and graphic art are also welcome if they are part of a creative work. If accepted, authors of submissions will receive $100 paid toward tuition and fees at their college or university. Submissions may be sent to the editor at any time to rverzasconi@msn.com.
“The Man in the Mirror” in Icarus: My ghost story, “The Man in the Mirror,” is in the first issue of Icarus, a new gay speculative fiction magazine, edited by Steve Berman, which also featuring work by Jeff Mann, Joel Lane, and Tom Cardamone. Icarus is a full-color quarterly, devoted to tales of gay fantasy, horror, science-fiction, and “everything else weird that falls through the cracks.” Craig Gidney is the assistant editor, Toby Johnson is the graphic designer, and Steve Berman and Lethe Press are the publishing forces behind the new magazine.
The single issue price of Icarus is $13 plus postage at http://lethepress.magcloud.com/. To order a year's subscription (4 issues), send $50 via Paypal to lethepress@aol.com. Subscription price includes free shipping and subscribers will receive a gratis copy of the latest edition of Wilde Stories, Lethe’s annual anthology of the year's best gay speculative fiction, with their 2nd issue of Icarus. Electronic editions of Icarus are also available. Contact lethepress@aol.com for more information.
Keith Orr, co-owner of the Common Language Bookstore, the GLBTQ bookstore in Ann Arbor, sent an email to customers saying that the store was not making enough sales to support itself and needed help from customers and the community. Orr and his partner Martin Contreras have been subsidizing the store with the personal savings and with money from another business they own the aut Bar.
Writer Patrick Gale will be reading from his 2009 novel The Whole Day Through and answering questions from the audience at the Dutch Bookshop Vrolijk, Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam: July 11th at 5 p.m. More details at www.vrolijk.nu/homo-boek/book-patrick-gale-whole-day-through.html.
Alyson will publish Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right in the Spring of 2010.
Alyson will also publish Ryan Field's An Officer and His Gentleman, a gay erotic romance about a small-town aspiring chef and his military lover, and EM Lynley's Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells, a gay erotic romance about a New York reporter who travels to Texas to cover the story of a real-life "runaway bride," only to fall in love with the groom and discover the bride's shocking secret.
Here Networks has completed a merger with PlanetOut to create a new company called Here Media. Holdings include the Advocate magazine, Here Studios and Here Films. Other assets include a television company and online properties Gay.com and Planetout.com.
Kudos: Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, an anthology of queer horror tales edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder, received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology from the Horror Writers of America.
Jade Donigan of Ponderay, ID, Hannah Kapp-Klote of Lawrence, KS, and Calen Winn of Vashon, WA, are the Queer Foundation Scholors for 2009-2010. Each student received a $1,000 scholarship for study at the college of their choice.
Nicola Griffith and Scott Cranin have joined the Board of Trustees of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Open Calls: Todd Gregory is accepting submissions for an anthology of erotic gay vampire tales titled Blood Sacraments, to be published by Bold Strokes Books in October 2010. Deadline is October 1, 2009. Submissions must be mailed to: Todd Gregory, c/o Greg Herren, 5500 Prytania Street #215, New Orleans, LA 70115. Questions can be emailed to gregwrites@gmail.com.
Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both print and web versions. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations. For more details visit: http://www.maryliterary.blogspot.com/
The Queer Foundation Scholar, an electronic newsletter published in March and August, is looking for essays from undergraduate or graduate students. Photographs and graphic art are also welcome if they are part of a creative work. If accepted, authors of submissions will receive $100 paid toward tuition and fees at their college or university. Submissions may be sent to the editor at any time to rverzasconi@msn.com.
“The Man in the Mirror” in Icarus: My ghost story, “The Man in the Mirror,” is in the first issue of Icarus, a new gay speculative fiction magazine, edited by Steve Berman, which also featuring work by Jeff Mann, Joel Lane, and Tom Cardamone. Icarus is a full-color quarterly, devoted to tales of gay fantasy, horror, science-fiction, and “everything else weird that falls through the cracks.” Craig Gidney is the assistant editor, Toby Johnson is the graphic designer, and Steve Berman and Lethe Press are the publishing forces behind the new magazine.
The single issue price of Icarus is $13 plus postage at http://lethepress.magcloud.com/. To order a year's subscription (4 issues), send $50 via Paypal to lethepress@aol.com. Subscription price includes free shipping and subscribers will receive a gratis copy of the latest edition of Wilde Stories, Lethe’s annual anthology of the year's best gay speculative fiction, with their 2nd issue of Icarus. Electronic editions of Icarus are also available. Contact lethepress@aol.com for more information.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
June Publishing Notes
City Lights is releasing this month Smash the Church, Smash the State!, an anthology of gay activist writings edited by Tommi Avicolli Meccca.
Also this month, Queer Mojo Press is releasing Trebor Healey’s collection of short fiction, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories.
Perry Brass, Robert W. Cabell, and Doric Wilson will read at Rebels and Rhinestones, Thursday, June 11, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library, 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan. The event is hosted by Francine Trevens and sponsored by the Greater New York Independent Publishers Association (GNYIPA), and co-sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing. There is a requested donation of $8.
Doric Wilson, John Finch, Steven Hauck, Robert W. Cabell, Perry Brass, Heidi Russell, and others are scheduled for Stonewall + 40, Thursday, June 18 at 6 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway in Manhattan. The event is free and open to the public.
The fourth issue of Ganymede, a gay literary and art journal, is now available. Highlights include a rare reprint of Oscar Wilde’s story, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” fiction by Bruce Nugent, Ryan Doyle, Jeffries Schwartz, new work by seven poets, Ian Duncan’s essay on porn star Matthew Rush, and portfolios on magic realism painter George Tooker and seven photographers. Details and sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Mavety Media Group has shuttered all of their gay magazines—including Mandate, Torso, Honcho, Inches, and Playguy. Among this blogger’s first published work was short fiction that appeared in Mandate in the 1980s.
Twelve Press will publish Christopher Bram's Eminent Outlaws, a group biography about gay American writers who changed the culture.
In the Spring of 2010, Harmony will publish Bryan Batt's She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother, about what it was like being raised by an eccentric but very loving Mom in 1970s New Orleans.
Thom Bierdz, actor, artist, and author of the memoir Forgiving Troy, returns to The Young and the Restless in a hush-hush story line twenty years after his last appearance on the top-rated soap.
BBC2 announced that it will adapt Sarah Waters' fourth novel, The Night Watch, into a ninety-minute film.
This month Square One is releasing a paperback edition of Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life by Elliot Tiber with Tom Monte to coincide with the movie version directed by Ang Lee.
David Brendan Hope’s play The Beautiful Johanna will be part of the North Carolina Stage's Catalyst Series downtown in January 2010. His play The Loves of Mr. Lincoln, about the President’s relationship with Joshua Speed, will have a reading June 5 in New York at the BGT Theater.
Nathan Manske has launched a website, http://www.imfromdriftwood.com/, which is a compilation of "true stories by gay people from all over," with a goal to link gays and lesbians, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle award winners are: In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain by Andrea Weiss (Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction); Drifting Toward Love by Kai Wright (Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction); Interpretive Work by Elizabeth Bradfield (Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry); Boy with Flowers by Ely Shipley (Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry); Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg (Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction); The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction). Martin Duberman was honored with the 2009 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Carole DeSanti won the Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award.
The Lambda Literary Awards were announced May 28, 2009. A complete list of the winners can be found on the Foundation Web site at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.
Sarah Schulman has been named the 2009 winner of the Kessler Award, given to a scholar who has, over a number of years, produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBT Studies.
Carol Ann Duffy became Britain’s first lesbian Poet Laureate.
Jim Duggins, Michael Thomas Ford, G. Winston James, Radclyffe, and Jess Wells were inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at the annual literary festival in New Orleans. Michael Lowenthal and Elana Dykewomon received the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize.
Open Calls: Windy City Times is accepting poetry and prose submissions for their 6th Annual Pride Literary Supplement, edited by Kathie Bergquist and Owen Keehnen. This year’s theme is Stonewall 40: Looking Out. Prose has a 300 word limit, 3 poems submission is the maxium allowed. Word documents should be e-mailed to WCTPride@gmail.com. Deadline is June 10, 2009.
Ganymede, a literary/art print journal by and for gay men published quarterly as a paperback book in New York is seeking gay male writers of short stories, essays, poetry, reviews. Details, tables of contents, readable sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/. Submission guidelines: http://ganymedesubmissions.blogspot.com/.
Tincture, an imprint of Lethe Press for work by LGBT writers of color, is seeking submissions for a 2010 Gay Latino Fiction Anthology. Deadline: November 1, 2009. Unpublished short stories or novel excerpts of up to 7500 words. Submissions can be sent to LatinoLethePress@gmail.com.
Aesthetica magazine, a UK-based international arts and culture publication, is seeking poetry, fiction, artwork and photography for their Annual Creative Works Competition.
For full details visit: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm. Deadline is August 31, 2009.
Passages: Rodger McFarlane died May 15, 2009 in New Mexico. He was 54. McFarlane committed suicide while traveling to New Mexico. He was a former executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis and executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. McFarlane also authored The Complete Bedside Companion: No-Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill, and most recently penned the afterward for Larry Kramer’s The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. In 1993, he coproduced the Pulitzer Prize–nominated production of Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, the sequel to The Normal Heart.
Also this month, Queer Mojo Press is releasing Trebor Healey’s collection of short fiction, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories.
Perry Brass, Robert W. Cabell, and Doric Wilson will read at Rebels and Rhinestones, Thursday, June 11, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library, 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan. The event is hosted by Francine Trevens and sponsored by the Greater New York Independent Publishers Association (GNYIPA), and co-sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing. There is a requested donation of $8.
Doric Wilson, John Finch, Steven Hauck, Robert W. Cabell, Perry Brass, Heidi Russell, and others are scheduled for Stonewall + 40, Thursday, June 18 at 6 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway in Manhattan. The event is free and open to the public.
The fourth issue of Ganymede, a gay literary and art journal, is now available. Highlights include a rare reprint of Oscar Wilde’s story, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” fiction by Bruce Nugent, Ryan Doyle, Jeffries Schwartz, new work by seven poets, Ian Duncan’s essay on porn star Matthew Rush, and portfolios on magic realism painter George Tooker and seven photographers. Details and sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Mavety Media Group has shuttered all of their gay magazines—including Mandate, Torso, Honcho, Inches, and Playguy. Among this blogger’s first published work was short fiction that appeared in Mandate in the 1980s.
Twelve Press will publish Christopher Bram's Eminent Outlaws, a group biography about gay American writers who changed the culture.
In the Spring of 2010, Harmony will publish Bryan Batt's She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother, about what it was like being raised by an eccentric but very loving Mom in 1970s New Orleans.
Thom Bierdz, actor, artist, and author of the memoir Forgiving Troy, returns to The Young and the Restless in a hush-hush story line twenty years after his last appearance on the top-rated soap.
BBC2 announced that it will adapt Sarah Waters' fourth novel, The Night Watch, into a ninety-minute film.
This month Square One is releasing a paperback edition of Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life by Elliot Tiber with Tom Monte to coincide with the movie version directed by Ang Lee.
David Brendan Hope’s play The Beautiful Johanna will be part of the North Carolina Stage's Catalyst Series downtown in January 2010. His play The Loves of Mr. Lincoln, about the President’s relationship with Joshua Speed, will have a reading June 5 in New York at the BGT Theater.
Nathan Manske has launched a website, http://www.imfromdriftwood.com/, which is a compilation of "true stories by gay people from all over," with a goal to link gays and lesbians, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle award winners are: In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain by Andrea Weiss (Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction); Drifting Toward Love by Kai Wright (Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction); Interpretive Work by Elizabeth Bradfield (Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry); Boy with Flowers by Ely Shipley (Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry); Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg (Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction); The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction). Martin Duberman was honored with the 2009 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Carole DeSanti won the Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award.
The Lambda Literary Awards were announced May 28, 2009. A complete list of the winners can be found on the Foundation Web site at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.
Sarah Schulman has been named the 2009 winner of the Kessler Award, given to a scholar who has, over a number of years, produced a substantive body of work that has had a significant influence on the field of LGBT Studies.
Carol Ann Duffy became Britain’s first lesbian Poet Laureate.
Jim Duggins, Michael Thomas Ford, G. Winston James, Radclyffe, and Jess Wells were inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame at the annual literary festival in New Orleans. Michael Lowenthal and Elana Dykewomon received the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize.
Open Calls: Windy City Times is accepting poetry and prose submissions for their 6th Annual Pride Literary Supplement, edited by Kathie Bergquist and Owen Keehnen. This year’s theme is Stonewall 40: Looking Out. Prose has a 300 word limit, 3 poems submission is the maxium allowed. Word documents should be e-mailed to WCTPride@gmail.com. Deadline is June 10, 2009.
Ganymede, a literary/art print journal by and for gay men published quarterly as a paperback book in New York is seeking gay male writers of short stories, essays, poetry, reviews. Details, tables of contents, readable sample pages can be found at http://www.ganymedenyc.com/. Submission guidelines: http://ganymedesubmissions.blogspot.com/.
Tincture, an imprint of Lethe Press for work by LGBT writers of color, is seeking submissions for a 2010 Gay Latino Fiction Anthology. Deadline: November 1, 2009. Unpublished short stories or novel excerpts of up to 7500 words. Submissions can be sent to LatinoLethePress@gmail.com.
Aesthetica magazine, a UK-based international arts and culture publication, is seeking poetry, fiction, artwork and photography for their Annual Creative Works Competition.
For full details visit: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm. Deadline is August 31, 2009.
Passages: Rodger McFarlane died May 15, 2009 in New Mexico. He was 54. McFarlane committed suicide while traveling to New Mexico. He was a former executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis and executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. McFarlane also authored The Complete Bedside Companion: No-Nonsense Advice on Caring for the Seriously Ill, and most recently penned the afterward for Larry Kramer’s The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. In 1993, he coproduced the Pulitzer Prize–nominated production of Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, the sequel to The Normal Heart.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
April Publishing Notes
The buzz: This fall Alyson will publish Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, edited by Philip Clark and David Groff. Contributors will include Thomas Avena, Tim Dlugos, Tory Dent, Essex Hemphill, Paul Monette, George Whitmore, and others.
In April, Poets Wear Prada Press will publish Jee Leong Koh’s first full-length collection Equal to the Earth. Koh blogs here.
This spring, Rebel Satori Press will published a tenth anniversary (and revised) edition of Emanuel Xavier’s novel Christ Like.
Picador will publish Wayne Koestenbaum's Humiliation, exploring the connection between our private experiences of humiliation and our current fascination with the public humiliation of others.
This fall Alyson will also publish Women of the Bite, edited by Cecilia Tan, a lesbian vampire erotica anthology, first published as an e-book by RavenousRomance.com.
The University of Chicago Press will publish Alice Kaplan's To Live in France, the stories of three women who went to live in France as students: Jacqueline Bouvier (1949-1950), Susan Sontag (1957-1958), and Angela Davis (1963-1964).
Among the new book releases with videos is the novel I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin by Stephens Gerard Malone. View it on You Tube here.
Amid growing controversy and threats of violence, Alekper Aliyev’s Artush And Zaur, a gay novel of a doomed love affair between two men during the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been removed from the shelves of Azeri bookstores, Reuters reported.
Author Lyndon Evans will be doing LGBT themed op-ed blogs for the New Times in Connecticut. Evans also blogs here.
The Bay Area Reporter weighed in on the North Beach incident involving Mark Doty while the poet was in San Francisco. The article is here. Doty also wrote about the incident on his blog.
Among the panels being planned for this year’s Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 14-17, are “Tales of the New Depression: The Realities of the Modern Market,” “Shameless: The Author’s Art of Self-Promotion,” “Making Time for Creativity,” “How to Write With a Full Time Job,” and “The Versatile Writer: Writing in Different Genres.”
PEN World Voices festival will include a panel on April 30 on gay writers Reinaldo Arenas and Blai Bonet. Panelists include Jaime Manrique, Biel Mesquida, Margalida Pons, Carles Rebassa, and Manuel Vázquez Portal. The event is free and open to the public at Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 65 Fifth Avenue.
Rob Weisbach is starting a "new generation management company," Rob Weisbach Creative Management, designed to "re-conceive the traditional literary agency as a cross-training development company--one that will work with new and established talent on all aspects of career building."
Craig Gidney has become editor of Lethe Press. Steve Berman remains as publisher. One of Gidney's top priorities is the establishment of the Tincture imprint, which will feature the work by gay people of color.
Christopher K. Navratil is now the publisher of Running Press.
This fall Arsenal Pulp Press will launch Queer Film Classics, a new series of books on LGBT cinema, edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays.
Hansen Publishing will publish Gregg Barrios's Rancho Pancho, a two-act play that explores the turbulent and passionate relationship between playwright Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez, who inspired the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, which follows the relationship from the summer of 1946 on Nantucket Island with novelist Carson McCullers to the summer of 1947 in Provincetown.
Hansen will also publish David Kaplan's Tenn at One Hundred, a retrospective collection of edited essays marking Tennessee Williams one hundredth birthday and his legacy as a premier American playwright.
Next spring, Scribner will publish Actor James Franco's collection of short stories.
Stephen Spinella and Linda Emond have joined the cast of Tony Kushner’s Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, a new work that will have its premiere at the Guthrie Theater this spring.
Ugly Betty star Michael Urie will star in The Tempermentals, a new play by Jon Marans, set to begin April 30 at the Barrow Group Studio Theater in Manhattan. The play is about the origins of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by the activist Harry Hay in 1950, when “temperamental” was a code word for homosexual.
In Grandfield, Oklahoma, a high school teacher was reportedly fired for having students produce their own short films about Matthew Shepard, after watching The Laramie Project.
Embren Entertainment will release the film The Big Gay Musical this summer. The story follows Paul and Eddie, starring in a meta-musical titled Adam and Steve Just the Way God Made 'Em.
Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, and Katie Holmes will star in a film adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novel, The Extra Man.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle has selected the finalists for their literary awards in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. A complete list is available on the organization’s Web site. Editor Carole DeSanti will receive the organization’s Leadership Award and Martin Duberman is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. The awards will be presented May 7, 2009, at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) at 7 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.
Among the finalists for the Indies Choice Book Awards from the American Booksellers Association is David Sedaris for “Most Engaging Author.”
Among the finalists for the 2009 Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers of America, are: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, and “Turtle” by Lee Thomas for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, and Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder for Superior Achievement in an Anthology.
Among the finalist’s for the Galaxy British Book Awards are: Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry for Popular Non-Fiction Award and The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff for Richard & Judy's Best Read of the Year.
105 books in 22 categories from 72 publishers are finalists for the annual Lambda Literary Awards. A full list of the finalists is available on the foundation’s Web site. The awards will be presented Thursday, May 28, 2009 at the Proshansky Auditorium at CUNY Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $75 until May 15, 2009 and $95 thereafter.
Among the finalists for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s sci-fi/fantasy awards, were stories by Lynne Jamneck (“The Oath”), and Lyn McConchie (“Waiting Tables and Time”) from the anthology Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades. Editor Catherine Lundoff relays that this is the first time that stories with LGBT content have made the final ballot.
Elana Dykewomon and Michael Lowenthal are the recipients of this year’s James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award, presented at the annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans.
The ten finalists in the Saints and Sinners Playwriting competition are: David-Matthew Barnes for Sloe Gin Fizz; Andrew Black for That Second Weekend in September; Leo Cabranes-Grant for The Whale in the Room; Joan Dunayer for Apes on Display; Michelle Embree, Hand Over Fist; Allison Fradkin for Dykechotomous; Michael Edison Hayden for Hustler's Journal; Elizabeth Orndorff for Aidan's Gift; M. Lennon Perricone for Unresolved; and Edward J. Walsh & Robert Thomas Noll for Hit or Miss.
The Book of Getting Even by Benjamin Taylor won second-place honors in fiction the 16th annual Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Awards.
Band of Thebes uncovered several LGBT stories as finalists for the National magazine Awards: Hannah Rosin's "A Boy's Life," for Feature Writing: from the Atlantic; Andrew Corsello's "Let God Love Gene Robison," for Profile Writing from GQ; three pieces by Hendrik Hertzberg including his editorial on the Proposition 8 victory for Columns and Commentary from The New Yorker: Annie Proulx's short story, "Them Old Cowboy Songs," for Fiction from The New Yorker.
Open calls: Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize for an unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a LGBTQ writer. Deadline is May 15, 2009. This year’s judge is Ruth L. Schwartz. More details can be found at http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.
Passages: Scott Symons, the Toronto-born author of the 1967 novel Place d’Armes, died February 23, 2009. He was 75. Symons was also the subject of a documentary film, God's Fool (1998), by Nik Sheehan.
James Purdy died March 13, 1994. He was 94. Purdy was the author of the novels Cabot Wright Begins, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Malcolm, and The Nephew.
In April, Poets Wear Prada Press will publish Jee Leong Koh’s first full-length collection Equal to the Earth. Koh blogs here.
This spring, Rebel Satori Press will published a tenth anniversary (and revised) edition of Emanuel Xavier’s novel Christ Like.
Picador will publish Wayne Koestenbaum's Humiliation, exploring the connection between our private experiences of humiliation and our current fascination with the public humiliation of others.
This fall Alyson will also publish Women of the Bite, edited by Cecilia Tan, a lesbian vampire erotica anthology, first published as an e-book by RavenousRomance.com.
The University of Chicago Press will publish Alice Kaplan's To Live in France, the stories of three women who went to live in France as students: Jacqueline Bouvier (1949-1950), Susan Sontag (1957-1958), and Angela Davis (1963-1964).
Among the new book releases with videos is the novel I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin by Stephens Gerard Malone. View it on You Tube here.
Amid growing controversy and threats of violence, Alekper Aliyev’s Artush And Zaur, a gay novel of a doomed love affair between two men during the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been removed from the shelves of Azeri bookstores, Reuters reported.
Author Lyndon Evans will be doing LGBT themed op-ed blogs for the New Times in Connecticut. Evans also blogs here.
The Bay Area Reporter weighed in on the North Beach incident involving Mark Doty while the poet was in San Francisco. The article is here. Doty also wrote about the incident on his blog.
Among the panels being planned for this year’s Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 14-17, are “Tales of the New Depression: The Realities of the Modern Market,” “Shameless: The Author’s Art of Self-Promotion,” “Making Time for Creativity,” “How to Write With a Full Time Job,” and “The Versatile Writer: Writing in Different Genres.”
PEN World Voices festival will include a panel on April 30 on gay writers Reinaldo Arenas and Blai Bonet. Panelists include Jaime Manrique, Biel Mesquida, Margalida Pons, Carles Rebassa, and Manuel Vázquez Portal. The event is free and open to the public at Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 65 Fifth Avenue.
Rob Weisbach is starting a "new generation management company," Rob Weisbach Creative Management, designed to "re-conceive the traditional literary agency as a cross-training development company--one that will work with new and established talent on all aspects of career building."
Craig Gidney has become editor of Lethe Press. Steve Berman remains as publisher. One of Gidney's top priorities is the establishment of the Tincture imprint, which will feature the work by gay people of color.
Christopher K. Navratil is now the publisher of Running Press.
This fall Arsenal Pulp Press will launch Queer Film Classics, a new series of books on LGBT cinema, edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays.
Hansen Publishing will publish Gregg Barrios's Rancho Pancho, a two-act play that explores the turbulent and passionate relationship between playwright Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez, who inspired the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, which follows the relationship from the summer of 1946 on Nantucket Island with novelist Carson McCullers to the summer of 1947 in Provincetown.
Hansen will also publish David Kaplan's Tenn at One Hundred, a retrospective collection of edited essays marking Tennessee Williams one hundredth birthday and his legacy as a premier American playwright.
Next spring, Scribner will publish Actor James Franco's collection of short stories.
Stephen Spinella and Linda Emond have joined the cast of Tony Kushner’s Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, a new work that will have its premiere at the Guthrie Theater this spring.
Ugly Betty star Michael Urie will star in The Tempermentals, a new play by Jon Marans, set to begin April 30 at the Barrow Group Studio Theater in Manhattan. The play is about the origins of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by the activist Harry Hay in 1950, when “temperamental” was a code word for homosexual.
In Grandfield, Oklahoma, a high school teacher was reportedly fired for having students produce their own short films about Matthew Shepard, after watching The Laramie Project.
Embren Entertainment will release the film The Big Gay Musical this summer. The story follows Paul and Eddie, starring in a meta-musical titled Adam and Steve Just the Way God Made 'Em.
Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, and Katie Holmes will star in a film adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novel, The Extra Man.
Kudos: The Publishing Triangle has selected the finalists for their literary awards in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. A complete list is available on the organization’s Web site. Editor Carole DeSanti will receive the organization’s Leadership Award and Martin Duberman is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. The awards will be presented May 7, 2009, at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) at 7 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.
Among the finalists for the Indies Choice Book Awards from the American Booksellers Association is David Sedaris for “Most Engaging Author.”
Among the finalists for the 2009 Stoker Awards, given by the Horror Writers of America, are: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, and “Turtle” by Lee Thomas for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, and Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder for Superior Achievement in an Anthology.
Among the finalist’s for the Galaxy British Book Awards are: Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry for Popular Non-Fiction Award and The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff for Richard & Judy's Best Read of the Year.
105 books in 22 categories from 72 publishers are finalists for the annual Lambda Literary Awards. A full list of the finalists is available on the foundation’s Web site. The awards will be presented Thursday, May 28, 2009 at the Proshansky Auditorium at CUNY Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $75 until May 15, 2009 and $95 thereafter.
Among the finalists for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s sci-fi/fantasy awards, were stories by Lynne Jamneck (“The Oath”), and Lyn McConchie (“Waiting Tables and Time”) from the anthology Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades. Editor Catherine Lundoff relays that this is the first time that stories with LGBT content have made the final ballot.
Elana Dykewomon and Michael Lowenthal are the recipients of this year’s James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award, presented at the annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans.
The ten finalists in the Saints and Sinners Playwriting competition are: David-Matthew Barnes for Sloe Gin Fizz; Andrew Black for That Second Weekend in September; Leo Cabranes-Grant for The Whale in the Room; Joan Dunayer for Apes on Display; Michelle Embree, Hand Over Fist; Allison Fradkin for Dykechotomous; Michael Edison Hayden for Hustler's Journal; Elizabeth Orndorff for Aidan's Gift; M. Lennon Perricone for Unresolved; and Edward J. Walsh & Robert Thomas Noll for Hit or Miss.
The Book of Getting Even by Benjamin Taylor won second-place honors in fiction the 16th annual Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Awards.
Band of Thebes uncovered several LGBT stories as finalists for the National magazine Awards: Hannah Rosin's "A Boy's Life," for Feature Writing: from the Atlantic; Andrew Corsello's "Let God Love Gene Robison," for Profile Writing from GQ; three pieces by Hendrik Hertzberg including his editorial on the Proposition 8 victory for Columns and Commentary from The New Yorker: Annie Proulx's short story, "Them Old Cowboy Songs," for Fiction from The New Yorker.
Open calls: Seven Kitchens Press is accepting submissions for the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize for an unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a LGBTQ writer. Deadline is May 15, 2009. This year’s judge is Ruth L. Schwartz. More details can be found at http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/.
Passages: Scott Symons, the Toronto-born author of the 1967 novel Place d’Armes, died February 23, 2009. He was 75. Symons was also the subject of a documentary film, God's Fool (1998), by Nik Sheehan.
James Purdy died March 13, 1994. He was 94. Purdy was the author of the novels Cabot Wright Begins, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Malcolm, and The Nephew.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
March Publishing Notes
The buzz: Two bookstore closings of note: Oscar Wilde Bookshop in Manhattan, the world’s oldest gay and lesbian bookstore, will close in March. A Different Light bookstore in West Hollywood, Calif., is closing this spring. The gay and lesbian store's branch in San Francisco will remain open; a branch in New York City closed in 2001.
British author Geraldine Bedell was banned from the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai because one of the characters in her new novel, The Gulf Between Us, set in the Middle East, is gay. The Gulf Between Us tells the story of a single mother trying to raise three boys in the Gulf emirate of Hawar in the summer of 2002, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Author Margaret Atwood pulled out of festival in the wake of the fair's decision to cancel the launch of Bedell's book, then decided to participate in a debate on censorship to be hosted at the festival via video link-up.
Bold Strokes Books and Casitas Laquita Resort are presenting the Third Annual Lesbian Book Festival in Palm Springs California, March 5-8, 2009, featuring over twenty authors, including Radclyffe, Jane Fletcher, Andrews & Austin, Kim Baldwin, Jennifer Fulton, and Justine Saracen. For more information visit www.boldstrokesbooks.com or www.casitaslaquita.com. The resort is located at 450 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92264.
Among those spotted at New York Comic Con was Tim Fish at the booth for Poison Press, “a teeny, tiny publishing house offering gay and gay friendly comics.” Fish’s latest work in his Cavalcade of Boys volumes is Love is the Reason.
Robert Cabell, author of the novel Hair-Raising Adventures of Jayms Blonde, filed suit in Manhattan Federal Court, accusing Adam Sandler, Happy Madison Productions, Sony and Columbia Pictures for copyright infringement for ripping off his idea for a blow-dried public avenger and turning it into the film You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Casperian Books will publish Paul G. Bens, Jr.’s first full-length novel Kelland this fall.
Vanilla Heart Publishing will publish Collin Kelley’s forthcoming novel, Conquering Venus, this summer.
This month RID Press is releasing Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life by Raymond Luczak. Luczak has included an American Sign Language clip that’s subtitled in English on his Web site: http://www.raymondluczak.com/assemblyrequired.
Out this fall from Haiduk Press: The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered. Editor Tom Cardamone has gathered essays by gay writers discussing their favorite works of forgotten gay fiction. Contributors include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Philip Gambone, Aaron Hamburger, Paul Russell, Rick Whitaker, and others. Cardamone’s collection of his dark, speculative fiction is also forthcoming later this year in Pumpkin Teeth, published by Lethe Press.
Lethe Press is also rereleasing the first two books in Lev Raphael’s Nick Hoffman mystery series. Lethe will also be reprinting Jim Tushinski's novel Van Allen's Ecstasy, which has been optioned by Guest House Films.
In October, Llewellyn will publish Christopher Penczak's The Witch’s Coin: Prosperity and Money Magick, a comprehensive manual on achieving a balanced life - pursuing your soul's purpose but not consigning yourself to living in poverty to do so - including practical tips on herbs, stones, charms and meditations for wealth alongside solid financial advice.
Harper will publish Jack Kerouac's The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel, edited by Dawn Ward, along with correspondence and commentary illuminating the author’s development as a young writer, including correspondence with his friend, the poet Sebastian Sampas. Manhattan Films has also optioned the film rights to Kerouac's The Dharma Bums.
Page Six reported that editor Neal Boulton has left Genre magazine to pursue his dream of becoming a best-selling author. Boulton recently sold his motorcycle-trekking book, Sex Across America, and is working on a memoir about being a married bisexual dad of two.
Ballantine will publish comedian Kathy Griffin's memoir. The deal was reportedly made "for more than $2 million."
My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, a solo show written and performed by Leslie Jordan, will begin previews at the Westside Theater in Manhattan on April 15. Jordan recently published a memoir with the same title.
An Evening at La Cage, the world-famous drag revue at The Riveria in Las Vegas, closed in February.
Rent, the spring musical production at the Corona del Mar high school in Newport Beach, California, was canceled after the principal disapproved of its gay characters, but after a controversy arose on the Web and in the media, the school will go ahead with the production of the musical.
Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is hoping to reinvent the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice by having an alien crash-landing disrupt the life of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Predator.
Gerald Clarke's Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, has been optioned by The Weinstein Company.
Michael Luongo will be holding an all day class on the ins and outs of travel writing, Saturday May 2, at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. To register for the class and for more information, visit: A Roadmap to Travel Writing, Smithsonian Resident Associate Program: http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=217153.
Tom Goss, a gay singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC, has posted his new music video “Till the End” on his music channel at You Tube -- www.youtube.com/tomgossmusic. Check his Web site for the release of his upcoming CD Back to Love. www.tomgossmusic.com.
Equality Forum 2009 will showcase the first-ever Richard Amsel Retrospective Exhibition, featuring artwork by one of Hollywood’s most highly-acclaimed illustrators. The exhibition runs at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, April 15 – May 14, 2009. Equality Forum 2009, the largest annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum, will be held April 27 to May 3 in Philadelphia. Amsel, a native of Philadelphia, began his career when he won a national competition at art schools to create a poster design for the movie Hello Dolly!
The first issue of Collective Fallout has been released with art by Stephen Mead, fiction by Sandra Gail-Lambert, and poetry by Lawrence Schimel and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran.
The financial investment firm that owns The Washington Blade and other gay papers has gone into federal receivership.
Los Angeles's two gay magazines, Frontiers and In, have merged into a single biweekly paper.
Lambda Literary Foundation is launching a new directory of professional literary services this month. The directory will provide a list of working professionals in the following areas: editors, literary agents, publicists, graphic designers, Web designers, writing workshops, and writers to hire. To be listed in the directory, the annual fee is $25.
Kudos: Dustin Lance Black won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Milk. Black also won the award for Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Among the fiction nominees for the Barnes & Noble annual Discover Great New Writers Awards was Benjamin Taylor for his novel The Book of Getting Even.
The American Library Association’s Rainbow List committee, a joint initiative of the ALA’s GLBT and Social Responsibilities Round Tables, has published its second annual list of recommended books for young readers from birth through age 18. The committee chose four titles for special recognition: 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray; Skim by Mariko Tamaki (text) and Jillian Tamaki (artwork); Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole; and Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon. For a full list of titles, visit the Rainbow List Web site.
Gun Brooke, Jane Fletcher, Nicola Griffith, and Lesléa Newman received the 2009 Alice B. Medal, a lifetime achievement award recognizing authors of lesbian fiction, given by the Alice B. Readers' Appreciation Awards. The 2009 Lavender Certificates, presented to authors of the best “maiden” novel of the previous year, were awarded to Del Robertson for Taming the Wolff and Gill McKnight for Falling Star and Green-eyed Monster.
Among the nominees for the 2008 Nebula Awards is Ursula K. Le Guin for her novel Powers.
Open calls: Don Kilhefner and Mark Thompson will co-edit an anthology of writing to celebrate thirty years of Radical Faeries. Submissions can include personal experiences, academic “think pieces,” or writings about the impact of the Faeries on gay culture. 2,500 word maximum is suggested. Deadline is July 1, 2009. Entries should be sent as an attached Word Document to either MarkThompson52@aol.com or donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has initiated a public art project entitled Lostmissing, a public expression of grief in order to feel hopeful again. For more details visit the blog nobodypasses.blogspot.com.
Dustin Brookshire is sponsoring Project Verse, a 10-week poetry competition with the winner announced in week 11. Judges will be Brookshire, Beth Gylys, and Dana Guthrie Martin. The winner will receive a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist, and a weeklong residency at Soul Mountain Retreat. For more details visit: http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-verse-needs-applicants.html.
Passages: Robert Anderson, the American playwright and screenwriter, died February 9, 2009 at his Manhattan home. He was 91 years old. Among his plays were Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.
British author Geraldine Bedell was banned from the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai because one of the characters in her new novel, The Gulf Between Us, set in the Middle East, is gay. The Gulf Between Us tells the story of a single mother trying to raise three boys in the Gulf emirate of Hawar in the summer of 2002, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Author Margaret Atwood pulled out of festival in the wake of the fair's decision to cancel the launch of Bedell's book, then decided to participate in a debate on censorship to be hosted at the festival via video link-up.
Bold Strokes Books and Casitas Laquita Resort are presenting the Third Annual Lesbian Book Festival in Palm Springs California, March 5-8, 2009, featuring over twenty authors, including Radclyffe, Jane Fletcher, Andrews & Austin, Kim Baldwin, Jennifer Fulton, and Justine Saracen. For more information visit www.boldstrokesbooks.com or www.casitaslaquita.com. The resort is located at 450 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92264.
Among those spotted at New York Comic Con was Tim Fish at the booth for Poison Press, “a teeny, tiny publishing house offering gay and gay friendly comics.” Fish’s latest work in his Cavalcade of Boys volumes is Love is the Reason.
Robert Cabell, author of the novel Hair-Raising Adventures of Jayms Blonde, filed suit in Manhattan Federal Court, accusing Adam Sandler, Happy Madison Productions, Sony and Columbia Pictures for copyright infringement for ripping off his idea for a blow-dried public avenger and turning it into the film You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Casperian Books will publish Paul G. Bens, Jr.’s first full-length novel Kelland this fall.
Vanilla Heart Publishing will publish Collin Kelley’s forthcoming novel, Conquering Venus, this summer.
This month RID Press is releasing Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life by Raymond Luczak. Luczak has included an American Sign Language clip that’s subtitled in English on his Web site: http://www.raymondluczak.com/assemblyrequired.
Out this fall from Haiduk Press: The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered. Editor Tom Cardamone has gathered essays by gay writers discussing their favorite works of forgotten gay fiction. Contributors include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Philip Gambone, Aaron Hamburger, Paul Russell, Rick Whitaker, and others. Cardamone’s collection of his dark, speculative fiction is also forthcoming later this year in Pumpkin Teeth, published by Lethe Press.
Lethe Press is also rereleasing the first two books in Lev Raphael’s Nick Hoffman mystery series. Lethe will also be reprinting Jim Tushinski's novel Van Allen's Ecstasy, which has been optioned by Guest House Films.
In October, Llewellyn will publish Christopher Penczak's The Witch’s Coin: Prosperity and Money Magick, a comprehensive manual on achieving a balanced life - pursuing your soul's purpose but not consigning yourself to living in poverty to do so - including practical tips on herbs, stones, charms and meditations for wealth alongside solid financial advice.
Harper will publish Jack Kerouac's The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel, edited by Dawn Ward, along with correspondence and commentary illuminating the author’s development as a young writer, including correspondence with his friend, the poet Sebastian Sampas. Manhattan Films has also optioned the film rights to Kerouac's The Dharma Bums.
Page Six reported that editor Neal Boulton has left Genre magazine to pursue his dream of becoming a best-selling author. Boulton recently sold his motorcycle-trekking book, Sex Across America, and is working on a memoir about being a married bisexual dad of two.
Ballantine will publish comedian Kathy Griffin's memoir. The deal was reportedly made "for more than $2 million."
My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, a solo show written and performed by Leslie Jordan, will begin previews at the Westside Theater in Manhattan on April 15. Jordan recently published a memoir with the same title.
An Evening at La Cage, the world-famous drag revue at The Riveria in Las Vegas, closed in February.
Rent, the spring musical production at the Corona del Mar high school in Newport Beach, California, was canceled after the principal disapproved of its gay characters, but after a controversy arose on the Web and in the media, the school will go ahead with the production of the musical.
Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is hoping to reinvent the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice by having an alien crash-landing disrupt the life of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Predator.
Gerald Clarke's Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, has been optioned by The Weinstein Company.
Michael Luongo will be holding an all day class on the ins and outs of travel writing, Saturday May 2, at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. To register for the class and for more information, visit: A Roadmap to Travel Writing, Smithsonian Resident Associate Program: http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=217153.
Tom Goss, a gay singer-songwriter based in Washington, DC, has posted his new music video “Till the End” on his music channel at You Tube -- www.youtube.com/tomgossmusic. Check his Web site for the release of his upcoming CD Back to Love. www.tomgossmusic.com.
Equality Forum 2009 will showcase the first-ever Richard Amsel Retrospective Exhibition, featuring artwork by one of Hollywood’s most highly-acclaimed illustrators. The exhibition runs at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, April 15 – May 14, 2009. Equality Forum 2009, the largest annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum, will be held April 27 to May 3 in Philadelphia. Amsel, a native of Philadelphia, began his career when he won a national competition at art schools to create a poster design for the movie Hello Dolly!
The first issue of Collective Fallout has been released with art by Stephen Mead, fiction by Sandra Gail-Lambert, and poetry by Lawrence Schimel and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran.
The financial investment firm that owns The Washington Blade and other gay papers has gone into federal receivership.
Los Angeles's two gay magazines, Frontiers and In, have merged into a single biweekly paper.
Lambda Literary Foundation is launching a new directory of professional literary services this month. The directory will provide a list of working professionals in the following areas: editors, literary agents, publicists, graphic designers, Web designers, writing workshops, and writers to hire. To be listed in the directory, the annual fee is $25.
Kudos: Dustin Lance Black won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Milk. Black also won the award for Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Among the fiction nominees for the Barnes & Noble annual Discover Great New Writers Awards was Benjamin Taylor for his novel The Book of Getting Even.
The American Library Association’s Rainbow List committee, a joint initiative of the ALA’s GLBT and Social Responsibilities Round Tables, has published its second annual list of recommended books for young readers from birth through age 18. The committee chose four titles for special recognition: 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray; Skim by Mariko Tamaki (text) and Jillian Tamaki (artwork); Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole; and Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon. For a full list of titles, visit the Rainbow List Web site.
Gun Brooke, Jane Fletcher, Nicola Griffith, and Lesléa Newman received the 2009 Alice B. Medal, a lifetime achievement award recognizing authors of lesbian fiction, given by the Alice B. Readers' Appreciation Awards. The 2009 Lavender Certificates, presented to authors of the best “maiden” novel of the previous year, were awarded to Del Robertson for Taming the Wolff and Gill McKnight for Falling Star and Green-eyed Monster.
Among the nominees for the 2008 Nebula Awards is Ursula K. Le Guin for her novel Powers.
Open calls: Don Kilhefner and Mark Thompson will co-edit an anthology of writing to celebrate thirty years of Radical Faeries. Submissions can include personal experiences, academic “think pieces,” or writings about the impact of the Faeries on gay culture. 2,500 word maximum is suggested. Deadline is July 1, 2009. Entries should be sent as an attached Word Document to either MarkThompson52@aol.com or donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has initiated a public art project entitled Lostmissing, a public expression of grief in order to feel hopeful again. For more details visit the blog nobodypasses.blogspot.com.
Dustin Brookshire is sponsoring Project Verse, a 10-week poetry competition with the winner announced in week 11. Judges will be Brookshire, Beth Gylys, and Dana Guthrie Martin. The winner will receive a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist, and a weeklong residency at Soul Mountain Retreat. For more details visit: http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-verse-needs-applicants.html.
Passages: Robert Anderson, the American playwright and screenwriter, died February 9, 2009 at his Manhattan home. He was 91 years old. Among his plays were Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
February Publishing Notes
The buzz: Next month McFarland & Company will publish Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Bille Burke by Grant Hayter-Menzies, which will include material on the actress’s alleged relationship with director Dorothy Arzner.
In April, Alyson will publish The Mariposa Club by Rigoberto Gonzalez, about four guys in their last year of high school.
Cleis will publish James Lear’s The Low Road in September.
This spring, Lethe Press will reprint So Fey:Queer Fairy Fiction, an anthology edited by Steve Berman.
St. Martin’s will publish Kevin Sessums’s I Left It On The Mountain, which picks up where his memoir Mississippi Sissy left off, exploring the author’s life once he moved to New York City; from his time at Vanity Fair to hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Beacon Press will publish David Plante’s The Pure Lover, a memoir of love and grief, tracing the life of Plante’s longtime partner Nikos and his death of brain cancer, this fall.
Performance poet Megan Volpert has published her second book of poetry, the desense of nonfense.
MLR Press has just released a new novel by Storm Grant, Gym Dandy.
New Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s The Twist: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, exploring the family as the place where straight and gay people first learn homophobic behavior, in 2010.
GLAAD’s President Neil Giuliano announced that he will step down later this year to pursue “personal interests” and complete a book about his personal and professional life.
Mark Abramson’s Beach Reading reached the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Seller’s list in January.
368 books from 161 publishers have been submitted to the 21st annual Lambda Literary Awards. The complete list is available on the Foundation’s Web site. Finalists for the awards will be announced no later than March 15, 2009. The awards will be held in New York on Thursday, May 28, 2009.
The first annual Rainbow Book Fair will take place on Saturday March 28, 2009 from 11 am to 6 pm at the LGBT Center at 208 West 13th Street, in Greenwich Village.
Mark Carmien, the owner of Pride & Joy at 20 Crafts Avenue in Northampton, MA, has put the store up for sale. Founded by Martha Nelson in 1992, Pride & Joy has served as the unofficial GLBTQ community center for the area, selling books, DVDs, jewelry, T-shirts, banners and other items.
Bisceglie’s SF Follies debuts February 6th at Actors Theatre in San Francisco.
Regent Entertainment Media, publishers of The Advocate and Out magazines and owner of the here! TV network, signed a merger agreement with PlanetOut Inc. The combined company will be known as Here Media Inc, 80% of which will be owned by the owners of Regent Entertainment Media. Regent Entertainment Media is also the parent company of Alyson Books.
The White House has posted its Gay Rights Agenda on the reactivated Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/.
Kudos: The American Library Association Honors for 2009 are: Stonewall Book Awards - Barbara Gittings Literature Award to Evan Fallenberg for Light Fell; Stonewall Book Awards - Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award to William N. Eskridge, Jr. for Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003. The Stonewall honor books in literature are: The Conversion by Joseph Olshan, A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer, and The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue. The Stonewall honor books in non-fiction are: Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad by Bob Morris, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster by Joanne Ellen Passet, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson and Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever by Joel Derfner.
Among the recent nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards was a nomination in the Criticism category for Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics and the Freedom of Poetry by the late Reginald Shepard.
GLAAD does not include literary awards, but each year the organization nominates comic books for recognition. This year’s nominees are: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames, Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb, and Joss Whedon, Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka, Secret Six by Gail Simone, and Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction.
Milk received eight Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Dustin Lance Black for Best Original Screenplay. Push, based on the novel by Sapphire, scored a triple victory at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award for drama as well as a special jury prize for acting.
Open Calls: Rebel Satori Press has launched a new imprint, Queer Mojo, and is seeking submissions for a queer male erotic anthology focusing on characters “out of the mainstream: punks, outcasts, skaters, urban anarchists and secretly rebellious farmboys.” Stories should be no longer than 7,000 words. E-mail submissions as a Word doc attachment to info@queermojo.net. Deadline is June 1, 2009.
Richard Labonté is seeking submissions for Best Gay Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 6,000 words. Deadline is May 20, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.com with BGR 2010 in the subject line.
Radclyffe is seeking submissions for Best Lesbian Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 5,000 words. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.comwith BLR 2010 in the subject line.
The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the winners of its 2009 High School Seniors English Essay Contest College scholarships in the amount of $1,000 for studies in queer theory or a related field at a US college. Deadline is February 28, 2009. More details can be found at the Web site.
Passages: Sir John Mortimer died January 16, 2009 at the age of 85 after a long illness. Mortimer, one of Britain’s most prolific writers and noted for his television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, famously defended the publishers of the London Gay News in 1976 after they were accused of blasphemy for publishing a poem that appeared to imply that Jesus was gay.
In April, Alyson will publish The Mariposa Club by Rigoberto Gonzalez, about four guys in their last year of high school.
Cleis will publish James Lear’s The Low Road in September.
This spring, Lethe Press will reprint So Fey:Queer Fairy Fiction, an anthology edited by Steve Berman.
St. Martin’s will publish Kevin Sessums’s I Left It On The Mountain, which picks up where his memoir Mississippi Sissy left off, exploring the author’s life once he moved to New York City; from his time at Vanity Fair to hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Beacon Press will publish David Plante’s The Pure Lover, a memoir of love and grief, tracing the life of Plante’s longtime partner Nikos and his death of brain cancer, this fall.
Performance poet Megan Volpert has published her second book of poetry, the desense of nonfense.
MLR Press has just released a new novel by Storm Grant, Gym Dandy.
New Press will publish Sarah Schulman’s The Twist: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, exploring the family as the place where straight and gay people first learn homophobic behavior, in 2010.
GLAAD’s President Neil Giuliano announced that he will step down later this year to pursue “personal interests” and complete a book about his personal and professional life.
Mark Abramson’s Beach Reading reached the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Seller’s list in January.
368 books from 161 publishers have been submitted to the 21st annual Lambda Literary Awards. The complete list is available on the Foundation’s Web site. Finalists for the awards will be announced no later than March 15, 2009. The awards will be held in New York on Thursday, May 28, 2009.
The first annual Rainbow Book Fair will take place on Saturday March 28, 2009 from 11 am to 6 pm at the LGBT Center at 208 West 13th Street, in Greenwich Village.
Mark Carmien, the owner of Pride & Joy at 20 Crafts Avenue in Northampton, MA, has put the store up for sale. Founded by Martha Nelson in 1992, Pride & Joy has served as the unofficial GLBTQ community center for the area, selling books, DVDs, jewelry, T-shirts, banners and other items.
Bisceglie’s SF Follies debuts February 6th at Actors Theatre in San Francisco.
Regent Entertainment Media, publishers of The Advocate and Out magazines and owner of the here! TV network, signed a merger agreement with PlanetOut Inc. The combined company will be known as Here Media Inc, 80% of which will be owned by the owners of Regent Entertainment Media. Regent Entertainment Media is also the parent company of Alyson Books.
The White House has posted its Gay Rights Agenda on the reactivated Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/.
Kudos: The American Library Association Honors for 2009 are: Stonewall Book Awards - Barbara Gittings Literature Award to Evan Fallenberg for Light Fell; Stonewall Book Awards - Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award to William N. Eskridge, Jr. for Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003. The Stonewall honor books in literature are: The Conversion by Joseph Olshan, A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer, and The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue. The Stonewall honor books in non-fiction are: Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad by Bob Morris, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster by Joanne Ellen Passet, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E. Patrick Johnson and Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever by Joel Derfner.
Among the recent nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards was a nomination in the Criticism category for Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics and the Freedom of Poetry by the late Reginald Shepard.
GLAAD does not include literary awards, but each year the organization nominates comic books for recognition. This year’s nominees are: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames, Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb, and Joss Whedon, Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka, Secret Six by Gail Simone, and Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction.
Milk received eight Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Dustin Lance Black for Best Original Screenplay. Push, based on the novel by Sapphire, scored a triple victory at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award for drama as well as a special jury prize for acting.
Open Calls: Rebel Satori Press has launched a new imprint, Queer Mojo, and is seeking submissions for a queer male erotic anthology focusing on characters “out of the mainstream: punks, outcasts, skaters, urban anarchists and secretly rebellious farmboys.” Stories should be no longer than 7,000 words. E-mail submissions as a Word doc attachment to info@queermojo.net. Deadline is June 1, 2009.
Richard Labonté is seeking submissions for Best Gay Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 6,000 words. Deadline is May 20, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.com with BGR 2010 in the subject line.
Radclyffe is seeking submissions for Best Lesbian Romance 2010. Short stories should be no more than 5,000 words. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Submissions to mailto:BGR10@gmail.comwith BLR 2010 in the subject line.
The Queer Foundation, a Washington nonprofit corporation, will offer the winners of its 2009 High School Seniors English Essay Contest College scholarships in the amount of $1,000 for studies in queer theory or a related field at a US college. Deadline is February 28, 2009. More details can be found at the Web site.
Passages: Sir John Mortimer died January 16, 2009 at the age of 85 after a long illness. Mortimer, one of Britain’s most prolific writers and noted for his television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, famously defended the publishers of the London Gay News in 1976 after they were accused of blasphemy for publishing a poem that appeared to imply that Jesus was gay.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
December Publishing Notes
The buzz: Abrams will publish Gore Vidal’s illustrated memoir in the Fall of 2009. The memoir will combine personal reflections with a social history of the twentieth century, and never-before-seen images of political and cultural icons from Vidal’s personal collection. ** World Parade Books will release Edward Field’s memoir Kabuli Days, Travels in Old Afghanistan this month.
Touchstone Fireside will publish Gyles Brandreth’s next three mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde as a sleuth aided by his real-life friend Arthur Conan Doyle. ** Sphere will publish mystery writer Val McDermid’s next two books, including a new Tony Hill for publication in 2009. ** Holt will publish Louis Bayard’s next two literary suspense novels.
In 2009, Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, edited by Amber Dawn. ** Da Capo will publish Catherine Friend’s The Last Farm Standing, a look at the state of small, sustainable farms, and how sheep may be the answer to our environmental woes.
Author Stephen McCauley is working with on a film adaptation of his novel The Easy Way Out. Filming is set to begin in March in Paris. ** Showtime announced that it is developing Perry Moore’s book Hero, the story of a young gay superhero, into a hour-long series for the network. Moore will be writing the script and will executive-produce the series along with his partner, Hunter Hill. The two are also collaborating with comic book legend Stan Lee and his Pow! Entertainment partner Gill Champion. ** Nicole Kidman will star in and produce the film version of The Danish Girl, based on the novel by David Ebershoff, about the world’s first post-op transsexual, Einar Wegener. Charlize Theron will also star. ** John Hurt will star in the film An Englishman in New York, about Quentin Crisp’s later years. ** John Boorman is attached to direct the $25 million, CG-animated pic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted from L. Frank Baum’s original novel. Unlike the MGM classic, it will not be a musical.
Jane Fonda returns to Broadway after a 46-year absence, in 33 Variations, a new play by Moisés Kaufman, scheduled to open in the winter of 2009. ** South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are working with Avenue Q co-writer Robert Lopez to on a new musical, Mormon Musical, which will star Cheyenne Jackson. ** Playwright Michael Yawney’s play, 1,000 Homosexuals, about Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign to repeal Miami-Dade County’s first gay-rights ordinance, recently opened in Miami. The play was commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts. Miami’s Camposition is producing the play. ** The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center is suing the city for shutting down its production of the popular musical revue, Naked Boys Singing. ** This month the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs is presenting Michael Holmes in Judy’s Old Fashioned Christmas Show, a comic tribute to the old Garland holiday specials.
Variety reported that due to the recent departure of City Opera Artistic Director Gerard Mortier, some upcoming opera projects will be shelved. Among them, the musical adaptation of the film Brokeback Mountain. ** The Fort Worth Opera has announced it will stage the world premiere of Before Night Falls, a new opera by Cuban American composer Jorge Martin, based on the memoir by Cuban dissident poet Reinaldo Arenas, as the centerpiece of its 2010 Opera Festival.
Don Weise has been named the new publisher of Alyson Books. ** In November poet, novelist and playwright Jewelle Gomez married Dr. Diane Abbe Sabin at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The wedding was written up in the Style section of The New York Times.
In Atlanta in November, Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta celebrated its 15th year and Charis Books & More its 34th.
The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival has set their 2009 dates: November 4 through 7, 2009. More details forthcoming at http://atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/.
Gay rights activist Cleve Jones and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black published a manifesto calling for LGBT civil disobedience and government intervention against Proposition 8 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Jones and Black have urged President-elect Barack Obama, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid to push legislation that protects LGBT people in areas of hate crimes, marriage, military service, adoption, Social Security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing, and access to health care, social services, and education. ** Louis-Georges Tin, editor of the recently published Dictionary of Homophobia and president of the International Day Against Homophobia Committee, will address the United Nations General Assembly in December to urge a world-wide end to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ** Dustin Brookshire of limpwristmag.com has started the Not In My Georgia Project in response to the rumored legislation to ban adoption by LGBT Georgians.
Kudos: Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems. ** Hudson Booksellers named When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris as its Book of the Year. ** On the IMPAC Dublin longlist for the 2009 award, which honors book-length fiction published in English during 2007, were Alan Bennett for The Uncommon Reader, David Leavitt for The Indian Clerk, Ali Smith for Girl Meets Boy, Jeanette Winterson for The Stone Gods, Andre Aciman for Call Me By Your Name, Jonathan Coe for The Rain Before It Falls, and Marianne Wiggins for The Shadow Catcher. The shortlist will be announced April 2, 2009. ** Michael Cunningham won the sixth annual Fairfax Prize given by the Fairfax County Public Library Foundation. ** Chris & Don: A Love Story was nominated for best documentary for the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Marc Andreyko was among the recent Out magazine 100. He is the author of the graphic novel, Torso, based on the true story of Eliot Ness and a serial killer in 1930s Cleveland, now in development as a Paramount film. Other works of note include co-creating and writing a modern update of the Peter Pan universe, The Lost, and work on the DC comic book series Manhunter, which features the son of the original Green Lantern, a superhero named Obsidian, in a happy and healthy gay relationship.
In November, The Black Cat, a bar in Silver Lake, California that was home to the gay rights movement in Los Angeles, was named a historic-cultural monument. The bar was the site of a police raid and subsequent protests in 1967, predating the Stonewall riots in New York City by two years. Today, the bar at Sunset Junction is known as Le Barcito, a small stucco building with a purple facade that still bears the original sign of a black and white smiling cat.
Open Calls: Editors Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel are seeking short essays and memoirs for the anthology I Like It Like That: True Tales of Gay Desire, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2009. Submissions should be between 1000-3000 words and sent to truetalesofgaydesire@gmail.com. Deadline is Feb 1, 2009. ** Labonté is also seeking short stories and erotica for Best Gay Erotica 2010. Blair Mastbaum is this year’s guest judge. Original work, or reprints of work published or scheduled to be published between July 2008 and July 2009, are eligible. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Queries and submissions to: bge2010@gmail.com in .doc format.
Passages: Irish poet James Liddy died in November, 2008. Born in Dublin in 1934, Liddy is best known for his early collections In A Blue Smoke (1964) and Blue Mountain (1968). The first volume of his memoir, The Doctor’s House: An Autobiography, was published in 2004.
Touchstone Fireside will publish Gyles Brandreth’s next three mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde as a sleuth aided by his real-life friend Arthur Conan Doyle. ** Sphere will publish mystery writer Val McDermid’s next two books, including a new Tony Hill for publication in 2009. ** Holt will publish Louis Bayard’s next two literary suspense novels.
In 2009, Arsenal Pulp Press will publish Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, edited by Amber Dawn. ** Da Capo will publish Catherine Friend’s The Last Farm Standing, a look at the state of small, sustainable farms, and how sheep may be the answer to our environmental woes.
Author Stephen McCauley is working with on a film adaptation of his novel The Easy Way Out. Filming is set to begin in March in Paris. ** Showtime announced that it is developing Perry Moore’s book Hero, the story of a young gay superhero, into a hour-long series for the network. Moore will be writing the script and will executive-produce the series along with his partner, Hunter Hill. The two are also collaborating with comic book legend Stan Lee and his Pow! Entertainment partner Gill Champion. ** Nicole Kidman will star in and produce the film version of The Danish Girl, based on the novel by David Ebershoff, about the world’s first post-op transsexual, Einar Wegener. Charlize Theron will also star. ** John Hurt will star in the film An Englishman in New York, about Quentin Crisp’s later years. ** John Boorman is attached to direct the $25 million, CG-animated pic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted from L. Frank Baum’s original novel. Unlike the MGM classic, it will not be a musical.
Jane Fonda returns to Broadway after a 46-year absence, in 33 Variations, a new play by Moisés Kaufman, scheduled to open in the winter of 2009. ** South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are working with Avenue Q co-writer Robert Lopez to on a new musical, Mormon Musical, which will star Cheyenne Jackson. ** Playwright Michael Yawney’s play, 1,000 Homosexuals, about Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign to repeal Miami-Dade County’s first gay-rights ordinance, recently opened in Miami. The play was commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts. Miami’s Camposition is producing the play. ** The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center is suing the city for shutting down its production of the popular musical revue, Naked Boys Singing. ** This month the Thorny Theater in Palm Springs is presenting Michael Holmes in Judy’s Old Fashioned Christmas Show, a comic tribute to the old Garland holiday specials.
Variety reported that due to the recent departure of City Opera Artistic Director Gerard Mortier, some upcoming opera projects will be shelved. Among them, the musical adaptation of the film Brokeback Mountain. ** The Fort Worth Opera has announced it will stage the world premiere of Before Night Falls, a new opera by Cuban American composer Jorge Martin, based on the memoir by Cuban dissident poet Reinaldo Arenas, as the centerpiece of its 2010 Opera Festival.
Don Weise has been named the new publisher of Alyson Books. ** In November poet, novelist and playwright Jewelle Gomez married Dr. Diane Abbe Sabin at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. The wedding was written up in the Style section of The New York Times.
In Atlanta in November, Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Atlanta celebrated its 15th year and Charis Books & More its 34th.
The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival has set their 2009 dates: November 4 through 7, 2009. More details forthcoming at http://atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com/.
Gay rights activist Cleve Jones and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black published a manifesto calling for LGBT civil disobedience and government intervention against Proposition 8 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Jones and Black have urged President-elect Barack Obama, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid to push legislation that protects LGBT people in areas of hate crimes, marriage, military service, adoption, Social Security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing, and access to health care, social services, and education. ** Louis-Georges Tin, editor of the recently published Dictionary of Homophobia and president of the International Day Against Homophobia Committee, will address the United Nations General Assembly in December to urge a world-wide end to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ** Dustin Brookshire of limpwristmag.com has started the Not In My Georgia Project in response to the rumored legislation to ban adoption by LGBT Georgians.
Kudos: Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems. ** Hudson Booksellers named When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris as its Book of the Year. ** On the IMPAC Dublin longlist for the 2009 award, which honors book-length fiction published in English during 2007, were Alan Bennett for The Uncommon Reader, David Leavitt for The Indian Clerk, Ali Smith for Girl Meets Boy, Jeanette Winterson for The Stone Gods, Andre Aciman for Call Me By Your Name, Jonathan Coe for The Rain Before It Falls, and Marianne Wiggins for The Shadow Catcher. The shortlist will be announced April 2, 2009. ** Michael Cunningham won the sixth annual Fairfax Prize given by the Fairfax County Public Library Foundation. ** Chris & Don: A Love Story was nominated for best documentary for the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Marc Andreyko was among the recent Out magazine 100. He is the author of the graphic novel, Torso, based on the true story of Eliot Ness and a serial killer in 1930s Cleveland, now in development as a Paramount film. Other works of note include co-creating and writing a modern update of the Peter Pan universe, The Lost, and work on the DC comic book series Manhunter, which features the son of the original Green Lantern, a superhero named Obsidian, in a happy and healthy gay relationship.
In November, The Black Cat, a bar in Silver Lake, California that was home to the gay rights movement in Los Angeles, was named a historic-cultural monument. The bar was the site of a police raid and subsequent protests in 1967, predating the Stonewall riots in New York City by two years. Today, the bar at Sunset Junction is known as Le Barcito, a small stucco building with a purple facade that still bears the original sign of a black and white smiling cat.
Open Calls: Editors Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel are seeking short essays and memoirs for the anthology I Like It Like That: True Tales of Gay Desire, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2009. Submissions should be between 1000-3000 words and sent to truetalesofgaydesire@gmail.com. Deadline is Feb 1, 2009. ** Labonté is also seeking short stories and erotica for Best Gay Erotica 2010. Blair Mastbaum is this year’s guest judge. Original work, or reprints of work published or scheduled to be published between July 2008 and July 2009, are eligible. Deadline is April 1, 2009. Queries and submissions to: bge2010@gmail.com in .doc format.
Passages: Irish poet James Liddy died in November, 2008. Born in Dublin in 1934, Liddy is best known for his early collections In A Blue Smoke (1964) and Blue Mountain (1968). The first volume of his memoir, The Doctor’s House: An Autobiography, was published in 2004.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A Bookstore Tourist
This October I took a cruise to the Mediterranean, visiting Venice, Dubrovnik, Santorini, Corfu, and Ephesus (in Turkey). The weather was gorgeous, as was the scenery, and the overall experience was very interesting and relaxing (and which was what I needed). The highlight of my trip, however, was my final day in Paris because of a stopover flight — a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon crowded with Parisians strolling arm and arm through the streets. I walked through the Marais till I found Rue Ste Croix de la Bretonnerie, where I was relieved to discover that Les Mots à la Bouche, the gay bookstore was open. I was tired from the flights and my stamina isn’t what it used to be, and I wedged my way through the aisles looking at titles, searching for books that might be familiar to me in their English editions. And there, face out on the shelves with the other works, was Les Fantômes, the French translation of my AIDS stories by Anne-Laure Hubert that French publisher Cylibris had published in late 2005. I’d seen the edition before; I have several copies and have given many as gifts to friends. But I had never seen the book in a bookstore.
It’s hard to explain this sort of thrill to someone who hasn’t had the experience of seeing their writing displayed in a bookstore. It’s immensely gratifying and awesome and exhilarating, probably like what an architect might feel standing in front of his completed building, particularly if you have spent years and years, as I do, writing a book, struggling with the plots and characters and themes and then trying to find a publisher who was willing to release it out into the world. I remember the first time I saw a book of mine in a bookstore — it was the winter of 1993, late February, and I was temping at a job on Park Avenue in Manhattan. My first collection of short stories had been accepted more than two years before by Viking, but because of a recession and a company freeze on signing contracts with new authors, the book was not slated for publication until that spring. The store was a small Barnes and Noble outlet, situated on a corner of one of the high-rising glass skyscrapers on Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. I hadn’t expected to find my book so soon in a store. I was on a lunch break, escaping my desk where I had eaten a sandwich because I was too poor to afford the neighborhood restaurants. It was a winter I could barely even afford to take the subway. I had stepped out of the cold into the bookstore, thinking I might look at a magazine or find a title I might later be able to get from the public library, before I headed back to my dismal job, where, at the time, I was typing up the license plates of cars and trucks that had been abandoned and were sitting in a lot in Queens. And there, in the store on a shelf with the rest of the fiction, were five copies of Dancing on the Moon. The first sight of them remains one of the happiest moments of my life, particularly when I correlate it with the unfortunate experiences and deaths from AIDS of the friends who inspired those stories.
That spring and the following one were full of similar thrills. My book found its way into the windows of Brentano’s on Fifth Avenue and B. Dalton’s in the West Village on Eighth Street. I did readings and signings for the first time — including at Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C and Glad Day in Boston, among other stores. I’m not a widely bought or distributed author and the press runs of my books haven’t been the kind to impress any kind of bestseller list, but I’ve now seen my books in an airport bookshop (in New Orleans), in foreign bookstores (also at Word is Out, the gay bookstore in the Bloomsbury district of London, where I was on the shelves with many of my friends’ books), and part of a suggested reading list posted at a university bookstore. And even now, fifteen or so years later, I still get a thrill discovering something I have written in a store, even if it is a used copy of my novel, Where the Rainbow Ends, in the second-hand bookstore in my hometown, north of Atlanta.
Hopefully as you get older and wiser, you discover things about yourself that keep you happy. I have been fortunate to have taken some amazing trips during the last two decades — many due to the generosity of friends — and I’ve learned that I find great joy in being a bookstore tourist. Some people go to museums or sporting events or concerts or restaurants when they travel. I love to hunt for books — and, for the record, not for just my own. I search out local ghost story anthologies, local gay history books, local literary journals and magazines, unusual translations, and all sorts of novels and fiction by both mainstream publishers and small presses. Of all the bookstores I've been to, some other memorable experiences stand out — a deja-vous experience at the Haunted Bookshop in Cambridge (realizing I had already been there decades before with a friend who was now deceased), a boulevard in Pisa, Italy, lined with bookstores, store after store after store, with bins of books outside in the bright sun, the same with Galway, Ireland and the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. I remember the first time I walked into City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and didn’t want to leave because the friend I was with wanted to go elsewhere. I can still spend hours wandering along Charing Cross while many of my other friends are out at the theater. And I’ve often thought I might one day retire to Napa, California — on my last visit there a few years ago I counted more than four bookstores within blocks of each other. I'm not ready for that yet, though. (I still have a few more years left...) And first I'd like to find that town in Wales where there's nothing but bookstores.
It’s hard to explain this sort of thrill to someone who hasn’t had the experience of seeing their writing displayed in a bookstore. It’s immensely gratifying and awesome and exhilarating, probably like what an architect might feel standing in front of his completed building, particularly if you have spent years and years, as I do, writing a book, struggling with the plots and characters and themes and then trying to find a publisher who was willing to release it out into the world. I remember the first time I saw a book of mine in a bookstore — it was the winter of 1993, late February, and I was temping at a job on Park Avenue in Manhattan. My first collection of short stories had been accepted more than two years before by Viking, but because of a recession and a company freeze on signing contracts with new authors, the book was not slated for publication until that spring. The store was a small Barnes and Noble outlet, situated on a corner of one of the high-rising glass skyscrapers on Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. I hadn’t expected to find my book so soon in a store. I was on a lunch break, escaping my desk where I had eaten a sandwich because I was too poor to afford the neighborhood restaurants. It was a winter I could barely even afford to take the subway. I had stepped out of the cold into the bookstore, thinking I might look at a magazine or find a title I might later be able to get from the public library, before I headed back to my dismal job, where, at the time, I was typing up the license plates of cars and trucks that had been abandoned and were sitting in a lot in Queens. And there, in the store on a shelf with the rest of the fiction, were five copies of Dancing on the Moon. The first sight of them remains one of the happiest moments of my life, particularly when I correlate it with the unfortunate experiences and deaths from AIDS of the friends who inspired those stories.
That spring and the following one were full of similar thrills. My book found its way into the windows of Brentano’s on Fifth Avenue and B. Dalton’s in the West Village on Eighth Street. I did readings and signings for the first time — including at Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C and Glad Day in Boston, among other stores. I’m not a widely bought or distributed author and the press runs of my books haven’t been the kind to impress any kind of bestseller list, but I’ve now seen my books in an airport bookshop (in New Orleans), in foreign bookstores (also at Word is Out, the gay bookstore in the Bloomsbury district of London, where I was on the shelves with many of my friends’ books), and part of a suggested reading list posted at a university bookstore. And even now, fifteen or so years later, I still get a thrill discovering something I have written in a store, even if it is a used copy of my novel, Where the Rainbow Ends, in the second-hand bookstore in my hometown, north of Atlanta.
Hopefully as you get older and wiser, you discover things about yourself that keep you happy. I have been fortunate to have taken some amazing trips during the last two decades — many due to the generosity of friends — and I’ve learned that I find great joy in being a bookstore tourist. Some people go to museums or sporting events or concerts or restaurants when they travel. I love to hunt for books — and, for the record, not for just my own. I search out local ghost story anthologies, local gay history books, local literary journals and magazines, unusual translations, and all sorts of novels and fiction by both mainstream publishers and small presses. Of all the bookstores I've been to, some other memorable experiences stand out — a deja-vous experience at the Haunted Bookshop in Cambridge (realizing I had already been there decades before with a friend who was now deceased), a boulevard in Pisa, Italy, lined with bookstores, store after store after store, with bins of books outside in the bright sun, the same with Galway, Ireland and the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. I remember the first time I walked into City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and didn’t want to leave because the friend I was with wanted to go elsewhere. I can still spend hours wandering along Charing Cross while many of my other friends are out at the theater. And I’ve often thought I might one day retire to Napa, California — on my last visit there a few years ago I counted more than four bookstores within blocks of each other. I'm not ready for that yet, though. (I still have a few more years left...) And first I'd like to find that town in Wales where there's nothing but bookstores.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
