HBO Is Turning a Gay-Themed Novel into a TV series, the Green Carnation Literary Prize, and Other LGBT News
Author: William Johnson
October 3, 2013
In the News
We like books and we like television, so when our favorite queer novels are turned into TV shows it is like killing two birds with one giant gay stone. Novelist and TV writer/producer Richard Kramer’s debut novel, These Things Happen, is currently being adapted into a TV series for HBO.
AV Club reports:
The network is developing a comedy series based on These Things Happen, a novel by TV writer-producer Richard Kramer (Thirtysomething, My So-Called Life). Released last fall, These Things tells the story of two couples—one gay, one straight—who live in Manhattan and share a 15-year-old son, Wesley. While Wesley mostly lives with his mother and doctor stepfather, he moves in with his father and his longtime partner for a semester to try to get to know him and his best friend, Theo, who just came out. And that’s where the comedy happens. Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Prods. is producing the show which, if it actually gets made, would probably launch on the premium cable network next year.
The longlist for the Green Carnation Prize, an international LGBT writers’ prize, was announced this week. This year’s nominees include noted authors Maureen Duffy, A.M. Homes, and Neil McKenna.
The Green Carnation Prize is a literary prize for any form of the written word by an LGBT writer. The prize got off to a great start in 2010 as the first award that celebrated the best fiction and memoirs by gay men. It provoked debate, produced an intriguing shortlist and chose a worthy winner in Christopher Fowler’s ‘Paperboy’. In 2011 it was followed by Catherine Hall’s ‘The Proof of Love’ in 2011 when the prize opened itself to any LGBT author worldwide. It was won by joint winners Patrick Gale, with ‘A Perfectly Good Man’, and Andre Carl Van Der Merwe with ‘Moffie’.
Check here for the complete 2013 longlist.
This week in the Huffington Post, Yolo Akili interviewed author Mia McKenzie about her Lambda Literary Award winning novel The Summer We Got Free.
Mckenzie had this to say about her novel:
One theme of the book is the idea of looking deeper, of taking the time to really see each other and try to really understand each other’s lives and struggles, rather than glancing, rather than skimming. It asks for more intentionality, more gentleness, more love. And less fear. People do seem to be getting real emotional and spiritual healing from this story.
Hey America, beloved British author Jeanette Winterson has a new book coming out this fall. Set for an October release in the US–it was released last year in the UK–The Daylight Gate (Grove) is a dark, dread-filled historical novel.
From the publisher:
Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I—the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft—The Daylight Gate is best-selling writer Jeanette Winterson’s re-creation of a dark history full of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power.
This is a world where to be a Catholic is a treasonable offense. A world where the new king vows to rid England of “witchery popery popery witchery” and condemns the High Mass and the Black Mass as equivalent heresies punishable by torture, hanging, and burning.
This literary suspense tale takes us dark and deep into a brutal period of English history, centered on the notorious Pendle witch trials of 1612—an infection of paranoia that crossed the ocean with the Pilgrim Fathers and set the scene for the 1692 Salem witch hunt.
Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of thirteen is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Already two stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy and respected Alice Nutter sets out to defend them, haunted by her own past and an entanglement with magick. She doesn’t believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.
Zine fans rejoice! Toronto is hosting a queer zine fest on Saturday, October 19th! As recently noted by Lambda Literary editor Cathy Camper, zines serve an important purpose within the LGBT literary landscape because “they can fill in gaps where mainstream publishers forget or refuse to go.”
From TQZF:
Toronto Queer Zine Fair seeks to make space for traditionally marginalized voices in the zine community. While accepting applications from all self-identified queer/trans* folks, TQZF chooses to prioritize the voices of trans women, trans women of colour, queer people of colour, indigenous/two-spirited folks, and non-binary folks. Toronto Queer Zine Fair is an alternative zine fair focusing on the radical and political history/philosophy of zines and giving a platform to those often under-represented in zine culture.
Did you know that dinosaur erotica is a thing? Horny triceratops have arrived!
In the Cut reports:
Alara Branwen and Christie Sims met in the dorms at Texas A&M. Alara worked at a supermarket and Christie worked as a tutor — until they discovered how lucrative erotic fiction about women having sex with dinosaurs could be.
Pop star/sage-on-the-mountaintop Madonna once said, “Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.” Madge is never wrong, so have at it dinosaur lovers.
