‘Nanette’ as Queer Storytelling, Guy Branum’s New Book, and More LGBTQ News

Author: Brian Gentes

August 8, 2018

It’s time for some more LGBTQ news!

At Slate, Mariella Mosthof wrote about the response to Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, Nanette:

[….] And the reason it felt like a radical new kind of stand-up is because, well, it wasn’t stand-up. Or at least, it wasn’t purely stand-up. Gadsby, knowingly or not, tapped into another discrete and firmly established genre with Nanette: queer storytelling.

Vulture has an excerpt of Guy Branum’s new book, My Life As a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture, which came out on July 31. In the excerpt, he “reflects on pop culture’s destructive depictions of the humanity of fat people and how it’s affected his own self-worth and perspective–plus the one thing he didn’t let it affect.”

At Book Riot, Alex DiFrancesco wrote about Casey Plett’s debut novel, Little Fish, and says it’s “a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the growth (and growing pains) of trans literature.”

Angela Bowen, queer activist and dance teacher, died on July 12 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 82. Rest in peace.

Duke University Press is featuring a reading list on their site entitled “Queer About Comics.” Compiled by Ramzi Fawaz, the list covers “the intersection of queer studies and comics studies.” Fawaz and Darieck Scott co-edited a special issue on the topic for American Literature (volume 90, issue 2). You can browse the issue’s table of contents on the press’s site, and also read the introduction and (through the end of the year) three articles from the issue.

Hanya Yanagihara talked with Casey Legler for Literary Hub about how her new memoir, Godspeed, evolved, as well as her recent autism diagnosis and her obsession with cephalopods.

The Paris Review has an excerpt of Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry, by Adrienne Rich, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert. The book will be released this month by W.W. Norton.

And while you’re at The Paris Review, take a look at the latest PoetryRx column, in which resident poet Sarah Kay prescribes a poem to someone wrestling with staying in the closet for the sake of his parents: “I want to spare them any further heartache.” (Spoiler alert: the recommendation is perfect.)

Steven William Thrasher spoke with poet Justin Phillip Reed for Literary Hub about his new collection, Indecency. Their conversation also touched on sex, debt, and race:

It’s really easy to be caught up in that kind of binary where if I were to be flat and inhabit this kind of—what is called like the angry Black trope—that I somehow buy into whatever stereotype that has nothing to do with me. On the other side of that, if I suspend all of that, if I suppress my anger, that I am then doing the work that the institution tells me to do. It seems like there’s really no way out of that.

There’s a new biopic of Colette coming to theaters in September. Before it comes out, check out Heather Hogan’s list of 8 Fascinating Facts About Bisexual Legend Colette That You Should Know Before Keira Knightly’s Biopic at Autostraddle.

If you’re looking for some new books for your to-read list, head over to Book Riot and see how many of Casey Stepaniuk’s 50 Must-Read LGBT Fantasy Books you haven’t read yet. Or check out Danika Ellis’s list of 8 Queer Booktubers You Should Subscribe to Right Now. They’re full of recommendations!