Author: Lambda Admin

The Future of The Review

Dear friends, After careful consideration,

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Lambda at AWP 2023

Earlier this month, Lambda Literary

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‘My Cat Yugoslavia’ by Pajtim Statovci

For a reader looking for fiction that also serves as social criticism, My Cat Yugoslavia is both thought-provoking and emotionally resonant

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‘Primahood: Magenta’ by Tyler Cohen

“Cohen tackles the innate struggles of parenthood, as well as the challenges of trying to raise a humanist child.”

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‘Living a Feminist Life’ by Sara Ahmed

Living a Feminist Life is sectioned into three parts which cover, respectively, the path and necessity of becoming feminist, the challenges of diversity work, and the consequences of being deliberate in one’s feminism

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‘Rough Patch’ by Nicole Markotic

Keira is bisexual, and she lets you know it even if she hasn’t told anyone else. She is 15 years old with a lot to figure out, including meticulously planning the moment to come out to her best friend.

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‘Kingdom Come: A Fantasia’ by Timothy Liu

The poems in Kingdom Come become progressively more luminous—even as they insist on their carnality

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‘Babybel Wax Bodysuit’ by Eric Kostiuk Williams

All three stories in this collection deal with “peeling back the wax bodysuit” (an analogy to the wax covering of Babybel cheese), i.e. all the multiple layers we use to hide both our fears and our egos

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Kids Need LGBTQ Books in Schools

This work in schools matters more than ever and every donation, large and small, makes a difference to these students’ lives.

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‘Erased’ by Robbi McCoy

Erased opens with the quintessential

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‘The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips’ by Raymond Luczak

Almost generous to a fault, Luczak’s poems salute Whitman and at the same time he respects him enough to question some of his underlying notions of love, community, and self

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‘The Troubleseeker’ by Alan Lessik

The Troubleseeker is a potent mash-up of contemporary history, Greek mythology, Caribbean Santería, and queer eroticism

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‘Running’ by Cara Hoffman

Running has plenty of dazzle; it races atop remarkable sentences. But at its core are two people who, accustomed to getting by on nothing, have no idea what to do with the bounties that befall them: success, family, love

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‘Heartsnare: Book One of the Umbraverse’ by Steven B. Williams

Steven B. Williams blends a horrifying and unconventional world with verisimilitude.

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‘Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me’ by Bill Hayes

Bill Hayes has managed to tell his own moving story and to include Oliver Sacks, his partner of seven years, as a very active character but not the exclusive focus

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‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain

The Gustav Sonata focuses on the post-World War II life of shy Swiss hotelier Gustav Perle and his unspoken love for the German Jewish piano prodigy Anton Zweibel

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‘After the Blue Hour’ by John Rechy

After the Blue Hour is a clever psychodrama that blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction

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‘Abandon Me’ by Melissa Febos

Abandon Me is a fierce exploration of love and obsession

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‘Blind Side of the Moon’ by Blayne Cooper

Dreams haunt Samantha Blackwell. At

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‘Queer & Trans Artists of Color: Volume 2’ by Nia King and Elena Rose

For anyone feeling terrorized by the Trump administration’s dire promises, Nia King’s Queer & Trans Artists of Color: Volume 2 is the perfect antidote to fear and an inspiring handbook of activist creations

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‘Feder: A Scenario’ by Nathanaël

Decidedly cerebral, Feder doesn’t just involve the mind, it takes place there; the associative, disembodied voice of a narrator is quite nearly pure intellect

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‘Queerly Remembered: Rhetorics for Representing the GLBTQ Past’ by Thomas R. Dunn

In Queerly Remembered, Thomas R. Dunn explains how gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and communities over time have turned to publicizing their pasts to advocate for political, social, and cultural change

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A Literary Legacy: Lee Lynch and Michael Nava Announce Bequests of Literary Rights

Consider joining Lee Lynch and Michael Nava in a pledge to bequeath your literary rights and royalties to Lambda Literary

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A Look at Roxane Gay’s Comic Book Writing Debut

Though the format is new for Gay, the topics are well worn: power struggles, hot encounters, and female solidarity abound

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‘This is a Dance Movie!’ by Tim Jones-Yelvington

The collection as a whole speaks to any reader unafraid of a revealing dive into sexual deviancy, fickle intimacy, and evasive amour

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‘Difficult Women’ by Roxane Gay

Difficult Women is comprised of wildly different stories, ranging from realistic to magical, hopeful to dystopian

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‘Walk-in’ by T.L. Hart

If you like your mysteries filled with red herrings, twists, and turns, you’ll be thoroughly entertained by this book

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‘Marbled, Swirled, and Layered’ by Irvin Lin

More than just a collection of recipes, Marbled, Swirled, and Layered is a slice of Lin’s life with his partner AJ, his friends and family

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‘State of Grace’ by Sandra Moran

State of Grace is just as unsparing and jarring as the experience of trauma itself.

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Cartoonist Ed Luce on Creating Comics and Promoting Body Positivity

“I’m still dedicated to writing and drawing stories that I haven’t really seen in comics, especially queer comics, that I think need to exist.”

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‘The Queer Heroes Coloring Book’ by Tara Madison Avery and Jon Macy

If you’re looking for the perfect holiday gift or birthday present, search no more.

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‘Tall As You Are Tall Between Them’ by Annie Christain

Tall as You Are Tall Between Them, Annie Christain’s debut poetry collection, offers readers a raucous and glorious, spiritual and secular, cosmic and commonplace cacophony of voices.

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‘Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days’ by Jeanette Winterson

For years, Winterson has written a new story every year at Christmastime, and here she collects them for the first time. The result is a book for cold, clear nights and roaring fireplaces.

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‘Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady’ by Susan Quinn

In Quinn’s well-written and exhaustively researched book, Hick and Eleanor come across as a butch-femme Romeo and Juliet. The book’s rich detail and Quinn’s obvious passion will keep you turning the pages

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Fingerplay and Handmaidens: The Queer and Subversive Pleasures of Reading Sarah Waters

In Sarah Waters’ writing, historical queer female desire is inferred, inserted, and re-imagined

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Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace on Crafting Her New Punk Rock Memoir

“I found a lot of parallels between recording an album and writing a book. I came to find myself looking at each chapter like a song.”

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‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue

In her latest novel, Donoghue’s child characters once again shine in their imaginings when faced with creating solace in unimaginable circumstances

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‘Wedding Pulls’ by J. K. Daniels

Here we encounter poetry as archery: precise, adept: each enjambment taut as a bow, each image piercing as the head of an arrow

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‘Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier’ by Joanne Passet

Grier’s life emerges as an interesting through line of lesbian activism in the twentieth century

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‘Wuvable Oaf: Blood & Metal’ by Ed Luce

This collection is a visual smorgasbord, packed with one-page wrestling matches, posters, fake ads for Oaf hair care products, and…paper dolls

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‘The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories’ by A.C. Wise

The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories is achingly smart, sad, and weird in equal measure

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‘The Missing Museum’ by Amy King

The Missing Museum is not an easy read, any more than an actual museum exhibit is a thought-free gimme of an experience. But, like the Smithsonian and the odd roadside attraction, it’s worth taking the time to explore.

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‘At Danceteria and Other Stories’ by Philip Dean Walker

This short story collection is inspired by the heady mix of sex, celebrity, and sinisterness inherent in the metropolitan cities of the 1980s

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‘The Jungle Around Us’ by Anne Raeff

The slow, measured prose of these nine interrelated tales approaches big topics—loneliness, belonging, death, fear—and yet, Anne Raeff’s stories are intimate, character driven, and incredibly subtle

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Blacklight: Holmén’s ‘Clinch’ Showcases a Visceral World with a Hard-Boiled Anti-hero

Clinch is a vivid blood-soaked noir set in 1930s Stockholm.

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Ari Banias: On His New Poetry Collection and Trans Representation in the Larger Culture

“[…] I long to get outside the ways culture has directed me to see myself, others, and the world.”

• 2 Comments

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‘When The Moon Was Ours’ by Anna-Marie McLemore

When The Moon Was Ours is a story of secrets, and of speaking them, and the power of saying–and living–your truth, without fear.

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‘I’ll Tell You In Person’ by Chloe Caldwell

The essays in I’ll Tell You In Person wield the dual scalpels of honesty and wit in the manner of a caffeinated cardiologist

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‘The Fool’ by Grace Dunham

Artist and activist Grace Dunham blends poetry, sermon, and ditty in their new online chapbook, The Fool

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‘The Art of History’ by Christopher Bram

Bram’s The Art of History, Unlocking the Past in Fiction & Nonfiction is a brisk and entertaining jog through 29 great books and how authors grappled with history in their writing

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‘In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton’ Edited by Reginald Shepherd and Philip Clark

In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton is a delectable volume of poetry-concentrate, dense with previously unpublished and uncollected works that immortalize Britton

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‘The Clancys of Queens’ by Tara Clancy

The Clancys of Queens is a family story that takes an unfiltered look at class differences. It’s also hilarious, inspiring, and that rarest of animals–a memoir full of honest good cheer.

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‘Proxies’ by Brian Blanchfield

The subtitle to the book, aptly named, is “Essays Near Knowing.” Not essays of expertise. Not even essays of critical analysis—essays in the proximity of understanding (bodily, mentally, philosophically).

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Bob Smith: On Religion, Life with ALS, His Love of Nature, and His New Book ‘Treehab’

“I want a God who’s not meaner than I am.”

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‘Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983’ by Tim Lawrence

While unearthing the cultural crossroads that formed the foundation of so many vital venues, Tim Lawrence absolutely nails what early the 80s New York City club scene was all about

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‘Leaving Paris’ by Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley has created a trio of interlocking novels that can be read in any order. Read Leaving Paris first and you’ll know the “end” of the story. Read them backwards and the characters become richer and the intricate plot lines reveal their origins

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Queer Readers and Kim Addonizio’s ‘Bukowski in a Sundress’

Addonizio’s work is important to many LGBTQ readers because her writing persona works as an amalgamation of identities queer readers understand: the outsider, the rebel, the provocateur, the lover, and the survivor

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‘The Stormwater Drains in Canberra’ by Paul Johan Karlsen

It takes some courage for a young Norwegian man from a small town to travel around the world for gay sex. In some ways, the novel reads like a fairy tale… The Stormwater Drains in Canberra may serve as a study guide for a new generation of young gay men

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‘Vow of Celibacy’ by Erin Judge

Vow of Celibacy, stand-up comedian Erin Judges dishy debut novel, plunges the reader directly into the world of Natalie—bisexual, plus-sized fashion maven, and undertaker of the titular vow.

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Appreciations: Derrick Austin’s “Summertime”

Every month, “Appreciations” looks closely at a poem or poems from recently-published books by LGBTQ poets

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‘Remarkable’ by Dinah Cox

Set in Oklahoma, the stories in this collection are sharp, precise, and surprising

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‘Alphabet’ Edited by Jon Macy and Tara Madison Avery

Reading Alphabet will plunge you into the welcoming rainbow of queer comics.

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‘Captain of Industry’ by Karin Kallmaker

Captain of Industry is subtle and engaging, a Kallmaker love story with the kind of angst to which we can probably all relate

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‘Another Brooklyn’ by Jacqueline Woodson

Another Brooklyn is an absorbing, lyrical, beautifully written novel, which quietly draws the reader into its story of four friends “sharing the weight of growing up girl in Brooklyn” in the 1970s

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‘Here Comes The Sun’ by Nicole Dennis-Benn

How do you save your sister, your lover, your home and your ambition? In this brilliant debut novel, Nicole Dennis-Benn aims to present this riddle through rich prose, crackling dialogue, and the lives of three unforgettable Jamaican women

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‘Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall’ by James Magruder

This sparkling novel owes much of its success to Magruder’s remarkable ability to manipulate words to get to the heart of all matters, especially matters of the heart

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Adam Haslett: On Masculinity, Being Fearless, and the Power of Ambiguity

Imagine Me Gone is the most personal book I’ve written, since I used the fact there is mental illness in my own family more directly than I have in anything else.”

• One Comment

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‘Desert Boys’ by Chris McCormick

Both a collection and a journey, Desert Boys maps new ground in contemporary queer fiction

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‘GJS II’ by Shawn Stewart Ruff

With GJS II, readers get an in-depth and multi-faceted view of blackness playing out in business, the political arena, and familial relationships

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‘Read Me Like A Book’ by Liz Kessler

Author Liz Kessler highlights one young woman’s craving for love and validation to explore her emotionally charged world.

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‘Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World’ by Gregory Woods

British poet and scholar Gregory Woods has gathered the often overlooked or underappreciated stories of over a century of gay men and women from around the world and woven a remarkably cohesive narrative

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‘Sleeping Dogs Lie’ by E.J. Cochrane

Cochrane has given us an endearing, though somewhat self-deprecating sleuth, in Maddie Smithwick

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‘Call Me By My Other Name’ by Valerie Wetlaufer

This book is what happens when aesthetics and activism are yoked in the finest possible literary form

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‘Weekend’ by Jane Eaton Hamilton

What is especially wonderful about Weekend is the emotional adventure that occurs completely within the context of romantic and communal relationships

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‘Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis’ by Kevin J. Mumford

The book is deeply engaged in answering the question, not posed in the title, but hinted at, “What does it mean for a group of people with neither white, masculine, nor heterosexual privilege to find a political voice?”

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‘Lesbian Decadence: Representations in Art and Literature in Fin-De-Siecle France’ by Nicole G. Albert

Albert’s book is a treat for American LGBT Studies researchers. She provides us with a treasure trove of paintings, drawings, and cartoons that depict the French lesbian at the turn of the century

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‘Arcade’ by Drew Nellins Smith

In Drew Nellins Smith’s debut novel, Arcade, Sam, an awkward, likable late 20-something, guides us through a XXX video store on the outskirts of a Texas town

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‘The Halo’ by C. Dale Young

In a mythic landscape populated by Greek gods, wolfish men and flightless angels, C. Dale Young’s The Halo, the poet’s fourth and latest collection, explores intersecting mandalas of memory, legend and the quest for self-actualization

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‘Walking the Dog’ by Elizabeth Swados

The book details the struggles of “former child prodigy and rich-girl kleptomaniac” Ester Rosenthal as she navigates a post-prison life as a high-end professional dog walker

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Garrard Conley: On Surviving Ex-Gay Therapy, Writing His Memoir, and the Year in Queer Lit

“I remember in the 90s and even early 00s, the idea was still prevalent in popular culture and the media that gay sex equaled death. When you’re in this religious environment, it complicates it even further.”

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‘Final Cut’ by Lynn Ames

Jamison Parker is a best-selling

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‘Say Bye to Reason and Hi to Everything’ Edited by Andrew Durbin

With Say Bye to Reason and Hi to Everything, Andrew Durbin collects five individual chapbooks spanning poetic and essayistic forms, by five writers, all women: Dodie Bellamy, Cecilia Corrigan, Amy De’Ath, Lynne Tillman, and Jackie Wang

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‘Black Dove: Mama, Mi’jo, and Me’ by Ana Castillo

One of the collection’s implicit questions is what intersections of identities might come next, what experiences and realities we have yet to see represented

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‘Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation’ by Jim Downs

Stand By Me maps the complex cultural and political expressions of the lesbian and gay community in the years before AIDS

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‘Infringe’ by Sarah B. Burghauser

In Infringe, the reader is taken through the journey of a girl who has been raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, whose faith and sense of identity is fractured by trauma

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‘Infidels’ by Abdellah Taïa

Abdellah Taïa’s Infidels is a story about the protagonist Jallal’s fall–out of boyhood, into love, out of innocence, into Jihad.

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‘Original Fake’ by Kirstin Cronn-Mills and Illustrated by E. Eero Johnson

This story is about the power of blurring lines and altering perceptions of acceptability

• 2 Comments

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Appreciations: Christina Hutchins’ “Vigil”

Every month, “Appreciations” looks closely at a poem or poems from recently-published books by LGBTQ poets

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‘Imagine Me Gone’ by Adam Haslett

Adam Haslett immerses his novel of familial strife in contemporary ideas about racial and economic justice in America

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Saleem Haddad: On the Arab Spring and Writing About the Queer Arab Experience

“It was very challenging to write this, about such a sensitive subject as sexuality and shame, knowing that it would be read both by a Western audience and an Arab audience. So I kept telling myself: Just tell the truth.”

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‘Without Annette’ by Jane B. Mason

Josie and Annette have been

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‘The Death of Fred Astaire’ by Leslie Lawrence

Leslie Lawrence’s essay collection offers poignant musings on the nature of memory

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Philip Clark on Unearthing the Poetry of Donald Britton

“If anything, the poems are testament to an eye and a mind that was looking at the world on a different wavelength: there’s a remarkable particularity of language matched with fresh and jarring images.”

• One Comment

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‘Night Sweats’ by Tom Cardamone

Short these stories may be, but that doesn’t mean that they’re lightweight

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‘Black Sheep Boy’ by Martin Pousson

What Pousson does so masterfully is to take such a dazzlingly fantastical and specific world and render it universally recognizable

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‘So Much To Be Done: The Writings of Breast Cancer Activist Barbara Brenner’ Edited by Barbara Sjoholm

This is not another pity-party book written by someone with a life-threatening illness. Instead, Brenner’s writing provides a map for future activists and organizers.

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‘In Case of Emergency, Break Glass’ by Sarah Van Arsdale

Whether the stories take place on a snow bank in an unknown, prehistoric land or in a hotel in Barcelona, Van Arsdale’s novellas strike achingly close to home by reporting true narratives of people and their complications

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Blacklight: Crime Fiction Makes Hidden LGBTQ Histories Visible

The LGBTQ historical crime novel has a dual function: first, to uncover the particular past, true actions and motivations of a set of characters; and second, to re-insert queer characters back into a time period that has excluded them

• One Comment

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‘Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Sexual Violence Movement’ Edited by Jennifer Patterson

Queering Sexual Violence is something of a collectively written open letter to what Patterson refers to as “the non-profit industrial complex,” which has consistently overlooked and undervalued the experiences and insights of queer survivors of sexual violence

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‘My Year Zero’ by Rachel Gold

My Year Zero is classified as “new adult fiction,” and will appeal to both young and more experienced adults, meeting difficult topics head-on with a compelling story

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‘Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls’ by Lindsay King-Miller

In a world struggling with identity and how to behave, with big political questions of belonging/not belonging, Ask a Queer Chick is a gentle and educational guide for all of us

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‘The Cosmopolitans’ by Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman has given us a finely tuned, clever, and remarkably contemporary historical novel

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‘We Love You, Charlie Freeman’ by Kaitlyn Greenidge

That the novel is able to combine ASL culture, race, ambition, family, love, politics, and history is a marvel not to be missed

• One Comment

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‘Felicity’ by Mary Oliver

Over her past few collections,

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‘The Making of the American Essay’ Edited by John D’Agata

The total package of this collection is overwhelming, far-reaching, and feels very much like our collective home

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‘Our Young Man’ by Edmund White

Edmund White’s new novel examines the costs of maintaining a facade

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‘Juliana’ by Vanda

Juliana illustrates a poignant message: to be queer was to be anti-American, in a time where being anti-American meant isolation and ruination

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‘The Right Side of History: 100 Years of LGBTQI Activism’ by Adrian Brooks

The battle cries, blood, sweat, and tears of those who have both come before and will certainly exist after today’s LGBT activists are long gone, are carefully protected and cherished.

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French, Arabic, English: Abdellah Taïa Discusses His Novels and Why He Uses the Language that He Does

“Though I write now in French, my feelings about this language are very complicated. I am in a constant war with it.”

• One Comment

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‘Confucius Jane’ by Katie Lynch

Lynch has given us a superb account of a struggling romance, the personal growth her characters must achieve in disastrous circumstances, and a community rich in tradition

• One Comment

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‘Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology’ Edited by Sfé R. Monster

This beautiful collection of comics gathers a huge diversity of styles and narratives told from every possible universe and with every walk of life

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Kaitlyn Greenidge: On Her New Novel ‘We Love You, Charlie Freeman’ and Writing Fully Realized Characters

“I think anyone can write any experience as long as they recognize that experience as part of the human condition. The problem arises when a writer uses a character’s social positionality as shorthand or for street cred.”

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‘Beijing Comrades’ by Bei Tong

Beijing Comrades is both a valuable piece of global gay history and a political phenomenon

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Darryl Pinckney: On His Novel ‘Black Deutschland’ and the Complexities of Gay Desire

“It used to be that if you told your parents that you were gay, they imagined you were living these aimless nights of danger. Now you tell your parents that you are gay, and they want to meet your boyfriend.”

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‘The Straight Line: How the Fringe Science of Ex-Gay Therapy Reoriented Sexuality’ by Tom Waidzunas

The Straight Line is a socio-cultural exploration of the rise and fall of the ex-gay and reorientation therapy movement

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‘Glitter & Grit: Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy’ Edited by Damien Luxe, Heather María Ács & Sabina Ibarrola’

The essays and performance pieces in this anthology add to a collective tale while remaining essentially singular

• 2 Comments

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‘Husky’ by Justin Sayre

Husky tells the story of Davis, an overweight, smart, likeable, and genuinely decent boy on the cusp of facing middle school, where a whole new set of rules, rituals, and priorities face him and his cohort of friends

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‘Backcast’ by Ann McMan

Backcast is a memorable story about the unbreakable strength and resilience of women

• One Comment

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Reading ‘Stone Butch Blues’ on the First Anniversary of Leslie Feinberg’s Death

Stone Butch Blues is a book that demands with each reading new imaginative possibilities for how to live with and revolt against sex and gender in our world

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‘Fox Tooth Heart’ by John McManus

John McManus’s new collection Fox Tooth Heart is a gripping, often tragic meditation on the vast distance between inner life and outer expectations

• One Comment

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‘What’s Your Sign, Girl? Cartoonists Talk About Their Sun Signs’ Edited by Robert Kirby

This compilation’s topic and sharp design make it irresistible to peruse

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Burn, Bodice, Burn

The following excerpt is from The State of Our Union: A Collage, an essay collection from Julie Marie Wade

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‘The Uncollected David Rakoff’ by David Rakoff

David Rakoff was here. He made us laugh, he made us weep, he made us think. The Uncollected Works are some of his best and some of his not-so-best, but they are all him and as such, to be cherished

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‘The Repercussions’ by Catherine Hall

The Repercussions does not try to explain war, nor does it try to call us to action. It is simply a chronicle of the ways human beings mess each other up and what it takes, on an individual level, to keep on living

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Blacklight: Casey McKittrick’s ‘Murder on Faux Pas Island’: Golden Age-Style Mystery Casts Female Impersonator as Amateur Detective

In his first Pancetta Brulée mystery, Casey McKittrick pays homage to the Golden Age mysteries of the ‘20s and ‘30s, but with twist

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‘Pretty Much Dead’ by Daphne Gottlieb

This collection covers multitudes—the emotional and physical landscape of San Francisco, the politics of change, nontraditional intimacies, and stories of a city well-loved and well-complicated by the passing of time

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‘And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality’ by Mark Segal

The most important lesson one can learn from Segal’s life is that, no matter what, you just have to keep on fighting

• One Comment

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‘Hurricane Days’ by Renée J. Lukas

Hurricane Days is a romantic and gut-wrenching political drama

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Michael Graves: On Writing, Relationships, and Practicing Hope

“[…] People are scared to talk about religion. They are less fearful of discussions concerning sex or guns. Why don’t we talk about God? Why don’t we talk about spirituality?”

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‘Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home’ by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Dirty River goes above and beyond being a story of survival; it is a femme manifesto

• One Comment

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‘A Poet of the Invisible World’ by Michael Golding

In A Poet of the Invisible World, we’re asked to consider the curative role of art and how experience–often painful–can bring us to a deeper understanding of life

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‘When the Sick Rule the World’ by Dodie Bellamy

Bellamy’s book is like rough sex: it is intense, dizzying, and often leaves you bruised, but beneath the glitter of sensation lies a foundation of tenderness

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‘The Pink Trance Notebooks’ by Wayne Koestenbaum

The collection is apparently the result of a year-long hiatus from journal writing in favor of this more immediate, unfiltered transcription of a mind at work

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‘Did You Ever Have a Family’ by Bill Clegg

In this novel, fifty year old June Reid is faced with the irreconcilable deaths of every person in her family—a fate she was spared from by pure happenstance

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‘When I Was a Twin’ by Michael Klein

Good poets make us think; great poets make us imagine. And this is exactly what Michael Klein helps us do in his visceral, exultant, new collection of poetry and prose

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Blacklight: Greg Herren’s ‘Orion Mask’: An Engrossing Romantic Mystery Connects Place to Character

In his acknowledgments, Herren writes that, as a teenager, he loved romantic suspense and read widely in that sub-genre. In this novel, that love is apparent, and place, as is the case in gothic romances, plays an important role

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A Queer Look at Garth Risk Hallberg’s ‘City On Fire’

The book stretches broad enough to embrace many narratives, a compelling gay narrative among them

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Carrie Brownstein on the Joys and Agonies of Storytelling

“Music writing can be very frustrating, too, but for some reason, at the end of three hours of trying to write a song, if I’m unsuccessful, it doesn’t feel quite as degrading as not being able to write a successful paragraph.”

• 3 Comments

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‘Vienna’ by William S. Kirby

Vienna brings together the crime and intelligence of a Holmes story but with a twist: “Sherlock” and “Watson” appear as women—Vienna and Justine, respectively—and to further twist the usual, the unlikely duo are lovers

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‘The Collected Black Gay Boy Fantasy #1’ by Victor Hodge

Black Gay Boy Fantasy follows the story of Neil Jordan’s gay coming of age

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‘I Must Be Living Twice’ by Eileen Myles

There is infrequently anything as marvelous as being taken with a writer to a place in a whirlwind—to be rushed through streets, through lives, through interactions, through memory

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‘Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl’ by Carrie Brownstein

The debut memoir from Sleater Kinney member and Portlandia star Carrie Brownstein Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is a whip smart and compelling story that expertly blends music writing with personal revelations

• 3 Comments

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‘Uncovered: How I left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home’ by Leah Lax

Lax explores the ways in which men and women both encounter limitations in their lives through a fundamentalist religion and offers some insight into why they join.

• 4 Comments

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Chinelo Okparanta: On Her New Novel ‘Under The Udala Trees’ and Being a Champion of Love

“It’s too bad that so many of us have a need to psychoanalyze love and destroy it in the process.”

• One Comment

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‘Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin’ by Andrew Wilson

This biography chronicles how success changes you: the ways in which the people fall away, as you become consumed with your new life(style) which, if not managed carefully, can overwhelm and consume

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‘The Gap of Time’ by Jeanette Winterson

Winterson—whose energetic literary career began with the sui generis coming-out novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and has ranged through many forms and eras since—has written a “cover version” of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

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Remembering Nene Adams,1966-2015

A born storyteller who found inspiration in everything around her, Adams took lesbian readers through the cobblestones of Victorian England, the brothels of Shogun Japan, and the wilds of the Yukon

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‘Worlds Apart’ by David Plante

For readers who yearn more for good dish than spiritual pondering, it does not hurt that Plante’s “connections” are of the very best kind: Germaine Greer, Phillip Roth, David Hockney, to name a few.

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‘The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle’ by Lillian Faderman

In The Gay Revolution, Faderman takes on our collective LGBT history from the pre-Stonewall days through to now. It’s a massive undertaking and Faderman approaches it with diligence, tenacity and just the right touch of awe.

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Blacklight: Richard Stevenson’s ‘Why Stop at Vengeance?’: A Fast-Paced Thriller Uncovers Evangelical Anti-gay Conspiracy in Uganda

Why Stop at Vengeance? shows us how evangelical missionaries can harness political backing and propaganda for their hate-mongering in countries with political and economic instability

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How the Words of Nikky Finney Help Get Us Through Breaking Up & Breaking Down

Candice Iloh on how the work of the poet Nikky Finney can help us navigate through the world

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‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith’ by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks with Barbara Smith

[Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around is] a collection of stories that stress not only the importance of a movement but also its role and influence in larger society and culture as a whole.

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‘Dryland’ by Sara Jaffe

Adults and teen readers will appreciate this coming-of-age tale which captures a girl’s initial steps to finding her sexual identity and the emotional struggles of navigating adolescence

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‘Prayer of the Handmaiden’ by Merry Shannon

It’s been awhile since we’ve

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Gary Indiana: On His New Book ‘I Can Give You Anything But Love’ and the Impossibility of Happy Endings

“There aren’t any happy endings! We die! How could anything have a happy ending? Life is pessimistic because we die!”

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‘I Can Give You Anything But Love’ by Gary Indiana

I Can Give You Anything does, in fact, give you just about everything: travel writing; diary entries; fragments; and deliciously wicked but not inhumane portraits of a variety of noteworthy figures

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‘Love Not Given Lightly: Profiles from the Edge of Sex’ by Tina Horn

Love Not Given Lightly is compelling and oh-so-readable. Whether you know of and partake of this world or not, Horn’s portraits are deeply moving in their tender look at human sexuality and connection.

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‘The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter’ by Tom Mendicino

Tom Mendicino’s latest novel explores the bonds of brotherhood, literal and metaphoric, between two brothers who on the surface appear so dissimilar

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‘Under The Udala Trees’ by Chinelo Okparanta

Chinelo Okparanta has written a new classic of the lesbian novel, timeless in its risk and heart, immediate in its voice for the persecuted LGBT people of Nigeria

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‘The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghost’ by Tiya Miles

Historians reveal uncomfortable truths and novelists force us to look at them. Perhaps The Cherokee Rose is a nod in support of the New South that recognizes its multicultural past, present, and future.

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“Bendova Like I Told Ya”: Big Freedia and the Healing Power of Contradiction

Ease with contradiction would appear to be a kind of puckish response to systemic disenfranchisement

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‘Talk’ by Linda Rosenkrantz

Talk is a slender novel narrowly focused on three friends slowly embracing adulthood as the nation prepares to lose much of its innocence. It’s blazingly witty, unexpectedly touching, and note-perfect.

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‘Let Me Explain You’ by Annie Liontas

Let Me Explain You is a story about relationships—between sisters, between countrymen, between people and place, between food and memory, between languages, between time and space

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Blacklight: Commentary on the Past, Present, and Future of LGBTQ Crime Fiction

“My hope is that this column will promote quality crime stories written by or about our community…”

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‘Skyscraping’ by Cordelia Jensen

Captivating you in the first few pages, visionary author Cordelia Jensen has put forth Skyscraping, a semi-autobiographical novel in verse for young readers

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Author Quintan Ana Wikswo on the Limitations and Power of Labels

“Primarily, I wanted to see if I could write a book in which issues of love, erotics, desire, and sex could be momentarily liberated from conventional categorizations of gender identity.”

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‘Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina’ by Jamie Brisick

Becoming Westerly is an unforgettable portrait of a hard-won second act in an already exceptional life

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The Myth of Fluency and a Search for New Language

Author Daniel Allen Cox on building stories, fluency, and the power of language

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‘Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer’ by Tracy Baim

Baim’s book introduces this stalwart activist to a broad audience, and Gittings’ determination, achievement and love for her community shines through.

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‘The Small Backs of Children’ by Lidia Yuknavitch

The plot centers on an orphaned child from a war torn Eastern European country, and how her life captivates and unsettles a group of western artists

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“All Losses Are the Same” But Every Rediscovery of a Lesbian Poet Gives Us New Life

Catherine Breese Davis’ poems are taut and formal, with close attention to the power of compressed language

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‘Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing’ by Kate Walter

Looking for a Kiss is about one woman’s herculean attempt to thrive in the face of tragedy and an uncertain romantic future

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Riverhead Editorial Director Rebecca Saletan on the Art of Publishing

“For me, I’m less interested in things that reflect the world and the familiar literature that I already know. I want things to take me into new zones.”

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‘Hotel Living’ by Ioannis Pappos

Management consultants don’t exactly sound

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‘Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama’ by Jordan Tannahill

This slim volume is overflowing with ideas and practical criticism of current theatre practice.

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‘Shirtlifter’ by Steve MacIsaac with Fuzzbelly, Justin Hall, Ilya, Jon Macy, and Eric Kostiuk Williams

These stories expand the view of the gay male experience by examining stereotypes and the realities behind them, and by sharing the real joys and frustrations of gay life.

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‘Counternarratives’ by John Keene

The remarkable thing about this kind of book–this expansive, wide-reaching book–is that the writer expects the reader to be as well-read as they are, or to at least engage with the text in an intentional way

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A Queer Look at Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’

The eighty-nine-year-old Lee has long been a lesbian literary icon, and her protagonist, Scout Finch, a.k.a. Jean Louise, has been—along with Carson McCullers’ Frankie Addams in The Member of the Wedding—a girl that every young American lesbian grew up reading

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‘The Brink’ by Austin Bunn

The Brink is a fast-paced, slim, engrossing collection that reminds its reader of one of life’s most essential truths: we’re always on the cusp of something new, and every passing moment, for better or worse, changes us

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Out of the Dungeons and onto the Bookshelf: Leather Writers in a Post-‘Fifty Shades’ Literary World

Authors Sassafras Lowrey, Laura Antoniou, and Cecilia Tan discuss BDSM writing in a post-Fifty Shades literary world

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‘The Song in My Heart’ by Tracey Richardson

The Song in My Heart is about finding passion in life. It’s about relationships and how what we may think we want isn’t always what’s best for us.

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‘Night at the Fiestas’ by Kirstin Valdez Quade

At its best, Kirstin Valdez Quade’s new collection of stories, Night at the Fiestas, sidesteps cliché but keeps the grandeur of her setting by transposing it to her characters—people big as myth, opaque as Scripture

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Gore Vidal: Devil with a Soul

In Sympathy for the Devil:

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‘Two Augusts in a Row in a Row’ by Shelley Marlow

Two Augusts in a Row in a Row is a novel about gender, love, grief and magic.

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‘The Conversation’ by Judith Barrington and ‘Love Will Burst Into a Thousand Shapes’ by Jane Eaton Hamilton

Together, The Conversation and Love Will Burst into a Thousand Shapes demonstrate some of the vibrancy of contemporary lesbian poetry.

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‘Wuvable Oaf’ by Ed Luce

Wuvable Oaf is the tale of a big, hairy, gay ex-wrestler’s search for love in San Francisco

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‘Dangerous When Wet’ by Jamie Brickhouse

Dangerous When Wet is a fabulous new memoir about a man who has it all–a great job in publishing, a longtime boyfriend, fun friends and a caring family. But Brickhouse has some serious life challenges too, including addictions and HIV

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‘Sphinx’ by Anne Garréta

Sphinx, on the surface, is a standard story of love and loss. But that’s about all that’s standard here. You won’t get past the first page without asking questions, and by the time you turn the last one, you’ll be no closer to an answer

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Jonathan Galassi: On Publishing, Poetry vs. Prose, and Meeting Your Literary Heroes

“I chose to write about publishing because it’s the world I know best, and because I wanted to leave a record of a way of working that really is gone now.”

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‘It Starts with Trouble: William Goyen and the Life of Writing’ by Clark Davis

During his lifetime, William Goyen’s fiction elicited praise from the likes of Joyce Carol Oates and Truman Capote. He published five novels, several collections of short stories, a book of poems, and a respectable—if not abundant—body of nonfiction.

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‘Vera’s Will’ by Shelley Ettinger

“Don’t go. Let me show

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Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall: On the Queer Aspects of Hip Hop

“I think the reality of hip hop is that women and queer people and a lot of folks who we think about being in the margins have always been at the center of the culture.”

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‘Muse’ by Jonathan Galassi

Jonathan Galassi does a superb job of offering a meticulously observed peek behind the curtain of the book publishing world, complete with an eclectic cast of outsized characters.

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Pauline: Poet Jee Leong Koh on Writer and Activist Pauline Park

“To put yourself out there constantly, in newspapers, film and social media, requires nerves of steel. It also requires a stubborn set of values and a strong sense of self.”

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‘Soul Selecta’ by Gill McKnight

Prepare to meet the unexpected in this plot that folds back on itself and brings with it more than one element of surprise.

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‘The Ghost Network’ by Catie Disabato

The Ghost Network is a mystery, though less a whodunit than a philosophical koan. It’s a layered and twisted trip through the real and fictional, pop and political

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‘I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Part One: My Own Private Portland’ by Annie Murphy

The title of Murphy’s zineI Never Promised You a Rose Garden alludes to Portland’s nickname, “The City of Roses,” at the same time warning readers this book is not about petals and perfume.

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John Keene: On Hidden Histories and Why Writing Against Official Narratives is Queer

John Keene spoke with The Lambda Literary Review about his new book,Counternarratives, hidden histories, and merging fiction with reality

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‘The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled Into the Spotlight and Made History’ by Robin Givhan

The changes wrought by the designers and American fashion industry since Versailles make the reader realize, contrary to frequent accusations of frivolity, how serious the world of fashion can be.

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‘The Hope of Floating Has Carried Us This Far’ by Quintan Ana Wikswo

The stories here beg borders. They are amorphous and esoteric. Many of them feel like shortwave radio dispatches from another Universe where the edges that separate us are constantly blurring and shifting.

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“I want no ending,” and Neither Will You: ‘Chord’ as Continuation and Expansion of Rick Barot’s Exceptional Canon

The poems are sensuously complex, perhaps the most complex of Barot’s canon

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Jeffrey Round: On Becoming a Mystery Writer

“I’m an inveterate wanderer and snoop [….] Whether I’m on a bike or in a car, I stick my nose in places that most people avoid just to see what curiosities they hold, especially at night.”

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Dawn Martin Lundy: On the Power of Forgetting and Her New Collection ‘Life in a Box is a Pretty Life’

“What I believe in is forgetting; it’s transformative, if not reformative, power. What does it mean to truly leave something behind? To excise a happening from not only your thoughts, but also from your body?”

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‘I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast’ by Melissa Studdard

In short, lush lines on expansive subjects, Melissa Studdard deftly guides her debut poetry collection, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast, through cycles of time, space and emotion.

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On Plague and the Queer Art of Absurdist History: Larry Kramer’s ‘The American People’

As much as The American People purports to historical authenticity, Kramer’s tome is primarily a masterpiece of the queer art of legend making, a natural byproduct of our occluded historical visibility

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‘Gay is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny’ Edited by Michael G. Long

Never one for hiding his true feelings, Kameny’s tireless fight against the American establishment spearheaded a new period for homosexual rights in the early 1960s

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‘To the Dark Tower’ by Francis King

To the Dark Tower, Francis King’s first novel, was published in 1946

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Kirsty Logan: On Moving Through Grief by Writing, the Art of Worldbuilding, and Her New Novel ‘The Gracekeepers’

“I think that the world of The Gracekeepers is as accepting and as intolerant as our own world–that is to say, some people are incredibly tolerant of difference, and others just shriek about burning the witch (whoever and whatever the witch may be).”

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‘Boo’ by Neil Smith

Smith ventures to convey a reality about bullying and mental health that is far braver than any you’ve ever read, as Boo is a spelunking adventure deep into the caves of life, death, good, evil, mortality, loss and grief.

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‘Orient’ by Christopher Bollen

Bollen crafts a series of interweaving threads with impressive finesse and detail, and it’s a testament to his talent that the reader can become equally invested in them as they are in getting to the roots of the murders and arson that begin to pepper the narrative

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‘Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard & Art & the ’70s and the ’80s’ by Brad Gooch

In his new memoir Smash Cut, novelist and biographer Brad Gooch recounts his experiences in New York City during the turbulent ’70s and ’80s

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‘The Man With the Overcoat’ by David Finkle

It is October, on an

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‘Erebus’ by Jane Summer and ‘Fanny Says’ by Nickole Brown

Two recent collections express documentary impulses in contemporary poetry

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‘One Hundred Days of Rain’ by Carellin Brooks

In Carellin Brooks’ One Hundred Days of Rain, we meet a woman going through a divorce with a small son in Vancouver. Rain serves as a kind of co-narrator to the book; it’s both character and metaphor

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Yarrott Benz: On Revisiting a Harrowing Adolescence and Writing His New Memoir ‘The Bone Bridge’

“Whether I like it or not, the story of The Bone Bridge is the defining story of my life.”

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‘Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDS’ by Dale Peck

Peck compiles and re-edits material principally presented as stand-alone essays in their original publication, weaving a sort of non-linear portrait of the period during which HIV/AIDS was typically a terminal illness

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‘Things Half in Shadow’ by Alan Finn

Alan Finn mines the fertile history of post-Civil War Philadelphia and the country’s obsession with Spiritualism during that period to craft a superbly rich, historically-detailed whodunit in Things Half in Shadow

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Maggie Nelson: On Writing ‘The Argonauts’ and Doing Justice to Queer Happiness

“On one level, I tried to do something I hadn’t done before, which was use the book as a holding container for sentiments of love and happiness […]”

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‘The Completely Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green’ by Eric Orner

Orner’s book is a treasure trove of emotions, queer characters you both know and want to know, engrossing art, humor and good storytelling

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Whitney Houston and Robyn Crawford: An Incomplete Biography

The Houston and Crawford story speaks to the power of black female love (intimate or platonic) and the heights such unions can scale

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‘The Argonauts’ by Maggie Nelson

The Argonauts, a slim book by poet and critic Maggie Nelson, contains multitudes. It’s an appreciation of her favorite queer thinkers. It’s a chronicle of first-time motherhood. It’s also the best kind of nonfiction read, the kind that enlarges one’s reading list by half.

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‘Lost Boi’ by Sassafras Lowrey

Lost Boi is a counterculture fairy tale, but the way Lowery turns all expectations upside down and finds hope in the darkest corners is the real magic here.

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‘Tiny Pieces of Skull’ by Roz Kaveney

Tiny Pieces of Skull delights in its characters and the grit and glamour of their daily lives.

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Brad Gooch: On Remembering the 1970s and 1980s and Writing His New Memoir ‘Smash Cut’

“I had not really revisited these memories deeply since I shut the door on them over two decades ago. I discovered that I had intact, vivid memories, as if on a dolly track, reliving walking the halls of the AIDS wards of St. Vincent’s Hospital.”

• 2 Comments

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‘Apocalypse Baby’ by Virginie Despentes

Apocalypse Baby, in the end, is a demanding read; Despentes’ words, plot, and ideas are contentious, confrontational, and very purposefully so.

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‘Delicious Foods’ by James Hannaham

To describe Hannaham’s novel by referencing other writers would be too easy, and perhaps unfair. With Delicious Foods, James Hannaham has himself become a reference point.

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‘Forever Faithful’ by Isabella

As Forever Faithful opens, we

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‘JD’ by Mark Merlis

Jonathan Ascher, an acclaimed 1960s

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‘The Gracekeepers’ by Kirsty Logan

It’s easy to lose yourself in The Gracekeepers. Logan’s rich tapestry of characters and storylines, her deft language and her exquisitely built world add up to a deep, intriguing, and accessible novel.

• One Comment

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‘Politically InQueerect: Old Ghosts’ by Dylan Edwards

It’s a credit to Edwards’ talent to see how he’s expanded what started as a clichéd joke, into an insightful, humorous and unique comic.

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‘Like A Woman’ by Debra Busman

In prose as lucid and passionate as any manifesto, this contemporary feminist anthem offers us a hero who both charms and challenges readers by way of her acuity, grit and depth

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‘I Left It on the Mountain’ by Kevin Sessums

I Left It On the Mountain is a spiritual page-turner.

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‘Stranger’s Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994-2014’ by Marilyn Hacker

A Stranger’s Mirror demonstrates Hacker’s continued formal mastery; she effortlessly spins one sonnet into two, then three, then seven, leaving readers always breathless for more.

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‘Bright Lights of Summer’ by Lynn Ames

When Julie Newsome meets Theodora

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Lesbian Mystery Lammy Finalists

Still catching up on the

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“Too bright/ is the heaven I’m after”: A Review of Celeste Gainey’s ‘The Gaffer’

Celeste Gainey’s debut collection, The Gaffer, is a triumph of nouns—of people, places, things, and ideas presented to us in the most trenchant and timely ways.

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Mark Merlis: On His New Novel ‘JD,’ His Writing Process, and the Autobiographical Details in His Work

“I don’t know how other people work, but all my work is trial and error. You start out on the path to the book you think you want to write, and you may run into a dead end—like the dumbest rat in the maze—or you may find an opening to a vista you never imagined.”

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‘Daydreamers’ by Jonathan Harper

Jonathan Harper’s debut collection Daydreamers is aptly named: each story contains the ruminations of young men drifting through their lives, either making bad choices or failing to choose

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‘Call Me Home’ by Megan Kruse

Call Me Home, as the title implies, focuses very strongly on the idea of home. It’s place-based for sure, but in this novel, who we call home is even more important.

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‘Aquarium’ by David Vann

Ultimately, the characters in Aquarium are desperately struggling to move toward forgiveness and redemption—it’s a story you can’t help but be submerged in completely

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‘Lies We Tell Ourselves’ by Robin Talley

Robin Talley’s Lies We Tell Ourselves is a beautiful yet painful reminder of America’s history of segregation, desegregation, and integration.

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Helen Humphreys: On Her New Novel ‘The Evening Chorus,’ Her Creative Process, and the Solitary Act of Writing

“I struggle with writing because to write well you have to remove yourself somewhat from the life around you. It is a lonely business.”

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‘Songs Unfinished’ by Holly Stratimore

As Songs Unfinished opens, Shawn

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‘Don’t Let Him Know’ by Sandip Roy

Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know is a multi-generational story venturing deep into the hidden pasts of a single family over the course of decades.

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‘The Autumn Balloon’ by Kenny Porpora

Porpora deploys a deft hand and straightforward tone that lifts what could have easily been a maudlin, self-pitying—or, in the opposite direction, self-congratulatory—narrative into a memoir that should be moved to the top of everyone’s to-read list immediately.

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‘Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity’ by Robert Beachy

This is an important book, and an impressive feat of scholarship drawing on nearly five hundred sources, with twenty-two pages of notes and sixteen pages of photographs.

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‘The Evening Chorus’ by Helen Humphreys

The power of The Evening Chorus is accumulation: a plot that unfolds at a comfortable pace, characters that feel usual, even ordinary, and thus interesting in their familiarity, and exquisite sentences

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‘Love Is Enough’ by Cindy Rizzo

When Massachusetts Congressional Representative, Angie

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‘The God of Longing’ by Brent Calderwood

Understated, ironic and occasionally playful, Brent Calderwood’s poems in The God of Longing are vivid and calm

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Author Craig Gidney on Illuminating Race and Diversity in Speculative Fiction

“‘Death and Two Maidens’ was my response to my research on African-descended Victorians. I wanted to write a penny dreadful story that went beyond the usual (pale-skinned) cast.”

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‘Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide’ by Ryan R. Thoreson

Thoreson tells us that he wants to critically look at how a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the West functions and how, ultimately, its articulation of LGBT human rights gains legitimacy and global significance.

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A Look at the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division: New York City’s Queer Bookstore

“The primary service we provide is a welcoming and stimulating space where queers can meet and get to know each other; share our work and our ideas with each other; and encourage, inspire, and learn from each other.”

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‘The Vines’ by Christopher Rice

“[…] Rice’s latest novel […] creatively blends his first talent for mystery and suspense with his heritage and own imaginative horror to produce a captivating horticultural nightmare. […]”

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‘Adrian and the Tree of Secrets’ by Hubert and Illustrated Marie Caillou

In Adrian and the Tree of Secrets, we find our title hero stumbling through the barriers of a catholic school as a closeted gay teenager

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“We inhabit the brutal. We are shattered every day./ We look askew”: A Review of Dawn Lundy Martin’s ‘Life in a Box is a Pretty Life’

One of the many things I admire about Dawn Lundy Martin’s poetry is her potent ability to puzzle the reader without losing the reader

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‘How to Grow Up’ by Michelle Tea

For all of us late-to-the-party adults, for all of us stumbling around wondering how in fact to actually do this thing called adulthood, How to Grow Up is the book we’ve been waiting for

• One Comment

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‘The First Bad Man’ by Miranda July

July’s talent exists in her ability to create such complex, bizarre relationships while always raising the stakes, but her carefully erected world does require a willful suspension of disbelief.

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Danez Smith: On His New Poetry Collection, Writing About Gay Sex, and the Power of Blackness

“Today, being black and gay is an armor, a gospel I love dearly. I love black queers. I love who and how we are. It’s taught me a lot of love; how it can surprise you with its leaps and failures.”

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‘Life After Love’ by KG MacGregor

Is life after love even a

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‘Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe: A Biography’ by Philip Gefter

Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe: A Biography is a book-length argument for Wagstaff’s importance in the world of American art.

• One Comment

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‘You’re Not Edith’ by Allison Gruber

If the autobiographical essays in You’re Not Edith are any indication, Allison Gruber has a surprisingly functional (not to mention intimate) relationship with all things strange and eccentric.

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‘Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh’ by John Lahr

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is first and foremost a perceptive and edifying look at Williams’ life.

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‘There Goes the Gayborhood?’ by Amin Ghaziani

Proper punctuation is critical to

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‘Blackmail, My Love’ by Katie Gilmartin

Blackmail, My Love is a book to read for the page-turning mystery, but to savor for the nuance and detail and heart-breaking reality of what it was to be a lesbian or a gay man in 1951

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‘Carry the Sky’ by Kate Gray

Kate Gray has written a stunning book, a blazingly necessary work of fiction for a wounded world.

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Shelly Oria: On Her New Collection ‘New York 1, Tel Aviv 0,’ Her Favorite Queer Writers, and the Power of Literature

“I’ve always thought that one of the biggest gifts literature offers us is the ability to hang out in another person’s mind. I mean, it’s a basic human fantasy, isn’t it?”

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‘The Erotic Postulate’ by Matthew Hittinger

Throughout The Erotic Postulate, the politics of “coming together” are explored with a ruthless clarity that is neither cynical nor sentimental.

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‘Sweet, Sweet Wine’ by Jaime Clevenger

In the opening paragraphs of

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‘Second Avenue Caper: When Goodfellas, Divas and Dealers Plotted Against the Plague’ by Joyce Brabner and Illustrated by Mark Zingarelli

“In her new graphic novel, Joyce Brabner continues writing in the vein of the American Splendor comics she co-wrote with her husband Harvey Pekar, discovering stories, heroes and suspense in the daily activities of herself and her friends.”

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I Am Not Not Me: Unmaking and Remaking the Language of the Self

As we develop new syntax for trans identity, we will be developing new ways of understanding all identity

• One Comment

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‘Trespass’ by Thomas Dooley

Dooley has a particular heartbreaking family story to relate, of children abused, of the traumatized adults who find themselves in closets both metaphorical and literal

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‘Bitter Waters’ by Chaz Brenchley

This small collection provides an excellent representation of Brenchley’s wide-ranging output.

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Brontez Purnell: On His New Book ‘The Cruising Diaries,’ Silencing the Critics, and the Joys of Writing About Sex

“I like writing in a way that can sometimes be dark yet still be generous to the human condition…”

• 8 Comments

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‘The War Within’ by Yolanda Wallace

The lives of four people

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‘Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity’ by David M. Friedman

“The book’s central thesis is that our modern-day cult of celebrity, in the Kardashian sense of unaccomplished people famous for being famous, had its beginnings in Wilde’s American tour.”

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‘Fearful Hunter’ by Jon Macy

“[….] this is a young adult romance, only it’s about a Druid and werewolf that fall in love, and includes gods, magic, shape-shifters, rednecks, and punks. There’s sex, but it leans towards erotic and romantic rather than explicit or hard-core.”

• One Comment

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Looking at ‘In Cold Blood’: Violence, Masculinity, and Compassion

In Cold Blood taught me that I could dive into my shadows, face my would-be killer, plumb my heart for the kind of compassion that the worst kind of men never gave me […]”

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Judith Frank: On Mourning, Taking on Volatile Subject Matter, and Queer Relationships

“[…] what happens to a couple when one person changes so much he or she becomes almost unrecognizable to the other?”

Author Judith Frank talks to Lambda Literary about her new novel, All I Love and Know, exploring relationship dynamics through her characters, and her literary inspirations.

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Nadine Gordimer: The Writer as Conscience of a Nation

“There are few writers in the world to equal the breadth of Nadine Gordimer. The valiant fighter against apartheid and against the oppression of women and gays in South Africa died July 13 in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was 90.”

• 2 Comments

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‘Everyone is Someone’s Fetish’ by Tony Breed

“The sense of humor here is low-key, but one that nails the realities of coupledom.”

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‘O, Africa!’ by Andrew Lewis Conn

Moving deftly from Coney Island to Africa to the first-ever Academy Award ceremony and back, O, Africa! is an engrossing and thought-provoking novel about self-discovery and the occasionally dangerous power of the movies.

• One Comment

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Lorrie Sprecher: On Being—and Writing—a Lesbian Punk Feminist

“I think punk is perceived as a very aggressive, male thing, and that isn’t the whole story. First of all, the music is so uplifting, political and angry, I don’t know why all feminists don’t listen to it. Women in our culture have so much to be angry about, so why aren’t we embracing our anger more?”

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‘They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full’ by Mark Bibbins

Julie Marie Wade gives you ten reasons to read Mark Bibbins’ newest book.

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‘Positive Lightning’ by Laurie Salzler

Positive Lightning (Blue Feather Books) tells

• One Comment

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‘Haffling’ by Caleb James

Sixteen-year-old Alex Nevus lives in

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‘Pissing in a River’ by Lorrie Sprecher

Amanda, the narrator of Lorrie

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Stacey D’Erasmo: On Music, Writing Straight Characters, and Creating a Literary Legacy

Author Stacey D’Erasmo discusses her new rock & roll inspired novel Wonderland.

• One Comment

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‘The Possibilities of Mud’ by Joe Jiménez

The speaker in The Possibilities

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‘Nightingale’ by Andrea Bramhall

Charlie Porter is an out

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Michael Carroll: On His New Short Story Collection, the Benefits of a Spare Writing Style, and His Literary Inspirations

“I’m also not big on motive. I write one sentence at a time, then the next, and allow my creative juices to flow, take the story where it goes. I never have an ending in mind. That happens as I write.”

• 2 Comments

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‘A Room in Chelsea Square’ by Michael Nelson

Boredom is one thing you definitely won’t experience reading A Room in Chelsea Square. You might even be enlightened. The goal of satire after all is to foster change.

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In Remembrance: Nancy Garden

Nancy Garden, author, editor, LGBT activist, former theater maven and teacher, died suddenly on the morning of June 23 of a massive heart attack. She was 76.

• 26 Comments

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‘Corona’ by Bushra Rehman

In her 2014 Lambda Literary

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‘War of the Streets and Houses’ by Sophie Yanow

Sophie Yanow’s War of Streets and Houses pushes the boundaries of what a graphic novel can be by using comics to create an academic treatise.

• One Comment

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Remembering Assotto Saint: A Fierce and Fatal Vision

“[Saint] knew he had to chronicle the black gay voices of AIDS or they would be lost. He had to collect the bits and pieces that would create a different kind of names quilt–the angry verses, the embittered stanzas, the breathy last couplets of the dying.”

• 2 Comments

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‘Tiger Heron’ by Robin Becker

“Observant songs of history and elegy, these poems turn our faces to what we can do with love and language, and what we can’t.”

• One Comment

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John Waters : On Being Boring, Porno Walmarts, and Hitchhiking Across America

“I’ve always had little patience for people who have no idea what’s going on in the world. I’d say read five newspapers a day and you’re never boring.”

• 5 Comments

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‘Wonderland’ by Stacey D’Erasmo

“[…]D’Erasmo does a rare thing with Wonderland: she combines the delightful worlds of literature and music while bringing out the best in both mediums.”

• One Comment

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Marga Gomez: On Perseverance, Storytelling, and Writing Her New Show, ‘Lovebirds’

“What keeps me going is same as ever–I need attention. What would it take for me to quit? A sugar mama.”

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‘The Death of Lucy Kyte’ by Nicola Upson

Nicola Upson’s series of mysteries

• One Comment

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‘Last Words from Montmartre’ by Qiu Miaojin

Miaojin, I know this letter

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Adam Tendler: On Modern Music, the Advantages of Self-Publishing, and Coming Out on the Page

“Music was an escape for me when self-expression was, at least so I thought, a punishable offense.”

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When I Call Myself Bisexual

“When I call myself bisexual, I’m naming myself….I’m also opening myself up to other people’s interpretations—favorable or not—of what that means to them.”

• 10 Comments

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Michelle Theall: On God, Faith, and the Complications of Writing About Family

“There’s a fine line between privacy and shame…”

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‘Viral’ by Suzanne Parker

How do you sleep when

• One Comment

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‘The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story’ by Vivek J. Tiwary with Illustrations by Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker

Vivek J. Tiwary’s graphic novel (a finalist for a 26th Annual Lambda Literary Award in the graphic novel category) recognizes Brian Epstein as the fifth band member–a silent partner, the brains behind the Beatles’ concept.

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Cheryl Clarke’s ‘Living as a Lesbian’: The Wherewithal to Tell It as It Is

“Clarke is a provocative poet who never asks permission to make her voice heard.”

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‘Gender Failure’ by Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon

Gender Failure is not a simple Trans 101 lesson, rather this book offers a far more compelling story that brings readers to the hotel rooms, kitchen tables, and inner lives of Rae and Ivan.

• 2 Comments

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‘The Reappearing Act: Coming Out as Gay on a College Basketball Team Led by Born-Again Christians’ by Kate Fagan

“Fagan knows that it is not enough for a memoirist to merely relate her story; she must figure out how her life has shaped her.”

• One Comment

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‘Seneca Falls’ by Jesse J. Thoma

Seneca King has a past

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‘Teaching the Cat to Sit’ by Michelle Theall

“Michelle Theall’s new memoir, Teaching the Cat to Sit, brings some big topics—God, sexuality, abuse, loneliness, love, family—to the page. It’s a rocky ride, full of contentious conversations, frank disclosures, and plenty of struggle.”

• 2 Comments

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‘The Snow Queen’ by Michael Cunningham

“In The Snow Queen, Cunningham reminds us that no matter the form in which love arrives, we should consider ourselves lucky.”

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‘The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America’ by Edward White

The Tastemaker is essential reading for anyone interested in how America emerged from the cultural shadow of Europe in the last century.”

• One Comment

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Emma Donoghue: Making Beautiful Music

“We’re not always in the best place to judge our own work. There’s a lot to be said for just making the book as good as you can, sending it out into the world and not worrying about it.”

• One Comment

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‘Bend to It’ by Kevin Simmonds

“It would be redundant to ask if Simmonds plays an instrument when his voice is an instrument, a conduit of incomparable depth and range.”

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‘100 Crushes’ by Elisha Lim

“Though we might have made lists, few of us could craft descriptions (or drawings) as deft as Lim’s.”

• 3 Comments

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25 for 25 Lambda Fellows Reading and Reunion

The first (hopefully not the

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The First Annual E. Lynn Harris Award for Excellence in Black LGBT Short Fiction

In honor of the late novelist E. Lynn Harris, author of ten bestselling novels, the E. Lynn Harris Award for Excellence in Black LGBT Short Fiction recognizes outstanding work by a Black LGBT writer under 35 whose work incorporates queer themes.

• 3 Comments

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Jon Macy: Queer Visual Splendor

“What people don’t get is that adult themes are not just restricted to prose; they are perfectly suited to comics as well.”

Graphic novelist Jon Macy took some time to talk with Lambda Literary about the power of queer comics, creating erotic material, and his Lambda Award winning graphic novel Teleny and Camille.

• 2 Comments

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Splitting from the Spectrum: Comics and Alternative Sexuality Get Legs of Their Own

“Comics aren’t text and visuals mushed together any more than my sexuality simply combines homo- and heterosexual tendencies.”

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‘Canary’ by Nancy Jo Cullen

Every story in Nancy Jo Cullen’s debut collection skates along the edge of weirdness. These characters are just a tiny bit off, drawing the reader into their delightful eccentricities.

• One Comment

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Red-framed Glasses and a Gold Star: The Art of Writing Good Fiction

“…good writing—good fiction—begins with an

• One Comment

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‘Jack Be Nimble: The Accidental Education of an Unintentional Director’ by Jack O’Brien

Jack Be Nimble: The Accidental Education of an Unintentional Director details Jack O’Brien’s induction into theater through the Association of Producing Artists (APA) Repertory Company , his movement from an actor into a director, and his emergence as a major presence in the theater world in the 1970s.

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‘Pacific Rimming’ by Tom Cardamone

I am even less than

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Q&A With Self-published Writer Tom Schabarum

Last year was big one

• One Comment

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Jay Bell: Something Like Love

Jay Bell, the winner of

• 2 Comments

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‘Melt’ by Robbi McCoy

Kelly Sheffield is a talented

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‘Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns’ by David Margolick

It’s a sadly familiar story in American literature: an alcoholic gay writer of great talent comes to a tragic end. Think Hart Crane. Think Charles Jackson. And now think John Horne Burns, the subject of David Margolick’s enlightening biography, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns (Other Press).

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John Schuyler Bishop: The Strange Loves of Henry David Thoreau

“In all I read about him, Thoreau never really became more than the wooden icon who tramped the woods and wrote brilliant essays. But he was a living, breathing, gay man who yearned for love…”

A few bold scholars have explored the mystery of Henry David Thoreau’s love life, but author John Schuyler Bishop has now written a novel about it, appropriately titled Thoreau in Love.

• 2 Comments

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‘Collaborators’ by Deborah Wheeler

In Deborah Wheeler’s Collaborators, Earth

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‘Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father’ by Alysia Abbott

Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father (W.W. Norton & Company) by Alysia Abbott manages to pick up the nearly moribund genre of the AIDS memoir, give it a good dusting off, and then send it back out into the world with something like a fighting chance.

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‘Sacrilegion’ by L. Lamar Wilson

It’s far too easy to see an elision of religion and sacrilege in the title of L. Lamar Wilson’s bombshell of a collection, Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press), and thereby overlook the third member of a trinity: legion.

• 2 Comments

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A.M. Homes Wins The Women’s Prize Amid Controversy

There’s been a great deal of snarkiness about this literary prize. “Why only women?” “Isn’t this sexism in reverse?”

• 9 Comments

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‘The Pyramid Waltz’ by Barbara Ann Wright

Demons come in varying forms

• One Comment

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‘Before and Afterlives’ by Christopher Barzak

Lethe Press continues to produce

• One Comment

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‘Survival Skills: Stories’ by Jean Ryan

The natural world looms large

• 2 Comments

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A Week at Saint And Sinners–A Queer Literary Festival

For years I have been

• One Comment

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‘He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices’ by Stephen S. Mills

An important thematic element emerges

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Danny M. Hoey Jr. : Not So Distant Past

“[…] write your truth however painful it is or may be. You have to do that in order to create a narrative that is honest and true to your art or your idea of art. Let the pain guide you.”

Author Danny M. Hoey Jr., took some time to talk to Lambda Literary about the intricacies of his debut novel, The Butterfly Lady, and the intersections between his professional academic life and his artistic ambitions.

• 3 Comments

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Obituary as History: The Lost Lives of the Queer Dead

The impact of obituaries for those relegated to the margins of mainstream society cannot be overstated…

• 9 Comments

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‘Damn Love’ by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara

The nine connected stories of Damn

• 2 Comments

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And the Winner is…

Envy the judges who were

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‘The Selected Letters of Willa Cather’ edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

In one of Willa Cather’s letters to her beloved brother Roscoe she writes, “As for me, I have cared too much, about people and places–cared too hard. It made me as a writer, but it will break me in the end.” Losing those near to her very nearly did break Cather, but it is our great fortune that she let herself care as much as she did.

• 4 Comments

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‘Harvard Square’ by André Aciman

[,,.] André Aciman’s greatest accomplishment with his latest novel: the crafting of a thoroughly inclusive love letter to those who have ever felt excluded.

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‘The Master of Us All: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World’ by Mary Blume

How does one write a biography of someone who has been dead for 40 years, was a bit of a recluse their whole life, and whom few people really knew. If you are Mary Blume, and the subject is Cristobal Balenciaga, one of fashion’s most unique designers, you focus on the fashion itself…

• One Comment

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GunnShots: Spring 2013

This spring the books that

• 9 Comments

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‘Love by the Numbers’ by Karin Kallmaker

Love by the Numbers—a book

• 4 Comments

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‘Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema’ by Daniel Humphrey

Daniel Humphrey, in his new book-length study on the Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman, points out that since Bergman’s films were brought to America in the 1950s, gay men have been watching them in a unique way…

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Remembering Taylor Mead: Queer, Beat Poet, and Warhol Superstar

While many of Mead’s contemporaries from the Warhol days either died young or moved on to different things, Mead continued to live his eccentric and artistic life in lower Manhattan, painting, and writing poetry…

• 2 Comments

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‘Relative Stranger’ by Barbara Treat Williams

In Relative Stranger, Starr Spenser

• One Comment

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‘The End of San Francisco’ by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is Sycamore’s ability to capture queer adolescence and immortalize that reality onto the page without sanitizing the struggles.

• 6 Comments

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‘The Fainting Room’ by Sarah Pemberton Strong

“Mister, I need a cup

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Q&A With Self-published Writer Vic Tanner Davy

Last year was big one

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‘Beautiful Music for Ugly Children’ by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

A trans teen’s local southern

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‘The Princess Affair’ by Nell Stark

The Princess Affair (Bold Strokes

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‘One Fine Day’ by Erica Abbott

“Two weeks ago, she was

• One Comment

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‘Crime Against Nature’ by Minnie Bruce Pratt

Patricia Hampl says, “Autobiographical writing

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‘I Await the Devil’s Coming’ by Mary MacLane

Based solely on its title, I Await the Devil’s Coming (Melville House Publishing) sounds like a canonical text for Satanists. In reality, it’s the fiercely feminist, wickedly witty, and decidedly deranged glimpse into the life and thoughts of a transgressive young woman growing up unhappily in the Midwest at the beginning of the 20th century.

• 3 Comments

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‘Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? Confessions of a Gay Dad’ by Dan Bucatinsky

Families don’t just happen. Gay,

• One Comment

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‘The Albino Album’ by Chavisa Woods

The Albino Album is, at its core, a novel of the human condition. It’s a political novel. It’s a love story and a coming-of-age story. It’s the story of a girl who rides an albino horse and has no patience for the niceties of cultural conditioning. Suffice to say, it’s multifaceted, in the best possible way.

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‘Dirty Money’ by Ashley Bartlett

Dirty Money is the second

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In Remembrance: Margaret Thatcher’s Queer Legacy

It was compelling for the young lesbian-feminist reporter that I was, being in a country run by a woman. As a feminist, I wanted to experience that difference–having a woman in charge. That constancy of presence of Thatcher’s was part of the difference, the intensity with which she seized power was another.

• One Comment

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‘Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson’ by Blake Bailey

Blake Bailey has dissected complex, self-destructive literary lives in his biographies of Richard Yates and John Cheever, and Farther and Wilder will no doubt add to his reputation as the premiere chronicler of tormented American writers.

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‘A Horse Named Sorrow’ by Trebor Healey

A Horse Named Sorrow has the musicality of a punk rock anthem; as a reader, you experience the same sensation of seeing your favorite underground band perform live, singing along with the unforgettable lyrics that have defined your youth…

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In Remembrance: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Award-winning novelist and screenwriter Ruth

• 4 Comments

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‘Nevada: A Novel’ by Imogen Binnie

In her debut novel Nevada (Topside Press), Imogen Binnie welds a fierce new voice in an expertly delivered narrative.

• 3 Comments

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‘The Bone Bed’ by Patricia Cornwell

A new Kate Scarpetta novel

• 2 Comments

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‘Body Geographic’ by Barrie Jean Borich

In her third creative non-fiction book Body Geographic, creative writing professor Barrie Jean Borich traces the development of her identity as an American, a Midwesterner, a woman, a lesbian, and a writer.

• 2 Comments

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David McConnell: Murder, Discovery, and Punishment

“Murder is the complete annihilation of another person. Not to be simplistic or flip, but it’s the ultimate way of saying ‘I want to be alone!'”

David McConnell’s new book, American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men (Akashic Books), ostensibly about men who kill gay men, contains insight after insight into the culture of masculine identity.

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‘Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir’ by Nicole J. Georges

Nationally, Portland, Oregon is known

• One Comment

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Romance and Religion: Anne Brooke and Dennis Paul Stradford

Since the major religious festivals

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‘Murphy’s Law’ by Yolanda Wallace

Samantha “Sam” Murphy’s business is

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‘Appetite’ by Aaron Smith

At this year’s AWP, I

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Bits & Pieces: Spring Lesbian Mystery Roundup

https://lambdaliterary.mystagingwebsite.com//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Bits-and-pieces.jpg

• 2 Comments

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‘Skin Shift’ by Matthew Hittinger

The distinctive poetic vision creates

• 3 Comments

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‘Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Papers in America’ edited by Tracy Baim

Is there still a place for LGBT community newspapers in the world of social media? Tracy Baim’s edited volume Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Papers in America provides a history of the LGBT press, but no easy answers as to its future.

• 3 Comments

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‘Proxy’ by R. Erica Doyle

Don’t be deceived by the

• One Comment

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‘Spreadeagle’ by Kevin Killian

The acknowledgements section of Kevin

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Queer Rites: ‘Faitheist’

An atheist might be said

• One Comment

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‘The First Robin of Spring’ by Natalie London

The First Robin of Spring

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‘American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men’ by David McConnell

As this country again focuses

• 3 Comments

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‘Riot Lung’ by Leah Horlick

Leah Horlick’s first collection, Riot

• One Comment

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‘Mundo Cruel’ by Luis Negrón

Mundo Cruel is a shrewd celebration of subversion, to be sure, but for all its bravado the broader point here is a quiet reaffirmation that we all possess the innate capacity to subvert the status quo.

• 3 Comments

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‘Slow Lightning’ by Eduardo C. Corral

So much has already been

• One Comment

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Q&A With Self-published Writer John Waldron

To cast more light on commendable LGBT indie titles, Lambda Literary Review is introducing a monthly Q & A with self-published authors and professionals.

This month, Lambda Literary speaks with John Waldron, a gay dad from Phoenix, about his memoir, A Father’s Angel.

• 3 Comments

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‘The Talking Day’ by Michael Klein

The Talking Day is a nuanced, poignant, humane and absorbing collection, making supple use of the intricacies and exquisite radiance of language.

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‘Sagebrush & Lace’ by Sugar Lee Ryder and J.D. Cutler

In Sagebrush & Lace (Banty

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GunnShots: Winter 2013

Several winter evenings passed enjoyably

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‘L Is For Lion’ by Annie Rachele Lanzilloto

This sprawling narrative could be called an Italian memoir, a Bronx memoir, a cancer memoir, a veteran father memoir, a 1960s childhood memoir, a mother-daughter memoir, or a lesbian memoir.

• One Comment

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‘Scenes from Early Life’ by Philip Hensher

Late in Scenes from Early

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‘Collected Poems’ by Naomi Replansky

Naomi Replansky’s Collected Poems gathers poems from her first two collections, published in 1952 and 1994, as well as new and previously uncollected poems.

• 3 Comments

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‘The Twelve Tribes of Hattie’ by Ayana Mathis

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie does not feel like a debut novel. The quality of the writing, its quiet intensity, the certainty of the narrative voices speaks of a polish and talent that has been practicing for years.

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‘The Furthest City Light’ by Jeanne Winer

There’s more to The Furthest

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Valentine Hearts

Last Night I Dreamed I

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‘What Comes Around’ by Jameson Currier

From an adolescent crush on a swimming instructor to the imagined drowning of a high maintenance boyfriend, Currier explores every aspect of relationships – the good, the bad, and the very dysfunctional – each set in a literary landscape perfectly crafted for the lovelorn.

• One Comment

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‘Depression: A Public Feeling’ by Ann Cvetkovich

Though not always elegantly executed—perhaps on purpose, as Cvetkovich indicates early on in the text—Depression succeeds at opening up a public discussion on certain kinds of depression that are often dismissed as trivial…

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‘Robert Duncan in San Francisco’ by Michael Rumaker

This isn’t a memoir solely about the physical presence of Robert Duncan. It’s also about those who he inspired…

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‘The Ladder’ Makes History Again

The Ladder, the first lesbian

• One Comment

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‘Not My Bag’ by Sina Grace

Retail is a service industry,

• 2 Comments

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‘The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting’ by Philip Hensher

The Missing Ink, is very much concerned with the loss of individuality and character—a sad phenomenon that has been brought about by, among other things, the dominance of the keyboard.

• One Comment

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‘The Dragon Tree Legacy’ by Ali Vali

The Dragon Tree Legacy (Bold Strokes

• 2 Comments

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‘Coming Out Can Be Murder’ by Renee James

Experts estimate that the number

• 2 Comments

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‘A Simple Revolution’ by Judy Grahn

For over forty years, Judy

• 2 Comments

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‘Makara’ by Kristen Ringman

Traversing from Ireland to India to Venice, Makara (Handtype Press) manages to be both ethereal and incredibly earthly at the same time. It is a coming-of-age story unlike any other.

• One Comment

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T Cooper: Adventures in Manhood

In his new book, Real Man Adventures, novelist T Cooper turns his searing lens and sharp wit toward himself to capture something of the elusive experience of what it means to be a man, more specifically, a man who was assigned female at birth.

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‘Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein’ by Jonathan Cott

A seemingly inexhaustible mix of talent, genius, exuberance, and mischievousness, this is the Bernstein that leaps off the page in Dinner with Lenny (Oxford University Press).

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Romance in Theory and Practice

Theory I’d like to think

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‘The Retribution’ and ‘The Vanishing Point’ by Val McDermid

Some of our finest writers are authors of crime fiction. Russell Banks, James Ellroy, Patricia Highsmith, P.D. James and of course, Val McDermid. These writers don’t just tell a detective tale, they peel back the layers of human experience to reveal all the gory bits we try never to see up close.

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‘Transposes’ by Dylan Edwards

A major step to breaking down closet doors is to provide venues for trans* people to see themselves. Edward’s graphic novel does just that; focusing on the stories of six queer transmen.

• One Comment

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‘A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths’ by Tony Fletcher

In his introduction to A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths (Crown Archetype), author Tony Fletcher makes the claim that, of all the books concerning The Smiths, this is the first one that focuses on the whole band rather than lead singer Morrissey or guitarist Johnny Marr.

• 5 Comments

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Bryan Borland: A Most Fortunate Son

“I’m proud that I didn’t wait until I was perfect to begin. That’s perhaps the biggest lesson. You want something? Do it.”

Bryan Borland, whose newest book is Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems From the First Year Without My Father, is a poet and the noted publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press, which he began in 2009.

Borland talked with Lambda Literary about starting Sibling Rivalry Press, literary life in Arkansas, and his plans for the future…

• 4 Comments

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‘Licking the Spoon’ by Candace Walsh

Food is, of course, the perfect metaphor for Walsh’s life: through much stumbling, there is a persistent desire to find the right dish, the perfect spice, the ingredient that brings it all together.

• One Comment

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More Colors than Purple

I first saw The Color

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GunnShots: Top 10 Gay Crime Films

When friends, including mystery writers,

• 3 Comments

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‘H’ by Jim Elledge

When Walt Whitman declared, “Through

• One Comment

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‘Adaptation’ by Malindo Lo

If you had nightmares as

• 3 Comments

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‘Heart Block’ by Melissa Brayden

Business owner and CEO Emory

• One Comment

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GunnShots: Celebrating Great Gay Mysteries

“These are my candidates for the ten best gay mystery series and the ten best standalones. In looking back over them, one thing strikes me forcefully: all my choices share one or both of two things in common: a commitment on the sleuth’s part to something greater than his ego and a representation of the process of his self-actualization.”

• 7 Comments

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A Victory for Equality: Morehouse Offers LGBTQ Course

Morehouse, a respected all-male African

• One Comment

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Gerda Lerner: Founder of Women’s Studies Movement Dies at 92

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune 20 years ago, Gerda Lerner said, “When I started working on women’s history about 30 years ago, the field did not exist. People didn’t think women had a history worth knowing.”

• One Comment

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Thom Nickels: Affliction, Morality, and Liberation

“Like it or not, we

• One Comment

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Daniel Mendelsohn: Beyond Borders, Beyond Identities

 “I learn things when people

• 17 Comments

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‘Spit and Passion’ by Cristy C. Road

Not all LGBT coming of

• One Comment

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‘Art on Fire’ by Hilary Sloin

Art on Fire is framed as a biography of Francesca deSilva, a reluctantly revolutionary artist. DeSilva is a character of Sloin’s own making, but under the author’s deft craftsmanship she is an uncannily realized creation.

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‘Far from the Tree’ by Andrew Solomon

In Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search For Identity (Scribner), psychologist Andrew Solomon poses a fundamental question: How do you nurture a child who is nothing like you?

• 2 Comments

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‘Music for Porn’ by Rob Halpern

Music for Porn (Nightboat Books) is a linguistic symphony of the fetishization and politicization of the body of the “soldier” and an exploration of intimacy and desire.

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‘Coal to Diamonds’ by Beth Ditto and Michelle Tea

Beth Ditto’s memoir is PUNK, which, after learning about her through the pages of this book, I think is probably what she would see as the best possible compliment about her work.

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‘The Book of Eleanor’ by Nat Burns

The Book of Eleanor is

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Literature at the End of the World

A variety of theories, predictions, prophecies, astronomical fears, and ancient calendar concerns mark December 21st, 2012—the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, the return of the sun—as the end of the world.

What of literature, then?

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‘Liberation: Diaries, Volume Three: 1970-1983’ by Christopher Isherwood

One thing the reviewing of diaries can do is deflate the zeppelin of personality one has created around the writer, in this case, author Christopher Isherwood, whose crystal-clear stories of conflicted characters have been ridden blissfully by many for years…

• 4 Comments

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‘The Dream of Doctor Bantam’ by Jeanne Thornton

Meet Julie Thatch, the teenage

• One Comment

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‘Lovetown’ by Michał Witkowski

The phrase “too many queens, not enough spotlights” should give a glimpse into the anarchic feel of Michał Witkowski’s debut novel, Lovetown.

The self-proclaimed ‘queens’ of Lovetown, who exclusively refer to each other by feminine names, revel in what they see as the glorious heyday of Polish Communist-era sex, equal measures grim and liberating.

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‘Frozen’ by Carla Tomaso

In the front matter of

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‘Penetralia’ by Richard Foerster

“I’ve loved the dead too

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‘Sister Spit: Writing, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road’ edited by Michelle Tea

I first saw Sister Spit perform in Portland, Oregon in the early 2000s. Michelle Tea and her gritty gang of dyke writers and poets were legends. Everyone had a story about the crew, who jacked off to what zine, who had gotten high with who before getting sober, or what punk houses had hosted the tour in years previous…

• One Comment

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Queer Rites: November 2012

While reading Salman Rushdie’s Joseph

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The Case Against Censorship

I can’t remember when freedom

• 4 Comments

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Book Lovers: Get Booked! Romance Reading at Las Vegas Pride

Get Booked! Romance Reading at

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‘These Things Happen’ by Richard Kramer

“A lot can happen in a day sometimes,” says Wesley Bowman, one of two teenaged boys at the center of Richard Kramer’s witty and often moving first novel, These Things Happen (Unbridled Books). This opening line, of course, is prescient. A lot does happen in each of the few days that frame this story, in which the adults in Wesley’s life are forced to reevaluate their understanding of themselves.

• 4 Comments

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‘Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me’ by Ellen Forney

An association between artistic creativity and mental illness is something many of us take for granted without questioning which came first or why the two should be linked. In her new graphic memoir, cartoonist Ellen Forney tackles that question in light of its impact on her work as an artist with Bipolar I Disorder.

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‘Molly: House on Fire’ by R.E. Bradshaw

In Molly: House on Fire,

• One Comment

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‘All We Know’ by Lisa Cohen

Lisa Cohen’s lush biography, All We Know (Farrar Straus and Giroux), is a staggering labor of love that offers a triptych of three women of a queer persuasion. Cohen sets this story in the early 20th century, giving her audience a catalogue of the largely forgotten life during that time. Her subjects–the great intellectual Esther Murphy, the celebrity connoisseur Mercedes de Acosta, and the fashion maverick Madge Garland…

• 3 Comments

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The Poem. The Poet. The People. Queer Women Poets On The Road: Revival 2012.

“A salon-styled tour of queer women artists, The Revival, is a literary search for those people, those women like me who don’t quite fit in where we’re supposed to. With dynamic performances from poets and musicians alike, The Revival weaves a night of artistry, libations and genuine fellowship. “

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Shawn C. Nabors: To Love and Be Loved

“I’ve really had to dig deep to bring to the fore situations that society may be afraid to confront like two young black men openly expressing their sexual selves on stage.”

Shawn C. Nabors is a young emerging actor, playwright and poet from Brooklyn. His first play, deliciously titled Cake, will appear Off-Broadway this summer at the American Theatre of Actors. We’ve reached out to Shawn to learn more about the play and his artistic self.

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‘Why are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform’ edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Collected from across a continua of class, age, race, gender, sex, and geography, these academics and activists, professionals and students–for whom the personal is political and vice versa–raise their voices in complicated and varied attempts to problematize and deconstruct the assorted issues related to homophobia (externalized and internalized).

• 2 Comments

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Lynne Gerber: Homosexuality and Weight Loss in the Evangelical Context

“… I think homosexuality and fatness are two items that have definitely been infused with intense feelings of disgust, moral feelings of disgust. Religion plays a part in that.”

Lynne Gerber is the author of the insightful, surprising new book, Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America (University of Chicago Press). The book is an astute examination of evangelical programs that have “attempted to contain the excesses associated with fatness and homosexuality. ”

Lambda took some time to talk with Gerber about the “sin” of being fat and/or gay, how she conducted the research for her latest book, and the morality of health.

• One Comment

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‘But This Is Different’ by Mary Walker Baron

Amelia Earhart, America’s beloved and

• 2 Comments

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‘Black Marks on White Paper’ by Michelle Antoinette Nelson (Love the Poet)

On the page, Love’s poems remind you that rhyme is the root word for rhythm. Contemporary poetry may have long shied away from the limits of rhyme, but Love’s wordplay is refreshing, executed with precision and a clear, performable quality. All of her poems have a direct relationship with their audience, relying on a rich sense of community instead of any writer-reader barrier.

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Chad Harbach: The Strategies of Baseball, Friendship, and Love

“…I don’t want to try and boil down the book, but I just think there’s a whole kind of crazy spectrum of the way that men feel about each other and interact with each other that doesn’t often get described”

The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach’s bestselling literary jock novel—named one of the NY Times’ “10 Best in 2011”— astutely maps the complicated and intense relationships of a set of baseball players at a fictional college campus.

Lambda Literary ambushes Harbach with questions on his novel’s tone, as ripe with homoeroticism as any locker room. And the author gamely replies.

• 2 Comments

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‘Lost Story’ by Brane Mozetič

Techno, as any DJ will tell you, is a circular form of music. Its structure is built from repeating patterns called loops which the enterprising DJ can stitch into a long, continuous track. In this way, Brane Mozetič’s Lost Story resembles a techno track. Written in the form of a diary, Lost Story follows a young gay Slovenian, Bojan, who’s stuck in a loop of drugs, clubs, sex.

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Free Cupcakes, Heart-shaped Refreshments, and Some Truly Sweet West Coast Readings

Anyone in San Francisco looking

• One Comment

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‘A Waste of Time’ by Rick Worley

This is the tale of a big-headed narrator bunny, a sex-n-drug crazed fox, a teddy bear best friend, and ill-fated robot lovers that drink, smoke weed, look at porn, bonk guys and snort things they later regret. Or not.

• One Comment

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‘Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970’s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco’ by Jim Stewart

Jim Stewart brings together stories, poems and photographs that gives readers of today a glimpse into the early days of the leather community and the beginnings of a post-stonewall gay community in San Francisco.

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Book Lovers: Winter Gothic

Winter is here and so are some darkly romantic new titles. This month Dick Smart reviews two recent romance novels, The White Devil by Justin Evans and The Bad Seed by Lee Hayes.

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‘Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life’ by Vivian Gornick

In Emma Goldman’s day, as in ours, many on the Left saw issues of sexuality, happiness, and what we might generally call the “personal” as peripheral to the class struggle. Yet Goldman herself demurred. She elucidated an anarchism that was a personal as well as a political platform, and, as the subtitle to Vivian Gornick’s book suggests, she lived it out in practice.

• 2 Comments

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‘Cow’ by Susan Hawthorne

Red cow, blue cow, black cow. A golden calf and a moon-jumping heifer. Figures that often grace pastoral landscapes or children’s books have wandered into the realm of poetry. Susan Hawthorne’s latest collection, Cow, blends the bovine figure with ancient mythologies to re-envision history for modern women.

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Paul Russell: Merging Fiction and Fact

In his new novel The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, author Paul Russell brings an almost forgotten witness to history back to life: the younger brother of the great writer Vladimir Nabokov, a gay man who lived in the shadow of his famous family.

Russell spoke with Lambda Literary Review about creating Sergey’s unreal life, blending historical fact with a novelist’s imagination, and reveling in the syntax of Gertrude Stein.

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From Tinfoil Elephants to Gary Indiana Naked, with Love and Justice Between

Anna Joy Springer’s Tinfoil Elephants, Guernica Magazine, Gary Indiana Naked and More News From Around the Web…

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‘Trick of the Dark’ by Val McDermid

Trick of the Dark (Bywater Books) is something old and something new from McDermid. A stand-alone novel (not one of her series detectives appears) and thoroughly, engagingly, compellingly lesbian as well as being just as bloodily intense as her previous thrillers.

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Queer Rites: Faith Politics and Sexual Diversity

In August of last year,

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Laura Goode: Making Mischief

“It’s that gay kid in Minnesota, surrounded by people who practice intolerance, who needs to know that there are adults out there rooting for him or her. That was a big motivator for me in writing a gay coming of age story, feeling like there are kids out there who need help…”

• One Comment

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‘Jack Holmes and His Friend’ by Edmund White

Jack Holmes and His Friend does not re-open Edmund White’s The Boy’s Own Story trilogy, nor, like Fanny (2003), does it venture into the genre of the historical novel. What Jack Holmes and His Friend does do is continue White’s long and distinguished use of semi-autobiography to produce fine literary fiction.

• One Comment

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‘The Marbled Swarm’ by Dennis Cooper

Structured like a gruesome Möbius strip, Dennis Cooper’s latest novel, The Marbled Swarm (Harper Perennial), is a carnivalesque switchback of secret passageways, incest, cannibalism and a haunting sense of isolation.

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Brontez Purnell: Love, Compassion, and Rock & Roll

‘I basically wanted to do a zine that reflected what I was feeling at the time. With Fag School, I hadn’t really seen a zine or at least a personal gay zine that dealt with the difficult subject of gay sex with both humor and frank talk. It covered some real issues. Race, the condom code…”

• One Comment

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‘The Vicious Red Relic Love’ by Anna Joy Springer

Springer uses journals, letters, myth, and doodles from feminist class lectures to create a interlocking puzzle map that guides readers on an intoxicating journey through the dyke community in 90s San Francisco.

• 2 Comments

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‘boneyard’ by Stephen Beachy

There are some books that

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‘Brooklyn, Burning’ by Steve Brezenoff

Steve Brezenoff’s latest novel tells the story of a street-kid in Brooklyn accused of burning down a local warehouse. However, the more interesting storyline in Brooklyn, Burning has little to do with the fire, but focuses on the protagonist’s love interests, particularly a newly arrived street-kid who is also a gifted singer.

• 2 Comments

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‘Small Fires’ by Julie Marie Wade

In Small Fires, Julie Marie Wade, who won a Lambda for her memoir Wishbone, considers family and memory with a poetic eye and unabashed tongue. With her carefully chosen words and a studied deliberateness, Wade proves unafraid to delve into her past—to skillfully reconstruct the events of her youth, from the horrifying to the sentimental to the self-conscious and beyond.

• 2 Comments

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‘Best Gay Stories 2011’ edited by Peter Dubé

Collections such as this also invariably bring up the question, “What is a ‘gay story,’ anyway?” Is it simply a story that a gay person has written? Something that features gay characters prominently? How much focus needs to be on the uniqueness of gay life, or can the protagonist be someone who “just happens to be gay?” Does the author have to be gay—or male—to do it justice?

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‘The Last Nude’ By Ellis Avery

While the book begins as a passionate tale from the lush landscape of Paris in the 1920s, livened by entrancing sex scenes and seductive exchanges, the story takes a turn toward the fast-paced—morphing into a plot-driven whodunit…

• One Comment

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Book Lovers: The 12 Nights of Christmas

“And visions of sugar plums

• 2 Comments

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Queer Spirituality: What Can Poetry Tell Us? A Conversation with Julie Enszer and Kevin Simmonds

Gay and lesbians have long had a complex and often conflicted relationship with organized religion, sometimes facing exclusion—or worse. But at the same time there is a long history of gay people trying to understand queerness as a divine gift or turning to spirituality to celebrate their love for each other.

• 2 Comments

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‘Halsted Plays Himself’ by William E. Jones

Los Angeles-based artist and experimental filmmaker William E. Jones has brought together a variety of materials that will help, hopefully, to revive an appreciation both for Halsted’s work as well as of the man himself.

• One Comment

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‘Lightning People’ by Christopher Bollen

A fun fact about lightning: a strike lasts for about 30 microseconds.

Lightning People starts with a similar flash. The narrator of the prologue, Joseph Guiteau, speaks in conspiratorial terms, suggesting a link between a rise in lightning-related Manhattan-area deaths and the fall of the Twin Towers.

• One Comment

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‘Remain in Light’ by Collin Kelley

Sex, drugs, and chain-smoking Parisians

• 3 Comments

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Red Carpet Photos: 23rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards

This year Lambda Literary Foundation

• One Comment

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‘A Single Year’ by Dawn Mueller

As the joke goes, when

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‘Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature’ by Emma Donoghue

Lambda Literary Award Finalist How

• One Comment

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Confessions of a Librarian: Dr. Christine A. Jenkins

Dr. Christine A. Jenkins is

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Rainbow Book Fair Invades LGBT Center

New Paradigms for Queer Lit

• 2 Comments

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‘Circuit’ by Walter Holland

Towards the end of Walter

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‘Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare’

There’s no shortage of potentially

• One Comment

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Josh Aterovis: Falling in love with Nancy Drew

And Being the Black Sheep

• 2 Comments

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‘Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures’ by Julie Marie Wade

Like the Ocean which literally

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‘Jukebox’ by Gina Noelle Daggett

When one thinks of a

• One Comment

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‘Toss and Whirl and Pass’ by Shawn Stewart Ruff

Shawn Stewart Ruff’s first novel,

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Kelley Eskridge: the Invention of ‘Solitaire’

“I’m fascinated by stories of

• 4 Comments

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‘Gaylord Phoenix’ by Edie Fake

Reading the comic Gaylord Phoenix

• One Comment

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‘Missed Her’ by Ivan E. Coyote

Ivan E. Coyote latest story

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A Tribute to Peter J. Gomes

Preacher, Theologian, Queer Activist Rev.

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Book Lovers: Suspicious Tricks

A Queer Diagnosis Suspicious Diagnosis

• One Comment

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‘Earthquake Came to Harlem: Poems’ by Jackie Sheeler

The poems in Jackie Sheeler’s

• 3 Comments

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Gore Vidal Writing As Edgar Box

Fans of Gore Vidal will

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‘Kay Thompson’ by Sam Irvin

As a fan of Kay

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Emma Donoghue’s ‘Endless Immersion’

From Shakespeare to Sarah Waters

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‘Indelible’ by Jove Belle

The permanency of tattoos forms

• One Comment

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‘The Devil Be Damned’ by Ali Vali

Fourth in the “Devil” series

• One Comment

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‘the lake has no saint’ by Stacey Waite

The smell of crayons in

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‘Hero’ author Perry Moore dies

Lambda Literary Award winner found

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Victoria Brownworth: The Activist Writer

“I turn everything into activism.”

• 2 Comments

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Metaphysical Journals & Radical Faeries

Explorations in Queer Spirituality My

• One Comment

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‘Coming to Life’ by Joy Ladin

I’d like not to tell

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‘The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You’ by S. Bear Bergman

S. Bear Bergman’s latest collection

• One Comment

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‘Under the Poppy’ by Kathe Koja

Daringly provocative and entertainingly risque,

• 2 Comments

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3 Dollar Bill: Queer AWP Reading [Recap]

A Photo Gallery One of

• 3 Comments

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New in February UPDATED

“Make It Be Spring!” Here’s

• One Comment

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‘Tonight No Poetry Will Serve’ by Adrienne Rich

Do you remember the last

• One Comment

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Matthew Gallaway: “Henry James was a seriously hot gay bear”

Opera, HIV, and The Velvet

• 3 Comments

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BookBuzz #26 Feb 2011

The American Library Association’s  2011

• 2 Comments

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‘Parallel Lies’ by Stella Duffy

Lambda Literary Award Finalist Anyone

• 2 Comments

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BookLovers: Valentine’s Day

Life Comes for the Normal

• 4 Comments

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‘Unbearable Lightness’ by Portia de Rossi

I’ll approach any famous person’s

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Nathan Manske: From Miami to Wasilla

Blogger, Editor, Storyteller On March

• 2 Comments

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‘Amnesiac’ by Duriel E. Harris

Convention insists that I call

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‘Lord of the White Hell (Book One)’ by Ginn Hale

Wicked Gentlemen and Feral Machines author,

• One Comment

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‘Blood Sacraments’ ed. by Todd Gregory [NSFW]

For men who are into

• One Comment

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‘My Sweet Wild Dance’ by Mikaya Heart

My Sweet Wild Dance (Dog

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‘Slut Machine’ by Shane Allison

Slut Machine (Queer Mojo) by

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‘Queer Twin Cities’ by GLBT Oral History Project

In Minnesota, understatement is a

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‘Hidden’ by Tomas Mournian

When queerness forced me to

• 10 Comments

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Donogue and Johnson top the 2011 Stonewall Book Awards

“An embarrassment of riches” And

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‘Almost Perfect’ Wins Stonewall Award

Children’s Young Adult Lit Prize

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Howl: Poetry as Film

Ginsberg for Generation Adderall Howl,

• 5 Comments

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Over the Rainbow’s Top 11 Books

Last night “Over the Rainbow

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‘Veritas’ by Anne Laughlin

In the tidy little whodunit,

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‘A Passionate Engagement’ by Ken Harvey

Those watching the marriage equality

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‘Neighbour Procedure’ by Rachel Zolf

I’m tempted to begin with

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‘Annabel’ by Kathleen Winter

It was with some trepidation

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GunnShots: Winter 2011

A Roundup of Gay Crime

• 6 Comments

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Confessions of a Librarian: Que(e)ry

Queer Nerd Appeal Tara Hart,

• 3 Comments

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Book Lovers: Bad Romance

Hate: A Romance, the Prix

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‘Citizen, Invert, Queer: Lesbianism and War in Early Twentieth-Century Britain’ by Deborah Cohler

Deborah Cohler’s Citizen, Invert, Queer:

• One Comment

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‘Dancing Ledge’ by Derek Jarman

You might remember the opening

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New In January: Toibin, Levithan & Rich

How beautiful the turning of

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2010 in Review: Dan Savage

“Tell them it gets better.”

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2010 in Review: Best Book Covers

Judge a Book by its

• 5 Comments

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2010 in Review: Gays & the Military

From WWII To DADT One

• 2 Comments

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2010 in Review: Long Subtitles

Longest Book Titles of 2010?

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Felice Newman wants in on your Sex Life

Step Aside Dr. Kinsey Author,

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‘Fever Of The Bone’ by Val McDermid

Lambda Literary Award Finalist One

• 2 Comments

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‘Hard at Work’ by Brad Saunders

Hard at Work (Kensington Books)

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‘Teleny and Camille’ by Jon Macy

Imagine a collection of erotic

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Trans Teens & Drag Queens

A Look at Gender in

• 13 Comments

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Comic Nerds & Art Critics: Gift Guide

An art dealer has an

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‘Gay Shame’ edited by David M. Halperin & Valerie Traub

David M. Halperin and Valerie

• 2 Comments

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‘Bob The Book’ by David Pratt

Both times I read Bob

• 2 Comments

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‘Double Bound’ by Nick Nolan

In his exciting debut novel,

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‘The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969’ by Christopher Isherwood

Gertrude Stein said, “A diary

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Book Lovers: Holiday Romance

“Oh the weather outside is

• 3 Comments

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Eileen Myles: On Her Own Terms

Poet. Professor. Thought-provoker. Don’t call

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New In December

Happy Holiday! Can you believe

• 2 Comments

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‘Howl; A Graphic Novel’ by Allen Ginsberg & Eric Drooker

Fans of Eric Drooker’s earlier

• One Comment

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‘One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military’ by Paul Jackson

In 1992, the Canadian Forces

• 3 Comments

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Sam Steward: Scholar & Pornographer

Samuel Steward is a little

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‘Above Temptation’ by Karin Kallmaker

For many lesbian readers, it

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Confessions of a Librarian: Ryan Barnette

Ryan Barnette is a Library

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What Happens When You’re Old & Gay?

Gay Pioneer Asks, “Where Do

• 8 Comments

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Inferno (a poet’s novel) by Eileen Myles

Well I’ll be a poet.

• 3 Comments

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‘Hard and Fast’ by Sean Wolfe

Hard and Fast (Kensington) was

• One Comment

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‘Dear John, I Love Jane’ by Candace Walsh and Laura André

Lambda Literary Award Finalist Dear

• One Comment

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‘Match Maker’ by Alan Chin

Sports writing is perhaps one

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‘Spore’ by Thom Nickels

The fifth novel by Philadelphia

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Armistead In Autumn

Love, Sex and Everything in

• 2 Comments

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Armistead Maupin dissects Logo’s ‘A List’

An excerpt from our interview

• 2 Comments

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‘Said and Done’ by James Morrison

Lambda Award Finalist Full disclosure:

• 3 Comments

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Can Queer Authors Write Straight Characters?

5 Writers Set the Record

• 3 Comments

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New in November: Ricky Martin & Portia de Rossi

This month two celebrity memoirs—Ricky

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‘Do Not Disturb’ by Carsen Taite

Greer Davis is a bad

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‘Turn for Home’ by Lara Zielinsky

Turn for Home is a

• 7 Comments

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10 LGBT Teen Novels that Tackle Teen Suicide & Bullying

In September, the suicide of

• 22 Comments

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Librarian (To Be): Stewart Van Cleve

Stewart Van Cleve is a

• One Comment

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‘Sometimes She Lets Me’ ed. by Tristan Taormino

The stories in Sometimes She

• 3 Comments

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‘Between Boyfriends’ by Michael Salvatore

Award-winning playwright Michael Griffo makes

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‘House of Cards’ by Nat Burns

In her complex and beautifully

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‘Money for Sunsets’ by Elizabeth J. Colen

Lambda Literary Award Finalist A

• One Comment

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‘The Road Home’ by Michael Thomas Ford

The reason most accidents occur

• One Comment

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Remembering John Embry (1926-2010)

Drummer Magazine Founder Dies John

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Justin Spring’s Obscene Biography

Too controversial for Vanity Fair?

• 4 Comments

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National Book Award Nominees: Patti Smith and Justin Spring Contenders

The National Book Foundation announced

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‘Secret Historian’ By Justin Spring

While I may not remember

• 8 Comments

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‘Robin and Ruby’ By K. M. Soehnlein

On the eve of the

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Why More Authors Should Support Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” Campaign

Last week, memoirist Dan Savage

• 5 Comments

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‘Cut Away’ by Catherine Kirkwood

A tight and moody novella

• 2 Comments

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‘then, we were still living’ by Michael Klein

Michael Klein’s second book of

• 2 Comments

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Reading David Shields’ ‘Reality Hunger’

Chat between my friend T

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Jaime Manrique & the Apocryphal Quixote

An Interview Celebrated professor, novelist,

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New in October

UDPATED: The holiday season is

• 3 Comments

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Candace and Laura’s Excellent Adventure: Editing ‘Dear John, I Love Jane’

How many same-sex couples get

• 2 Comments

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Book Buzz: October 2010

The unrelated September suicides in

• 2 Comments

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‘Love Waits’ by Gerri Hill

Gerri Hill is a romance

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Remembering A Lesbian Legend

Jill Johnston died from complications

• 3 Comments

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‘Grant Wood: A Life’ by R. Tripp Evans

One of the most famous

• 3 Comments

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‘I Came Out for This?’ By Lisa Gitlin

Bywater Books has been making

• One Comment

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Confessions of a Librarian: Bleue Benton

Bleue Benton is the Collection

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Remembering Jill Johnston

Village Voice columnist and pioneering

• One Comment

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GunnShots: Fall 2010

As of mid-September, I have

• One Comment

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Journey Down the Rainbow

When I was first asked

• 7 Comments

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‘Mysterious Skin’ reimagined

Scott Heim’s Mysterious Skin, a

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‘Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation’ ed by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman

Lambda Literary Award Finalist Gender

• 3 Comments

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T Cooper’s Complex Polar Bear

Novelist T Cooper had a

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‘Aaron Bradley, Closet Detective’ by Timothy Owen

Despite its title, this is

• One Comment

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‘Infected: Prey’ by Andrea Speed

Anne Cain’s cover (so unlike

• 5 Comments

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‘Lily White, Rose Red’ by Cat Ford

If an openly gay novel

• One Comment

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‘All of Me (Can You Take All of Me?)’ by Dirk Vanden

Part mystery, part “fictionalized autobiography,”

• 4 Comments

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‘The Quarter Boys’ by David Lennon

Romance mysteries often work with

• One Comment

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My First Queer Book? ‘Borrowed Time’

My first gay book was

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‘Cockeyed’ by Richard Stevenson

The eleventh Don Strachey, Albany,

• One Comment

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‘Billionaire’s Row’ by Sullivan Wheeler

Here we have, once again,

• One Comment

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In Italics: Queer Latino Nuances in American Literature

Nuanced identities are amassed by

• 3 Comments

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‘Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers’ by I.E. Woodward

Like Ralph Ashworth’s Killer of

• One Comment

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In Memory: Poet, Essayist and Activist Judy Freespirit

Judy Freespirit died September 10,

• One Comment

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‘Crook’ by Michael Gouda

Why do the British seem

• 4 Comments

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Tanith Lee: Channeling Queer Authors

The prolific author Tanith Lee—almost

• 10 Comments

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‘Silver Kiss’ by Naomi Clark

The premise of Silver Kiss

• One Comment

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‘Tomorrow May Be Too Late’ by Thomas Marino

In Thomas Marino’s oddly titled

• 4 Comments

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‘Three’ ed. by Robert Kirby

It’s nice to see Robert

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Neil Plakcy’s ‘Have Body, Will Guard’ Series

What I Read in Place

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‘Muscle Men’ & ‘Biker Boys’

I consider Richard Labonté the Dean

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Most Anticipated LGBT (Relevant) Books of Fall 2010

UPDATE 9/13/10: Fall 2010 signals

• 15 Comments

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Book Buzz: September 2010

JM Redman has been honored

• 5 Comments

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‘Union Atlantic’ by Adam Haslett

Union Atlantic is a smart

• 2 Comments

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Confessions of a Librarian: Janet Trumble

1. What made you decide

• 5 Comments

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Monique Truong: Southern girl, Twice over

Monique Truong’s (author of The

• 3 Comments

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‘Bird Eating Bird’ by Kristin Naca

Lambda Award Finalist At the

• 2 Comments

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Feminist Classic Goosebumps in P-town

This morning in Ptown, I

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LLF Represented @ Chicago Pride Parade

The Chicago Pride Parade marched

• 3 Comments

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Kate Clinton, Pioneer Award Recipient

“Reading powerful stories about ourselves

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Larry Kramer, Pioneer Award Recipient

Receiving an Academy Award nomination

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Michelle Cliff: The Historical Re-Visionary

For three decades, professor, activist,

• 7 Comments

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Rakesh Satyal Goes Gaga @ Lambda Literary Awards

In lieu of a traditional

• 5 Comments

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In Memoriam @ 2010 Lambda Literary Awards

This video screened at the

• 2 Comments

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22nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards: Photo Journal [Update]

All Photos by Donna F.

• 5 Comments

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Gay BEA: Relevant Events at Book Expo America

Book Expo America, the largest

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21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards

LGBT Anthologies | LGBT Childrens/Young

• 8 Comments

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20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

LGBT Anthology | LGBT Childrens/Young

• 3 Comments

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19th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

LGBT Anthology | LGBT Childrens/Young

• 3 Comments

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17th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

ANTHOLOGIES/FICTION WINNER: Fresh Men: New

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18th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies WINNER: Freedom in this

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16th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Pulp Friction edited

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15th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Black Like Us

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14th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Diva Book of

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13th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Men on Men

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12th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Vintage Book of

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11th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Columbia Anthology of

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10th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: His(2) edited by

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9th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Women on Women 3

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8th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Tasting Life Twice edited

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7th Annual Lambda Literary Awards

Anthologies/Fiction WINNER: Chloe Plus Olivia edited

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