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‘Sweet, Sweet Wine’ by Jaime Clevenger

In the opening paragraphs of Sweet, Sweet Wine, Riley Robinson and Ana Potrero meet in the Rocky Mountain town of Catori. Riley has come to town to put some space between her and her recently failed relationship by visiting her friend, Sharon, who owns a bed and breakfast in the tourist town. Ana is in town on business from her home in California, consulting with a local wine boutique owner. As the two women share a split cottage, they are at first mildly annoyed with each other; then, they share a mutual attraction, which quickly becomes an interaction, which ultimately begins a relationship filled with sensuality, emotion, complications and a sprinkling of mistrust. (more…)

It’s been over twenty-five years since AIDS first devastated the LGBTQ community in the early 1980s. A buffer of time seems almost necessary to write about the fear, pain and loss in the community. 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. (more…)

Justin Luke Zirilli is an author, a club promoter, a social media consultant and a New York nightlife staple. He also just released his first fragrance, Pink Boi. While you and I sleep, Mr. Zirilli takes on the Big Apple and, apparently, the world. His newest literary offering, The Gay Gospel: A Survival Guide for Gay 20Somethings in America Today, is a self-help manual for twenty-something gays. Here is a glimpse into what a fella of the night—not to mention, one who perpetually dons pink glasses—can teach our burgeoning youth.

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I am not not me. When I lived as a man, I was not me. My “I”–the leafless tree of my public pronoun–referred to a man I knew I wasn’t. Since I stopped living as a man, my “I” refers to me, myself as I know myself to be.  (more…)

Thomas Dooley’s Trespass (Harper Perennial) is a winter book–the text of these lean poems like stark tracks over blank fields of a Glückian emotional reserve. As in Louise Glück’s work, the hell is domestic, and there is something equally astringent about Dooley’s touch, yet underneath the scalpel is something wounded and lush. In parsing a psychology of familial trauma and repression, Trespass leaves not the tracks of a wounded animal, but of a clever and deliberate scavenger.

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From an oeuvre of more than five hundred short stories, Lethe Press has chosen seventeen stories by Chaz Brenchley to produce Bitter Waters, Brenchley’s first collection devoted specifically to gay readers. Brenchley has written in many genres, under his own name and a pseudonym, from crime stories to urban fantasy to children’s books, and has also published essays, poetry, and even a play. One would not think it possible, but this small collection provides an excellent representation of Brenchley’s wide-ranging output, as he casts his all encompassing net far and wide—this collection contains stories that read like historical fiction or realistic fiction, fantasy, horror, and may even include elements of mystery and romance. (more…)

I’ve noticed that many people—mainly, those who say they are “spiritual” but don’t subscribe to a specific belief—tend to call “God” anything but God, as if the G-O-D word were somehow not only intellectually bereft but also belonged to the narrow-minded crazies who give organized religion a bad name. (more…)

Bad Feminist feels in some ways like a book of the summer. The essays are academic—author Roxane Gay has a Ph.D. and is a tenured professor—but the topics range from Tyler Perry films to the Sweet Valley High books for young adults. The title appears on the cover in a glossy shade of pink that’s just crying out for ten toenails to adorn. And of course Gay is seemingly everywhere, editing literary journals, popping up in Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine and, if you’re among her Twitter fan base, reporting on the outcome of meals prepared by Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten alongside observations about the protests in Ferguson. The book is worth reading now, since there’s so much in it worth discussing, but Bad Feminist has staying power. The most enlightening conversation it’s likely to provoke will be a deep self-examination of values, attitudes, guilty pleasures and cultural touchstones. You’ll come out of that exchange a different person than the one you were going in. (more…)

A return to critically reading and critically writing about Gertrude Stein’s writing are the objectives of the latest volume of literary criticism on Gertrude Stein. Entitled Primary Stein, editors Janet Boyd and Sharon J. Kirsch have brought together over a dozen essays that move away from the contemporary critical trend of writing more about Stein’s historical person–especially during World War II–than the writing itself. (more…)

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