BookBuzz #26 Feb 2011
Author: John Morgan Wilson
February 1, 2011
The American Library Association’s 2011 Over the Rainbow selections in eleven queer writing categories have been announced. Selected by the ALA’s GLBT Round Table, the list goes to librarians, archivists, information professionals, and library readers as recommended titles. [GLBTRT]
One of those Top Eleven was Raymond Luczak’s poetry collection Mute (A Midsummer Night’s Press). Mute also received a very positive recent review by Robyn Oxborrow in Pank Magazine. Raymond has also posted a new book trailer in which he “talks” in ASL about his latest collection, Road Work Ahead (Sibling Rivalry Press), with English subtitles for the ASL-impaired.
More news from Raymond: ten of his poems are featured in the inaugural issue of the gay poetry journal Assaracus. His essay “Chants of Silence: Notes of a Deaf Radical Faerie-in-Spirit” will appear next month in the anthology The Fire in Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries (White Crane Books). And his Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer: 20 Years Later revisits the Christopher Street magazine cover story that became his first break into national prominence two decades ago. [raymondluczak.com]
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The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has announced the nominees for its 22nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards. A complete list of English-language nominees is available here.
Among the GLAAD nominees is writer/director Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right,” co-written with Stuart Blumberg. The story behind the screenplay, along with the script itself, is available in a new illustrated book, The Kids Are All Right: The Shooting Script, from Newmarket Press. Lisa and Stuart are also up for an Oscar and a Writers Guild Award in the Best Original Screenplay category and an Independent Spirit Best Screenplay Award. [Newmarket]
Edmund White is a finalist for a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award (“the Edgar”) in the short story category for “The Creative Writing Murders,” which appeared in the Bloomsbury anthology Dark End of the Street. Winners in all categories will be announced at MWA’s 65th Gala Banquet on April 28 in NYC. [MWA]
Dog Ear Audio produced a short video featuring Bold Strokes Books author Kim Baldwin promoting BSB’s 5th Annual Lesbian Book Festival in Palm Springs March 3-6. [BSB]
Speaking of Bold Strokes Books, the Jewel Lesfic Bookclub, part of the women’s program at the Resource Center Dallas, will host an April appearance by author and BSB publisher Radclyffe (AKA Len Barot).
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Last month, the New England Book Festival honored two Blood Moon Productions titles with First Prize Literary Awards: Best GLBT Title of 2010 for 50 Years of Queer Cinema, and Best Anthology of 2010 for Hollywood Babylon Strikes Again. [Raw Meat]
Meanwhile, the NYC-based publisher has posted a video about its 720-page, heavily illustrated nonfiction book Damn You, Scarlett O’Hara: The Private Lives of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, written by the company’s president, Danforth Prince, with Darwin Porter. [Raw Meat]
Arsenal Pulp Press celebrated its fortieth anniversary last month, while also announcing a new marketing manager: Cynara Geissler.
Tom Schabarum’s debut novel, the gay-themed The Palisades (Cascadia), has been named one of Matt Yau‘s top twelve books for 2010 on his literary blog. [A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook]
Tom also reports that several poems from his forthcoming chapbook Swimming With Michelangelo received the 2010 Creek Walker Poetry Prize. The title poem has been accepted for publication by Poet Lore.
Richard Labonté, Lambda Literary Awards administrator, reports that at January’s end a record 550 books had been submitted in 23 categories, for evaluation by 92 judges. This year, both the Bisexual and Transgender categories have been split into two sub-categories, fiction and nonfiction. Winners will be announced at the 23rd Lammy awards dinner and ceremony on May 26 in NYC. [LLF]
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The prolific Ellen Hart, a multiple Lambda Literary Award winner, has signed a two-book deal with St. Martin’s/Minotaur for two more Jane Lawless mysteries, the twentieth and twenty-first in, to be released in the fall of 2012 and 2013.
Eduardo Santiago‘s short story, “The Golden Rings Of Paris,” has been published in the University of Nebraska’s Platte Valley Review. You can read Eduardo’s story here.
Matthew Gallaway’s debut novel, The Metropolis Case (Crown), has generated strong reviews, including praise in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Tish Pearlman’s poem, “New Light,” is included in the current issue The Healing Muse, the literary and arts journal published by SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Humanities and Bioethics Dept. Tish is the host of the award-winning radio program Out Of Bounds Radio Show, where she often interviews out writers.
David-Matthew Barnes‘s one-act play It’s a Pleasure to Be Sad is featured in the current issue of the literary journal Review Americana.
Eric Shaw Quinn has reissued his seriocomic novel Say Uncle as an e-book. The story of a gay single man raising a child and first published when the courts regularly took children from gays and lesbians, it is unrelated to the 2006 Peter Paige film with the same title.
James Cihlar reviewed Raymond Luczak’s Mute and Julie Enzer’s Handmade Love, both from Lawrence Schimel’s A Midsummer Night’s Press, for Gently Read Literature. [GentlyRead]
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Melissa Scott has begun work on two new books for Lethe Press in her Astrient series, following Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams, co-written with her late partner Lisa A. Barnett. The first new one, Point of Knives, is a novella detailing the adventures and romance between the two male leads in the earlier books. Fair’s Point will continue the series.
Rob Byrnes, a 2006 Lambda Literary Award winner for When the Stars Come Out (Kensington), has sold his latest novel, Holy Rollers, to Bold Strokes Books for release from its Liberty Editions later this year. The lighthearted crime caper novel revolves around an oddball team of gay and lesbians infiltrating a right wing mega-church to steal its concealed $7 million.
The UCLA Writers’ Program interviewed one of its students, Jamie Schaffner, a recently named 2011 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, about the fellowship and her current novel-in-progress, a lesbian teenage coming out tale set in Portland in the early ‘80s. [ucla extension writers’ program blog]
Also on the UNEX Writers’ Program site: a “success story” spot on another Writers’ Program student, Tomas Mournian, whose first novel, hidden, about gay teens escaping brutal gay-to-straight conversion boot camps to hide out in San Francisco safe houses, has just been published by Kensington. [uclaextension.edu/writers/]
In a San Francisco Examiner review, Alan Chin praised Rick R. Reed’s dark gay romance Tricks from MLR press. [Examiner.com]
Perry Brass, a coordinator of the Third Annual Rainbow Book Fair in NYC, the only exclusively LGBT book fair in the country, reports that space for tables is filling up fast. Check the book fair site for more information and registration guidelines. [rainbowbookfair.org]
Meanwhile, Perry has a new blog post in his “All Human Wisdom” series called “Men,” about the changing and discouraging place of the male gender in the world. [Queernewyorkblog]
Finally: If you didn’t see your item in this month’s Book Buzz, it might be one that went to my spam file, which I inadvertently deleted and couldn’t retrieve. If you think that might be you, please feel free to submit again for the March column, following the submission guidelines linked below.
That’s all the Book Buzz for now. So, go read a book!
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