BOOK BUZZ: May 2010
Author: John Morgan Wilson
May 2, 2010
Here come the honors and awards!
Several writers/activists or writing-related nonprofits are among the recipients of the 2010 Monette-Horwitz Trust Award for work in support of the LGBTQ community and in combating homophobia. The list includes Lambda Pioneer Award winner Leslie Feinberg; Glenne McElhinney’s Impact Stories; White Crane, the journal of gay wisdom and culture, which celebrates twenty years of publishing this year; and RFD, the rural gay and radical faerie publication established thirty-five years ago. Read our 2006 interview with Leslie Feinberg here.
D.A. Powell’s fourth poetry collection, Chronic (Graywolf Press), has won the Northern California Book Award, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Award, and the California Book Award. He was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. To learn more about the author and the collection, go to Graywolf’s Chronic page: http://su.pr/1ndzmB.
The Publishing Triangle has announced its 22nd Annual Triangle Awards: Blanche Wiesen Cook, lifetime achievement; Michele Karlsberg, leadership; Ronaldo V. Wilson, Points of the Black Object, gay poetry; Stacie Cassarino, Zero at the Bone, lesbian poetry; Rebecca Brown, American Romances, lesbian nonfiction; James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love, gay nonfiction; Lori Ostlund, The Bigness of the World, debut fiction. The Ferro-Grumley Literary Award for LGBT fiction went to Sebastian Stuart, The Hour Between. Read more here.
Reminder: Lambda Literary Award winners will be announced at the 22nd Annual Awards dinner and ceremony on May 27 in New York City. Click here for tickets and information. And if you wish to attend one of the readings by Lammy finalists around the country, click here for details.
The ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, to be announced May 25 during Book Expo America, include the following finalists in the Gay/Lesbian Fiction category: Beggar of Love by Lee Lynch, Benediction by Jim Arnold, Light Bearer by John Caruso, Shaming the Devil by G. Winston James, Sistine Heresy by Justine Saracen, and The Middle of Somewhere by Clifford Henderson. Finalists in all categories can be seen here.
The eighth annual Saints and Sinners LGBT literary festival in New Orleans, set for May 13-16, has announced the winners of its writing competitions. The winner of the First Annual Short Fiction Contest is Wayne Lee Gay for his story “Ondine,” with runners-up Danny Bracco for “Dancing Pink Roses” and James Driggers for “Jesus Is My BFF.” The winner of the Fourth Annual Full-Length Playwriting Contest is Jerry Rabushka for Brushup Ten. In other S&S news, Lee Lynch and Noel Alumit have each received $5,000 as recipients of the James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award, which honors LGBT mid-career novelists of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community. For festival details, including registration, go to www.sasfest.com.
Speaking of the ubiquitous Lee Lynch, she’ll be the keynote speaker at the 2010 Golden Crown Literary Society conference in Orlando, Florida June 3-6. View a video message from Lee about the event. For more information, go to www.goldencrown.org.
The Lesbian Readers Choice Awards have been announced from the 50 writers and 64 books nominated by fans of lesbian fiction. For more information go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LesbianFictionReadersChoiceAwards/.
Independent Publisher, the online magazine of the indie publishing industry, has announced its Living Now Book Awards, including these for GLBT Fiction. Gold: Stonewall: Stories of Gay Liberation (Palm Drive Publishing), by Jack Fritscher. Silver: Glad Hand Saloon (Smoke Tree Press), by Steve Scott. Bronze: Sazzae (Harvard Square Editions), by J.L. Morin. To view all award winners, go to IP’s home page.
As previously announced, the Lambda Literary Foundation has received a $25,000 grant from Amazon.com to support the Writers’ Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, to be held August 8-15 in Los Angeles (the application deadline was May 1). The faculty includes Nicola Griffith, fiction; Ellery Washington, nonfiction; and Ellen Bass, poetry.
By the way, Ellen and Dorianne Laux were interviewed together last month on Writers’ Sanctuary with Kim McMillon, where you can hear the podcast. Ellen (The Human Line, Copper Canyon Press) and Dorianne (Facts About the Moon, Norton) read from their most recent collections as well as new poems, and discussed writing and teaching.
Lee Thomas talks the state of queer horror and more in a new interview with Dark Scribe Magazine. Other new and notable Dark Scribe interviews include Tom Cardamone and Jameson Currier.
On that note, Jameson’s gay-themed ghost story collection, The Haunted Heart and Other Tales (Lethe Press), has made the longlist for the prestigious Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Sponsored by Cork City Council of Ireland (and carrying a prize of 35,000 euros!), the award honors the year’s best new collection from the international writing community, with 21 American writers among the 13 countries represented this year.
Zoom’n Dog Productions has submitted two video book trailers to the first ever Foreword Review Magazine’s online contest via Youtube. The trailers are for The Midnight Hunt, by L.L. Raand and Spanking New, by Clifford Henderson. Zoom’n Dog has also just completed a video with Lee Lynch promoting her Butch Cookbook. All these can be viewed at www.dogearaudio.com by hitting the “videos” tab.
Filmmaker Jeffrey Schwartz has been approved for fiscal sponsorship by the nonprofit International Documentary Association, but still needs more financial support to complete Activist: The Times of Vito Russo, about the iconic author of The Celluloid Closet. If you’re interested in making a tax deductible donation through the IDA, contact Jeffrey at jeffrey@automatpictures.com. Meanwhile, you can view a short trailer.
Eloise Klein Healy will serve as the final judge for the third annual Robin Becker Chapbook Prize, sponsored by Seven Kitchens Press. May 15 is the deadline for submissions of an original, unpublished poetry manuscript in English by a LGBT writer, with two categories: a previously published chapbook writer and a poet who has never published a chapbook. Guidelines here.
Patricia Nell Warren tips me that South Florida has a new LGBT bookstore, The Book Nook, written up in South Florida Gay News.
Artist-activist-author Michael Kearns (The Drama of Aids) is part of the Harlequin anthology, What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To and Letting Go of Their Daughters facebook.com, edited by Andrea N. Richesin. In his piece, “Bloodless But Not Loveless,” Michael celebrates his relationship with Tia, a fifteen-year old he adopted as an infant and has raised as a single gay parent.
Budding playwright Patricia Loughrey picked up a prize last month at the 42nd annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Washington, D.C. that will allow her to continue honing her play, “Dear Harvey,” which portrays slain gay rights hero Harvey Milk through his own words and through the eyes of people who were close to him. Patricia’s award provides her with a three-day workshop at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, followed by further mentoring for a year.
The Second Annual Rainbow Book Fair, sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in NYC, attracted an estimated 1,700 visitors on March 27. Next year’s fair will be held on March 26, with pre-registration open to LGBT authors and presses who wish to present and promote their books.
Catherine Kirkwood’s debut fiction from Arktoi Books, Cut Away, has received some fine notices, including this from Library Journal.
Bloom, the literary journal published by Charles Flowers, has announced its first annual Bloom Chapbook Contest for poetry and short fiction. Poetry judge is Minnie Bruce Pratt; Richard McCann will judge fiction. Each winner receives $250 and twenty-five copies of the chapbook. Deadline: June 15. Guidelines: www.artsinbloom.com.
The latest issue of Bloom, due out about now, features a story by James Magruder (www.jamesmagruder.com), who was recently designated a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the 2010 Sewanee Writer’s Conference in July. Also, his edgy coming-of-age tale, Sugarless, has been named a semi-finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novel Award.
Bold Strokes Books (www.boldstrokesbooks.com) has been busy with acquisitions: Shane Allison’s new erotic anthologies, Black Fire: Gay African-American Erotica and In Plain View: Gay Public Sex; Martha Miller’s new novel, Retirement Plan: A Crime Novel; and D. E. LeFever’s latest novel, Tomorrow’s Headline. All are due out next year.
Arsenal Pulp Press (www.arsenalpulp.com/) has been shortlisted for the Small Press Publisher of the Year Libris Award by the Canadian Booksellers Association, the third time Arsenal has been nominated. Winners will be announced at CBA’s Libris Awards ceremony in Toronto on May 29. To see the complete shortlist, click here.
The deadline for Gival Press’s annual Oscar Wilde Award for the best poem in English that describes GLBT life is June 27. For more information, visit www.givalpress.com or email givalpress@yahoo.com.
On May 3 at 9:30 p.m. EST, Erin Dutton (www.erindutton.com) will join host Cat Johnson of All Romance eBooks to discuss Erin’s newest lesbian romance, Point of Ignition and A Perfect Match, via blog talk radio at blogtalkradio.com. You can log on and listen and also sign into the chat room during the interview to suggest questions.
Perry Brass (www.perrybrass.com) is writing “Lost Gay New York,” a series on the Queer New York site. Here’s a link to his recent blog on queer NY during WW II.
Fay Jacobs of A&M Books (www.aandmbooks.com) has won the Delaware Press Association Award for her story “Going Bats” in Delaware Beach Life Magazine. Her piece now goes on to the National Federation of Press Women contest.
Craig Laurance Gidney, author of Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories (Lethe Press), will attend this summer’s Sycamore Hill Writer’s Workshop, an invitation-only workshop for established science fiction, fantasy, and slipstream writers.
Adam Lowe, Lammy finalist for his novel, Troglodyte Rose (www.troglodyterose.com/),
has been appointed a youth ambassador and advisor for the Cultural Olympiad, part of the 2012 Olympics, in association with the Arts Council of England.
Finally: Monica Nolan (www.monicanolan.com) has written a follow-up to her well-reviewed send-up of lesbian pulp fiction, Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary (Kensington). The new one is Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher, and it got me to thinking about Jane Lynch, the wonderful out actor who plays the tough-as-nails cheerleading coach on the hit TV show Glee. If only Monica could get a copy into Jane’s hands – who knows where it might lead? (In 1992, when President Clinton declared his admiration for Devil in a Blue Dress and its author, the resulting publicity helped put Walter Mosley on the literary map.) Just a thought.
That’s all the Book Buzz for now. So, go read a book!
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Book Buzz submission guidelines:
Brief items (no more than a few lines) of LGBT writing and publishing news should go to jmwwriter@aol.com, providing basic information, with a web link whenever possible. No attachments, please. Book Buzz does not cover standard book releases or local author events, such as readings. Please study the column to see what works for Book Buzz.
