Neil Plakcy starts his latest North African-based romance, Dancing with the Tide, with a literal bang between his two muscular and handsome heroes, Liam McCullough and Aidan Greene. Plakcy said, “The first book, Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, began as an action-adventure novel that just happened to have gay characters.
But there isn’t much market for that. My editor at Loose Id, Maryam Salim, saw the potential in the book and helped me enhance the romantic and erotic parts for that audience.” Read the full article →
Gival Press announced that Sarah Machinak is the latest winner of the 9th Annual Oscar Wilde Award (2010) for “the best previously unpublished original poem written in English that relates GLBT life.”
Her poem “L.B.A.” was chosen by last year’s winner, Chino Mayrina. The award carries a cash prize of $100.
We’re also happy to report that one of our 2010 Writers Fellows, Julie Weber and 2009 Lambda Award finalist Michael Montlack, both received honorable mentions. Good job guys! Hosky would be proud. Read the full article →
Six-time Lambda Award winner, Nicola Griffith, reads during the Writers’ Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices Faculty Reading in Los Angeles. Her advice to fellows? “Don’t let anyone tell you that your vision isn’t marketable.” Amen!
I consider Richard Labonté the Dean of gay pornography. I met him years ago at A Different Lights Books, which he managed when it had books of substance and was the place our community met to plan the next demonstration. Sadly, the store now is another of the rainbow five-and-dimes on Castro Street with glossy photographs of naked men, hard-on magazines, a limited selection of books, and the gifts you’d give someone if you really needed to tell them how gay you are. Richard encouraged me to keep writing and was polite enough not to say my writing had the excitement of unused toilet paper. Muscle Men is the second of his collections that I’ve read since beginning this assignment. In his introduction he gives us permission to touch the muscle comics and eroticize the writer of the “balls-on” essay on obsession with body building. Not a bad place to start. Read the full article →
Fall 2010 signals the publication of several high-profile books, including one we’ve been waiting for since February. From a few well-known authors (Emma Donoghue), to a relative unknown (Tristan Garcia), to a Grammy winner (Ricky Martin), the fall book line up is all over the map.
Here are 10 books (in no particular order) that we expect will make a big impact this autumn. Read the full article →
JM Redmanhas been honored with the New Orleans Gay Achievement Awards Lifetime Achievement Award for both her full-time work with an AIDS service organization and her writing (her Micky Knight PI series is set in the Big Easy). You can read about it here. JM’s most recent novel, Death of a Dying Man, won the Lambda Literary award for Best Lesbian Mystery. Her next, Water Mark (Bold Strokes Books), is out this month.
Read Victoria Brownworth's review here.
Speaking of JM and Bold Strokes, BSB’s new author blog has gone live, with a post by JM that explores the post-Katrina question, “How do you write about a city you live in but no longer know?” More posts by BSB authors to follow.
Meanwhile, two titles by BSB author Radclyffe are finalists in The Heart of Excellence Readers’ Choice Awards sponsored by the Romance Writers of America Ancient City Romance Authors chapter: Returning Tides and Secrets in the Stone. Secrets in the Stone was also named a 2010 Prism award winner by the RWA’s Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal chapter.
Scott Helm’sMysterious Skin, a dark novel (and film) about a troubled teenager, a hustler who was once his best friend, and the heart-breaking truths of his childhood, has been adapted by Prince Gomolvilas for a provocative stage production from East West Players, the venerable Asian-American theatre group in Los Angeles. Tim Dang directs a non-traditional cast of Asian actors portraying characters originally written as white. The play will run from September 9 to October 10.
Jeanette Winterson, acclaimed British author of the Whitbread Prize-winning novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, first published twenty years ago, has written a children’s thriller for the BBC, to be broadcast later this year. Jeanette has been hard at work on other projects, including two books for children due out soon, a response, she told the Guardian, to “complete and utter defeat and depression” following a breakup with her longtime partner. Read the full article →
“I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself – a Black woman warrior poet doing my work – come to ask you, are you doing yours?” (Lorde, p 40)
Audre Lorde asks this question, in numerous ways, through her writing and her life—and let me report that I will spend a life answering her. Black feminist/womanist writers have had a huge influence on my life and identity—as a writer, thinker, and as a person who is able to find the well of courage, fashion a cup and dip in. What a joy to find this intimate volume, I Am Your Sister, and also hear from her contemporaries—writers such as bell hooks, Alice Walker, Johnnetta B. Cole—sharing stories about Lorde. This collection stands as a reminder: not only that oppression is shared if ever it occurs, and that none among us is exempt from the possibility of oppressing others; but that learning and practicing love is vital. I am grateful to Audre Lorde, and to the editors. Each of us can find courage, and remember what to do when we find it. Read the full article →
