New in August: Wayne Kostenbaum, Judith “Jack” Halberstam and Terry Wolverton

Author: Edit Team

August 3, 2011

August is a great time to get in that last bit of beach reading before fall descends upon us.

You can enjoy the waning days of summer with new books from Terry Wolverton, Mark Henry, Dianne C. Stewart, Lyn LeJeune, Karis Walsh, Michael Griffo and Alan Clark.

Humiliation (Picador) is Wayne Kostenbaum’s morbidly funny, disquieting and thought provoking mediation on “the poetics of abasement.” Kostenbaum cast his dissecting eye on both cultural and personal humiliations—from Anita Bryant’s famous pie in the face, to the sordid photos taken of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and Kostenbaum’s own fear-inducing bar mitzvah ceremony. Kostenbaum reflects on these various humiliations, and the spectacle around them, to create a lyrical investigation of private and public shame.

What is so great about failure? Judith “Jack” Halberstam’s new book, The Queer Art of Failure (Duke University Press Books), just might have the answer. The book is about finding alternatives to “conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society.” Halberstam takes Quentin Crisp’s famed line, “If at first you don’t succeed failure may be your style,” and uses it to explore themes of how “failure sometimes offers more creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world, even as it forces us to face the dark side of life, love, and libido….”

From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Lethe Press), edited by Charles Rice-Gonzales and Charlie Vázquez, is a collection of stories from 29 gay Latino writers from around the US. The anthology includes selections from a stellar cast of writers, including Jimmy Lam, Justin Torres, Benny Vásquez, and Robert Vázquez-Pacheco. This far reaching collection examines “don’t mess with me’ divas, alluring bad boys and sexy teenagers, but also empowered youth for whom being queer is not a question…”

As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.

The Abode of Bliss: Ten Stories for Adam by Alex Jeffers Lethe Press
Elijah Rising by Lyn LeJeune InGroup Press
Captain Harding’s Six-Day War by Elliott Mackle Lethe Press
From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction by Charles Rice-Gonzales and Charles Vazquez, Tincture/Lethe Press
Rory’s Boy’s by Alan Clark, Arcadia Books
Stealing Angel by Terry Wolverton, Spinsters Ink
The Third Buddha by Jameson Currier, Chelsea Station Edition

Men of the Mean Streets edited by Greg Herren and JM Redmann, Bold Strokes Books
Women of the Mean Streets edited by Greg Herren and JM Redmann, Bold Strokes Books