The palimpsest of revolution and cosmopolitanism that overlays Picano’s recollections is of course utterly appropriate to the post-Stonewall years he describes… read more

Barneys Creative Ambassador-at-Large Simon Doonan has made a name for himself in what he describes as his “jarring and punky and intentionally shocking” window displays. In his new book The Asylum, a collection of fashion-related autobiographical essays, Doonan also continues to make a name for himself as a writer…. read more

How does one write a biography of someone who has been dead for 40 years, was a bit of a recluse their whole life, and whom few people really knew. If you are Mary Blume, and the subject is Cristobal Balenciaga, one of fashion’s most unique designers, you focus on the fashion itself…… read more

One thing the reviewing of diaries can do is deflate the zeppelin of personality one has created around the writer, in this case, author Christopher Isherwood, whose crystal-clear stories of conflicted characters have been ridden blissfully by many for years…… read more

“He always felt like he was an alien and that people wouldn’t accept him as he was. He created camouflage.”

Writer and biographer Cynthia Carr discusses the public and private life of the iconic artist David Wojnarowicz along with the challenges of creating a cohesive history that blends the two…. read more

This month Bloomsbury USA is releasing the first full length–and much buzzed about– biography of queer downtown artist, activist, and provocateur David Wojnarowicz.  Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992, is seen by many as one of the most influential and controversial artist of the  1980s East Village art scene…. read more

“For years, I tried to control my drinking and my drug use, and I nearly lost my life because of it. I hurt many people in that deluded thrashing. In the writing of these two books, which has taken up all of my free time for the last six years, I think–coming to the end–I felt a real sense of closure…”

Writer and literary agent Bill Clegg took some time to talk with Lambda about his new memoir, Ninety Days, his “relationship” with New York City, and the trials of staying sober…. read more

Clegg has made relapse the subject and not recovery the subject. That self-proclaimed emphasis is this book’s great strength because the question posed from the very beginning of whether or not he’s going to do crack again or drink again is never really answered. In a large way, this is a book about not finding the answer, when most memoirs are poised to do the exact opposite… … read more

Christopher Simon Sykes’s new biography of Hockney is the first in a planned two-volume set; this one covers 1937 to 1975. This is not a biography that will entice those seeking gossip. Instead, it offers rich research and details about how Hockney grew up…… read more

One of the heroes responsible for changing the medical establishment’s understanding that gay people can be sane, Silverstein helped sway the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1973. What’s most disturbing (or exonerating) about For the Ferryman is that even a shrink of Silverstein’s stature can be sucked into a tumultuous psycho-dependent relationship…. read more