John Francis Leonard

Here he is in all his glory. The supposedly perfect gay archetype. Handsome, virile, muscled, and perhaps with his most glaring attribute, his unavailability. Jameson Currier explores many themes in his latest collection of short stories, but the elusive “one that got away” is central to most of them. The results are a wry, witty, often self-deprecating take on desire from the more mature gay man’s point of view. The protagonists of many of these stories are settled, nuanced, experienced, and yet still filled with longing. Their days as a beauty, if they were ever perceived as that, are behind […]

So many things make up a successfully written novel—two of the most important being plot and character. Henry Alley masters both in his latest novel, Men Touching, but it’s his characters, both three-dimensional and subtly nuanced, that drive the narrative with their convincing faults and merits. This is the story of a flawed protagonist—one that’s so human and so relatable that you never stop pulling for him, even when he seems to give up on himself and in turn, those he loves. Robb is a divorced Vietnam veteran living the life of a supposedly liberated gay man in the city of […]

With one foot in historical fact and one foot beautifully in fiction, Christopher Castellini vividly reimagines one of the most fascinating partnerships of the gay literary world. The author has created a compelling narrative about the bonds of love and affection between two men: the playwright Tennessee Williams and his partner, the often overshadowed, Frank Merlo. Merlo, beloved by those closest to the celebrated Williams, still lived mostly in the playwright’s shadow. His own ambitions as an actor and dancer thwarted, Merlo functioned as William’s assistant, always getting the couple where they needed to be when they needed to be there. Leading Men is an accounting of Merlo’s time with Williams, a working-class man from New Jersey thrust onto the international stage […]

Judas, the teenaged narrator of Dale Peck’s latest novel, Night Soil, is the only child of legendary potter Dixie Stammers, famous for creating identical spherical pieces from clay without the use of a wheel or tools. Judas struggles with a birthmark that covers half his body, and as a young boy undergoes a long series of operations and procedures causing him much discomfort and pain. Through his mother, Judas is heir to a fortune which includes a renowned boarding school for underprivileged black youth founded by his great grandfather five times removed, Marcus Stammers. Stammers, an Eighteenth century coal baron, […]

It’s challenging to write prose that’s truly unique without crossing the line into the unduly abstract and esoteric. To write something that challenges convention without confusing the reader. Making the reader think, but still entertaining and providing artistic sustenance. Philip Dean Walker fulfills the early promise of his debut collection of short fiction, At Danceteria and Other Stories, in this, his sophomore effort. Read by Strangers is another completely unique effort by Walker drawing on an imagination rich in fully fleshed, finely drawn characters. In this volume, however, he doesn’t draw them from times past, only a vivid present and, in […]

Authors of fiction do something for us that goes far beyond the mechanics of plot. They create, or recreate, a time and a place drawn from both their own experiences and their imaginations. Few authors do that with the skill and dexterity of Alan Hollinghurst. He can imagine wholly fleshed characters as complex and detailed as an individual artist as well as his oeuvre—not only the vagaries of their personality, but the whole body of their work—as he did so effectively in his earlier masterpiece, The Folding Star. This understanding of an artist’s skills extends to his own work. He, […]