Books

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Book Review: ‘The Sparsholt Affair’ by Alan Hollinghurst

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, […]

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Book Review: ‘The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America’ by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois have crafted an extensive oral history of the making of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America that is ingenious by design. Much like a play script itself, the book is structured in a series of “Acts” with chapters more like titled scenes and a cast of characters listed at the end, and documents through diverse interviews–edited in such a way as to create an on-going dialogue–the genesis, history, themes and reception of this queer masterwork. The “cast” for this metanarrative includes Kushner, the actors, directors, producers, and production team, as well as the scholars, historians, critics, and fellow […]

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John Oliver’s Gay Bunny Book Hits #1 On Amazon

Guess who just managed to pull a best-selling book out of their hat? That’s right: it’s John Oliver and the staff of Last Week Tonight—specifically, writer Jill Twiss—whose picture book, the somewhat cumbersomely titled Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, is, as of this writing, the No. 1 best-selling book on Amazon. It’s a sweet victory, made even sweeter by the book that’s currently down at fourth place: Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a picture book written by Mike Pence’s 24-year-old daughter, Charlotte, and illustrated […]

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Book Review: ‘The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988’ by Martin Duberman

In his new memoir, The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988, Martin Duberman meditates on an era that, perhaps more than any other, proved pivotal for queer life, political, cultural, and otherwise. “Although most gay people did share the prescribed values and aspirations of mainstream culture,” Duberman writes, “a radical minority… firmly rejected the liberal view that our national institutions were basically sound and that a little tinkering here and there around the edges would make them better still.” As homosexuals serve openly in the military and get married from coast to coast, as the divide […]

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Writer Clayton Delery on Reconstructing a Hate Crime

Clayton Delery’s previous book, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, was named Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2015. His new book is Out for Queer Blood: The Murder of Fernando Rios and the Failure of New Orleans Justice. It tells the story of an anti-gay hate crime that took place in New Orleans in 1958 and chronicles a time and place in American history where such a crime was inevitable. In addition, Delery is a contributor to collections such as My Gay New Orleans and Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men who Came Out Later […]

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Book Review: ‘Queerly Loving (Volume 1)’ Edited by G Benson and Astrid Ohletz

There are dozens of new books to choose from each month if you’re a fan of f/f or m/m romance, never mind the m/f romance that’s been booming for decades. But what if you want to read a “happily ever after” or “happy for now” story that includes a trans person? Or someone who is asexual and/or aromantic? Those are much harder to find, especially if you want stories that don’t fling themselves (sometimes willfully, it seems) into the pitfalls of stereotypes and damaging, or even triggering, representation. Queerly Loving (Volume 1) is a short story collection that gives happy […]

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Book Review: ‘Taken In’ by Erica Abbott

Colfax police Captain Alex Ryan arrives home to find a thug barring her door and an unwelcome visitor inside their apartment with her wife, CJ St. Clair. The uninvited guest turns out to be CJ’s snobby, fractious mother, Lydia. She estranged CJ years before when CJ came out to her. Now, she’s shown up demanding her daughter come to the aid of the family using her skills as a police investigator to find the killer of her brother’s ex-wife. Otherwise, her brother, Clayton, may end up going to jail for the murder. After some mental gymnastics, CJ finally decides to […]

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Local Author Launches New Book at Occidental Center for the Arts

Friday, January 19th, 7-9 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts Book Launch Series presents recently published A Circle of Elephants, by beloved local author Michael David Fels. A heartfelt collection of poignant and humorous tales of life in Los Angeles during the period from 1948-1957, these stories continue to follow the life of Charlotte Evelyn Albert and her family first depicted in The Queen of Kansas. Fels touches on the struggles America encountered as it transitioned from pre-modern to modern at the end of the end of World War II. Free event, donations invited. Q&A, book sales and signing. Refreshments […]

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Lambda Literary Award for Emerging Writers Now Open With New Cash Prize

Lambda Literary announced today that they are accepting applications for the 2018 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers. The Judith A. Markowitz Award honors LGBTQ-identified writers whose work demonstrates their strong potential for promising careers. Two Emerging LGBTQ Writer prizes will be presented, each with a cash prize of $1,000. Applicants to this prize may be self-nominated or nominated by another member of the community. By emergent writer, Lambda Literary means those who have published at least one but no more than two books of fiction, nonfiction or poetry. Last year’s winners were H Melt & Victor Yates. Lambda Literary will be accepting applications for this prize until […]

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Book review: ‘Two Natures,’ by Jendi Reiter

Reiter, Jendi. Two Natures. Hilo, Hawaii: Saddle Road Press, c2016. 374 p. $22.00 (Amazon)  ISBN: 978-0-9969074-2-2. Two Natures is a literary quality gay novel by an award-winning author of poetry books and short stories.  Although this is Reiter’s first novel, it received a first prize in ‘best gay contemporary fiction’ from Rainbow Awards.  ‘Bildungsroman’, a charming German word for a coming-of-age novel, is an apt word to describe this story as it tells the story of Julian Selkirk, a native Atlantan on scholarship studying fashion photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. The novel takes place in New York City in the 1990s, ten years after […]

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