Pioneer into secret black gay lifestyle goes straight in latest novel
Best selling writer E. Lynn Harris can still remember the first time he realized he was poor.
His family had been invited to the housewarming of a well-to-do family in his hometown of Fayetteville, Ark., and Harris, then a young boy fresh from an afternoon of playing outside, was sitting in the living room when another guest remarked on his appearance. For much of the visit, he tried desperately to tuck his bare, dusty feet underneath the sofa.
It was those childhood memories that helped motivate his success in later years.
"I didn't grow up in the kind of environment that my characters grew up in, or the kind of environment that I live in now," the 52-year-old author says. "It was one of the things that I always aspired to."
His fame has made him a part of a more privileged world, and his success can be partly attributed to showing his readers a world with which they were previously unfamiliar: the secret world of professional, bisexual black men living as heterosexuals.
This week, Harris is back after a two-year hiatus with his 10th novel, "Just Too Good to Be True." In some ways, the book returns to some of his typical themes — family, relationships, fame — but Harris also takes on new territory, focusing for the first time on a straight relationship.
His writing falls into several genres, including gay and lesbian fiction, African American fiction, urban fiction, and so on. And with 4 million copies in print, the books are also best sellers. Pioneer into secret black gay lifestyle goes straight in latest novel Hartford Courant, United States
Anti-Gay Challenge Issued to Kids’ Book About Marriage Equality in ...
The blog of a Colorado librarian documents the first challenge to a children's book about a gay wedding, and predicts, "I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009."
In anticipation of future attacks on the book, the librarian, Jamie S. LaRue, adds in the July 14 posting to his blog, called Myliblog, "So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians."
LaRue posted his long, thoughtful letter to the woman who wrote to challenge the inclusion of the book, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen. The letter is consistently respectful in tone, but doesn't back down from stating LaRue's points: children's books are meant to address all sorts of things, including adult issues, everything from terrifying or sad topics like alcoholic parents, divorce, and death, to happier (but controversial) topics like marriage between two devoted people of the same gender. Anti-Gay Challenge Issued to Kids' Book About Marriage Equality in ... EDGE Boston -
Praised for his 'perfumed, dandified style', Andrew Sean Greer is one of America's finest young writers. He tells Stuart Jeffries about the family secret that inspired his latest novel, The Story of a Marriage
A long time ago in Kentucky, a man took Andrew Sean Greer's grandmother for a drive. The man, a family friend, told her something she didn't want to hear. During the war he and her husband had been lovers.
How did she react, I ask Greer. "She just said to him: 'Get the hell out of here.'" Greer sits back in his seat. We're chatting in his publisher's offices in Bloomsbury. I lean forward, thinking Greer will continue the story. I'm expecting (this being the American south of the 1950s) passion, ruin, shame, marital recrimination, probably divorce, possibly the husband being named and shamed for his sexual orientation in the local newspaper.
But no. That's the end of the story. "My grandmother was not a great storyteller," says Greer. Didn't she confront her husband? "They never talked about it. That wasn't the era of psychoanalysis when everybody tells everybody everything and where there is a presumption that confession and confronting difficult personal issues is good for a relationship." Do you know if your grandfather was gay? "Well, he did spend a lot of time cleaning his shoes and looking after his appearance. I knew him until I was about 13. He was this guy in a chair." You never asked him? "I never did."
These are not small matters. His grandmother's sliver of a tale sparked Greer's latest novel, The Story of a Marriage. Like Greer's 2004 novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli, his new book comes to Britain with rave reviews. According to the New York Times: "Greer's considerable gifts as a storyteller ascend to the heights of masters like Marilynne Robinson and William Trevor." Whatever Greer inherited from his grandmother, it wasn't her shortcomings as a narrator. Greer is only 37 and John Updike has already compared him to Proust and Nabokov for his "perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment". He's a monster of precocity, with a (sickeningly well-founded) confidence in his talent scarcely imaginable among his transatlantic peers.
In the book, the eerie domestic calm of Pearlie Cook's marriage to her husband Holland in early 1950s San Francisco is disturbed by an elegantly dressed gentleman caller named Buzz. He has come not just to tell Pearlie that he and Holland were together during the war (he never, Pearlie notes, uses the word "lovers"), but also that he has "a proposal". It's not quite an indecent one, but it's pretty wild. He will give her $100,000 if she agrees to allow him to take her husband away, probably to New York, where a gay couple might just find a sympathetic corner to build a life together. She will be able to raise her boy Sonny in unimagined luxury, and spare him the shame of it becoming known that his daddy is homosexual. How can she refuse?
"In 1953, when the story is set, women did make sacrifices of this kind: she would have wanted to protect her son. Dad being exposed as gay would have been another mark against her son. It still goes on, that kind of naming and shaming of gay people," says Greer. Not, surely, in San Francisco? "No, but when I was living in Montana 10 years ago, they were trying to pass a law to put lesbians and gay men on the sex-offenders register." No! "Oh yes," says Greer. "My country is nothing if not diverse."
Science fiction writer and poet Thomas Disch has committed suicide. Disch died July 4 and his body was discovered July 5, according to the New York City Police Department. He was 68.
The author of popular sci-fi novels Camp Concentration and 334, Disch had been openly gay since 1968. Following the 2004 death of his partner, poet Charles Naylor, Disch reportedly began suffering from depression.
Awarded many honors for his fiction, including two O. Henry awards, the genre-bending Disch also published more than a half dozen books of poetry, a whimsical Child's Garden of Grammar (1997); a history of speculative fiction, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998); and the Brave Little Toaster series for children.
Random House To Publish Fictional Laura Bush Book With Abortions, Lesbians & Presidential Sex
Curtis Sittenfeld, the bestselling author of Prep and The Man of my Dreams, has penned a fictionalized account of Laura Bush's life to be released in time for the Republican National Convention.
The book, American Wife, will be published by Random House, and centers around a main character named Alice Blackwell, a librarian who unwittingly falls in love with a blue-blooded man (Charlie Blackwell) who would become President of the United States.
It is, in short, a fictional examination of the life of the First Lady that mingles real facts and incidents with the author's imaginative, fanciful, sometimes sexually charged musings. The result is a masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that satisfies as ass-kicking literary fiction and juicy gossip simultaneously.
From discovering that her grandmother is a lesbian, killing her high school crush with her car at age 16 (this incident at least is based in fact--Laura Bush was involved in a fatal car accident at that age), having sex with his brother, getting an abortion, and descriptions of sex with the president, Alice's antics are sure to have tongues chattering from coast to coast.
Liberal Anglicans are the true church, new book claims
A new book just published leads the fight against the ‘conservative’ attempt to take over the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
Liberal Faith in a Divided Church by Jonathan Clatworthy, General Secretary of the Modern Churchpeople’s Union, argues that the Church has traditionally been tolerant and inclusive, willing to embrace differences of opinion and allow them to be debated without threats of schism.
At this time of increasing controversy between liberals and conservatives in the western churches, and especially in view of the July 2008 Lambeth Conference, this book is a highly topical contribution to the case for Christian liberalism and is certain to stir controversy.
While observing the current disputes, especially over women and homosexuality, it is a work of scholarship which examines why Christians understand their faith in such radically different ways, and proposes a way forward which would enable them to worship together and respect diversity of opinion.
The catalyst is the row over the consecration of a gay bishop in America, but Clatworthy argues that it goes deeper than that, to the very roots of Anglicanism itself. Different theories developed at different stages to produce the mix of ideas we have today. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century revivals and fundamentalism all produced their own ideas about the authority of the Bible, reason, the Church and individual experience. Clatworthy believes that classical Anglican theology is by definition liberal. It affirms tradition but is open to new insights and humble enough to accept that our knowledge can never be complete or certain. The Church should be inclusive, welcoming, and open to debate, allowing differences of opinion to continue until consensus is reached. Conservative Christians see it differently; this book explains why the two views may well be irreconcilable.
This book offers a strong defence of the liberal tradition within Christianity. In particular it highlights the importance that classic Anglicanism has always given to balancing the claims of Scripture, Tradition and Reason and hence to accepting the inevitability of diversity within a single Church. Clatworthy shows very clearly what is at stake in today’s debate within the Anglican communion and how tragic it would be if a fundamentalist uniformity were to triumph over a reasoned diversity Professor Paul Badham, Department of Theology, University of Wales, Lampeter
For a long time, liberals in the Church of England have been exposed to jibes that they offer a watered-down version of Christianity and have trimmed their sails according to the prevailing winds of secularism. This kind of name-calling leaves many naturally liberal Churchpeople feeling bruised, defensive, and uncertain as to whether they are really representing historic Christian teaching. Now there are signs of a fight-back. Jonathan Clatworthy’s book is one manifestation of this. Clearly written, with a firm grounding in the historical and intellectual background of contemporary debates, and plenty of common sense, he argues for the properly theological truth of liberalism. This work will encourage many to move from the defensive to speak out all the more strongly for the rightness as well as the humaneness of a liberal approach. George Pattison, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford
The Modern Churchpeople’s Union promotes liberal theology within the church. The MCU’s annual conference is to be held next week from 8th to 11th July and among its speakers are Gene Robinson, the gay American bishop, Frank Griswold, formerly Presiding Bishop of the church in the USA, and Trevor Mwamba, Bishop of Botswana and a leading voice in the African church.
Summer is wedding season. It seems especially so this year with the flurry of newly legal same-sex marriages.
Here's a timely picture book that adds to ever-growing diversity in today's children literature.
"Uncle Bobby's Wedding," by Sarah S. Brannen, is the tale of a girl and her favorite uncle.
Uncle Bobby takes Chloe for walks, for rowboat rides on the river and teaches her about the stars.
Life is good until the day Mama throws a family picnic and Uncle Bobby announces that he and his friend Jamie are getting married. Everyone is excited except Chloe.
She tells her mother, "Bobby is my special uncle. I don't want him to get married."
Victor Martin has been writing since he was a child, but he didn't realize it could be a career until he became a convict.
A few years ago, Martin became a published author, writing four novels while lying in his bunk in a state prison in Elizabeth City. His books, which feature a high-rolling criminal named Unique, have a following among readers of what is known as "urban fiction," a popular literary genre characterized by explicit tales of inner-city crime life. Martin's books are available on Amazon.com.
But Martin says prison officials are shutting him down, saying his novels violate a policy that bars inmates from conducting business behind bars.
Martin, a 32-year-old habitual felon with several theft-related convictions, says the policy violates his right to free speech. Martin's attorneys are challenging the policy, which they say prison officials have used to confiscate Martin's manuscripts and discipline him for writing.
"When I'm trying to do something positive, they want me to stop," Martin said in a telephone interview from the Elizabeth City prison. "The way I see it, they want me to stay stagnant and not do anything."
Martin's current publisher, Marcenia Waters of Charlotte, says Martin plays a small role in business affairs related to publishing. Her self-owned publishing company makes the arrangements for printing and distribution and handles the income from Martin's latest book, "Unique's Ending."
Waters said she became a fan of Martin's writing after hearing about him through word of mouth. She wrote to him in prison, and they developed a relationship through letters. Eventually, she offered to publish one of his books.
Burr, in the closet during TV career, comes to life in new book
The longtime partner of Raymond Burr says he has not seen the new book out on the late actor but is planning on writing his own tome about his life with Burr.
Robert Benevides, 78, told the Bay Area Reporter that he is working with a writer to tell the story of his 33-year relationship with the TV legend.
"[Burr's] relatives have died off, so I'm not concerned about offending them," Benevides said.
Burr, best known for his role as TV's Perry Mason, died with Benevides at his side in 1993 in the home the couple shared in Healdsburg, in Sonoma County's wine country. Burr was once TV's highest paid actor and through syndication, continues to be one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world.
Craig Seymour is exposed, past and present. As a University of Maryland graduate student, the metro Washington native entered the world of Southeast D.C.'s male-stripper venues. The premise was academic, at first interviewing patrons and strippers for the sake of his thesis. Moving on to doctoral work in American studies, he took things a step further, becoming a stripper himself.
Today, Seymour stands further exposed, this time in print, with the release of All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. It's a somewhat ballsy move for an academic, soon to relocate from his post at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth to a spot teaching journalism at Northern Illinois University. But if such a memoir -- replete with cum shots, hand jobs and crotch biting -- caused him any fear, it was all the more reason to do it. Conquering fear, after all, went hand in hand with entertaining his clients in nothing but socks and a smile.
''It really goes back to the message of the book, where I write about continually taking risks,'' says Seymour, who has spent the last few years making the half-hour commute to UMass from Providence, R.I., in part because of what he says is a fantastic culture of male-strip bars in that city. ''As much as I like Providence, this was a great opportunity and I owed it to myself to take that other risk, to see what more might be out there for me.
''That's why it's really important. I'm leaving all my friends. I'm leaving this great place. But I felt it was something I had to do, or else I wasn't even living up to the message of my own book.''
That message, learned in large part in Southeast, has not only helped Seymour in academia, but as a music journalist at Vibe, Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere, finding ways to get Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson to reveal themselves. Seymour also likely gleaned some of the message from his teenaged friendship with another local, Matt Drudge, remembered by Seymour for his laser-like focus. More of this review @ Metro Weekley.
I felt that I'd made a transformation as surely as Superman slipping out of a phone booth or Wonder Woman doing a sunburst spin. I was bare-ass in a room of paying strangers, a stripper. After years of wondering what it would be like, I had done it -- faced a fear, defied expectation, embraced a taboo self. It was only the beginning....
All I Could Bare is the story of a mild-mannered graduate student who "took the road less clothed" -- a decision that was life changing. Seymour embarked on his journey in the 1990s, when Washington, D.C.'s gay club scene was notoriously no-holds-barred, all the while trying to keep his newfound vocation a secret from his parents and maintain a relation-ship with his boyfriend, Seth. Along the way he met some unforgettable characters -- the fifty-year-old divorcé who's obsessed with a twenty-one-year-old dancer, the celebrated drag diva who hailed from a small town in rural Virginia, and the many straight guys who were "gay for pay." Seymour gives us both the highs (money, adoration, camaraderie) and the lows (an ill-fated attempt at prostitution, a humiliating porn audition).
Ultimately coming clean about his secret identity, Seymour breaks through taboos and makes his way from booty-baring stripper to Ph.D.-bearing academic, taking a detour into celebrity journalism and memorably crossing paths with Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige along the way. Hilarious, insight-ful, and touching, All I Could Bare proves that sometimes the "wrong decision" can lead to the right place.
Electronic books have been available in some form for a couple of decades, but the 7-month-old Amazon Kindle is flashing the publishing industry its clearest peek at the future of reading - even if analysts say the much-hyped e-reading device won't immediately upend the text business as the iPod has recently transformed the music world.
The 10-ounce Kindle, which holds 200 e-books and can also tirelessly download daily editions of 19 newspapers and 346 blogs, is fielding pretty heady praise for a device few have seen. Amazon hasn't released sales figures, which makes skeptics wonder about its market penetration. New York tech blog Silicon Alley Insider recently posted a photo of a subway rider holding a Kindle under the headline: "Found! A Real Amazon Kindle User."
"We were talking about (the Kindle's low public visibility) at the office the other day. Who's really seen one out there?" said Steve Weinstein, an analyst who tracks Amazon and other Internet commerce sites for Portland's Pacific Crest.
Nevertheless, Weinstein predicted that Amazon's global e-book sales could hit $2.5 billion by 2012. He estimates that the company sold 40,000 units a month this year at its original price of $399 (the price was recently reduced to $359, including wireless charges) and could sell between 700,000 and 800,000 by the end of 2008.
"I don't expect it to have the same impact on the industry as the iPod had on the music industry," Weinstein said.
Greener, easy to use
While the Kindle might not be at the center of a culturally transforming technology moment like the iPod, Weinstein said, "It could be at the very beginning of one."
So if the Kindle is not the publishing world's version of the internal combustion engine, perhaps it is more like its Prius: a greener, easy-to-use device that heralds the industry's future.
But the paperback-book-size gadget, which comes in a black leather carrying case, is still too expensive for the mainstream market, analysts say.
David Kaufman has now written the long-awaited, definitive biography of Doris Day. By telling Day’s incredible, previously untold story, Kaufman takes the reader to the epicenter of American popular culture— a roller-coaster saga, from the 1940s to the 1980s. While Day symbolized virtuous America to the rest of the world—especially in her heyday, the 1950s and early 1960s—both she and that era are still perceived as being far more innocent and carefree than they really were. Indeed, what makes Day’s story so richly fascinating is the fact that she was in many ways the opposite of her image as “the girl next door.” She was also a real-life Cinderella who regretted having gone to the ball and who found a series of princes who proved far less than charming.
Thanks to Kaufman’s dogged diligence in tracking down countless colleagues and intimates, he gives us:
Scintillating tales of fame, beauty, money, tragedy, sexual ambiguity, and sexual conquests.
Anecdotes about a vast array of major subsidiary players in Day’s life, including Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Charles Manson, Mickey Mantle, Candice Bergen, and Rock Hudson.
Kaufman reveals Day’s demons while emphasizing the extraordinary credit she deserves as an artist. In the tradition of great biographies, Kaufman’s detailed work not only reveals the surprising story of one of America’s most beloved icons, but also compels us to rush back and see her best films—including The Man Who Knew Too Much, Pillow Talk, Love Me or Leave Me—and to listen to her unforgettable songs—“Sentimental Journey,” “Secret Love,” “Que Sera, Sera.” Though she made more than 550 recordings and starred in 39 movies—not to mention her own TV show for five years—the epic story of Doris Day’s life has never been told . . . until now.
"Aside from her as-told-to autobiography with A.E. Hotchner in 1975, this is the first full-length biography devoted to Doris Mary Anne von Kappelhoff, who was rechristened Doris Day just before she began fronting for the Les Brown Band in 1940. Although Day was continually portrayed in magazines and onscreen as a contented wife and mother, Kaufman (Ridiculous!: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam)—who spent eight years interviewing more than 150 people to create this definitive biography—uncovers a tireless workaholic (from 1947 to 1968, she made 39 films and recorded more than 600 songs) with four failed marriages and a son (music producer Terry Melcher) who was "more of a brother or father-figure than a son to his mother." Kaufman also uncovers that she was born in 1922, making her two years older than reference works state. Mismanaged by her third husband (their 16-year marriage was "a business arrangement" by their fifth anniversary), her career (and legacy) was severely damaged by the last seven films she made over a three-year period. This is an eye-opening, fair-minded bio of a woman who brought a lot of joy to fans but has found very little herself." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Although Doris Day is still the number one box office star of all time, history has not taken her accomplishments very seriously, and little is known about her life after retirement—until now. Kaufman's definitive biography is highly recommended.... Delivering on his subtitle's 'untold story' phrasing, (Kaufman) uncovers juicy details of Day's nervous breakdown; her relationships, which belied her girl-next-door image; her reclusive life after retirement; and her little-known fourth marriage. Kaufman had unparalleled access to Day's friends and family, especially her son, Terry Melcher, who also discusses his relationship with Candice Bergen. ..—(starred review) Library Journal, May 27, 2008
“There’s not been a truly great biography of Doris Day, but that may change come 2008. That’s the pub date for David Kaufman’s book on Day, a work he promises will give Day her due as an actress and reveal what went on behind the shiny blond façade.” —Liz Smith, New York Post
Review That there has been a sea change in attitudes about sexual minorities in the past few generations is not news. What is remarkable, however, is the growing nonchalance of contemporary adolescents about their own sexuality. Savin-Williams, a pioneer in the study of sexual minority youth and the author of several groundbreaking books, admits that 'gay' may be a misnomer for the teens he interviewed. Many reject labels altogether and prefer to see themselves as free agents. Savin-Williams, likewise, rejects the developmental-stage ideas of sexual identity that have dominated psychological theory for over 30 years. Most important, by carefully listening to the experiences of the teenagers, he confirms what many other observers have noted: the generation coming of age now has increasingly open ideas about sexuality that will likely create huge cultural shifts in the coming decades. --David S. Azzolina (Library Journal )
In this lively and broadly researched book, Cornell University psychologist Savin-Williams reveals that the words gay teenagers use to describe their sexual preferences have changed radically over the past 30 years, and so have their attitudes towards same-sex relationships. In fact, many of them are reluctant to define their sexuality at all...Much of the volume is devoted to Savin-Williams's detailed critique of the psychological models currently used to study gay adolescence, which were developed in the 1970s and have barely changed since. These old models, Savin-Williams argues, don't reflect the diversity of the current gay adolescent experience...His book is an excellent resource for professional psychologists with gay patients, but it also contains enough invigorating, real-world case studies to interest general readers. (Publishers Weekly )
Madonna is said to be furious that her brother Chris Ciccione is telling all about her private life in a book out later this month.
Madonna, known to pals as “Em”, is leaving no stone unturned to determine the contents of the book, and so far her investigative work has uncovered material deeply hurtful to both her and Guy. “The book is harsh on Em, but even more on Guy. Chris blames him for turning Madonna into a bit of a homophobe,” The Sun quoted a source, as saying.
“He is going to claim Guy calls Madonna’s gay following ‘the Bunny Posse’. He will list rude comments Guy is supposed to have made to Em’s best friend Ingrid Casares, who is also gay,” the source added.
Armistead Maupin on gay elders, Internet dating and more
A talk with writer Armistead Maupin, whose "Tales of the City" became a PBS series and whose sequel, "Michael Tolliver Lives: A Novel," is out in paperback.
Claude Peck: Sure, San Francisco has a perfectly good elected mayor in gay-marriage maverick Gavin Newsom, but who could debate the assertion that the city's unofficial mayor is novelist Armistead Maupin?
Rick Nelson: Not me. I soaked up his SF-adoring "Tales of the City" series like a Bounty paper towel since first encountering it in the early 1980s. I was thrilled that he returned to "Tales," after an 18-year hiatus, with "Michael Tolliver Lives."
CP: I recall that you liked Maupin's newest book. Let's phone him!
RN: Armistead, do you think the California Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling will survive a November voter referendum?
Armistead Maupin: After a summer of watching happy couples flocking to the state to get married, I think people are going to find it more and more unreasonable to take that privilege away.
CP: Do you see it as a potentially divisive presidential-campaign issue?
Maupin: The sad truth is that gay rights have always been the disposable card in the poker game of American politics. They'll speak out for us just so far, and when push comes to shove, suddenly we're supposed to keep our mouths shut and not bring up the issue. Both (presumed Republican presidential nominee John) McCain and (presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack) Obama are going to have to address it one way or another, and time is on our side in this battle. All polls indicate that the younger generations of Americans have no issue with this whatsoever. More of Armistead Maupin on gay elders, Internet dating and more Scripps News, D
Michale Luongo's anthology of gay travel writing attempts to go beyond the recognizable Western symbols and tropes of “gayness”: rainbow flags, Pride parades and stories about coming out. A number of the authors point out that it's the West that fuses gay identity and gay sex; men in many Muslim cultures are unafraid of holding hands in public without being particularly gay. Luongo writes, after trying to discern between gay romance and everyday gestures in Kabul, “I wonder if I was seeing a society that simply took any form of love, including affection between men, as a wonderful thing.”
Authors honestly foreground the entanglement of race and desire, the exoticizing that comes with that and what happens when the very presence of ( mostly ) white gay men in tourist traps also makes them part of the commercial structure. Encounters aren't always peaceful. In Martin Foreman's “A Market and a Mosque,” the author writes about Sylhet, Bangladesh—a small city that appears, on the surface, to be reaping the benefits of global migration. The influx of money from immigrants sending money back to Sylhet has resulted in a new boom economy of sorts, especially for young men who trade sex for money. Foreman thinks he has a special connection to the place: “ … since most of the Bangladeshis in the UK [ Foreman's native country ] live in my home borough of Tower Hamlets, I feel a kind of affinity with the place. Whether or not Sylhet feels an affinity with me is a different matter.”
When I Knew: “I knew I was gay when the most exciting part of my Bar Mitzvah was meeting with the party planner.” — Howard Bragman, public relations executive
“When I was six I loved my first grade teacher so much I knew I would have to grow up to be a boy so I could come back and ask her to marry me.” — Tammy Lynn Etheridge, actress
In his 2005 book When I Knew author Robert Trachtenberg compiled the stories of famous and mainstream Americans retelling the moments they knew they were attracted to the same sex. Make-up artist Jeff Judd remembers, at seven years old, trying to crane his neck in such a way that he’d be able to peer under Tarzan’s loincloth while lounging in front of the TV. Comic Elvira Kurt recalls watching “The Trouble with Angles” for the umpteenth time and realizing what she wanted out of life: to be a bad girl who gets punished by Rosalind Russell. Both witty and heartfelt, Trachtenberg’s compilation would be nearly impossible to match. But local filmmaker Lisa Marie Evans is taking a shot, adapting the idea to the big screen.
The first locally produced, original documentary created for the Kansas City Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Evans’ “When Did You Know?” started with an idea she and festival director Jamie Rich had over lunch a few months ago. The two were discussing ways to get residents more involved in the annual event and landed on a concept inspired by Trachtenberg. The Tenth Voice, the weekly LGBT program on KKFI FM 90.1, had already started recording local individuals’ coming-out experiences. Over the past few weeks, Evans has been capturing those a-ha moments on camera.
On Tuesday night she was scrambling to get the film finished up. The final cut includes 26 interviews, with the music of local acts like the Ssion and Kristie Stremel.
Both witty and heartfelt, Trachtenberg’s compilation would be nearly impossible to match. But local filmmaker Lisa Marie Evans is taking a shot, adapting the idea to the big screen.
The first locally produced, original documentary created for the Kansas City Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Evans’ “When Did You Know?” started with an idea she and festival director Jamie Rich had over lunch a few months ago. The two were discussing ways to get residents more involved in the annual event and landed on a concept inspired by Trachtenberg. The Tenth Voice, the weekly LGBT program on KKFI FM 90.1, had already started recording local individuals’ coming-out experiences. Over the past few weeks, Evans has been capturing those a-ha moments on camera.
On Tuesday night she was scrambling to get the film finished up. The final cut includes 26 interviews, with the music of local acts like the Ssion and Kristie Stremel.
It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be disappointed. --Brad Thomas Parsons
No one has a better ear and eye for the American city than Richard Price, and in Lush Lifee, his first novel in five years, he leaves the fictional environs of Dempsy, New Jersey, where Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan were set, for a few crowded blocks of Manhattan's Lower East Side. There's a crime at the heart of the story, but you don't read Price for plot. Instead, you listen as he peels apart layers of class and history through the way his characters talk to each other: hipster bartenders who tell people they're really writers, homeboys from housing projects named after the Jewish immigrants who have long left the neighborhood, and cops, cops, cops, circling the streets looking for a collar, disappearing into their cases as their own lives go to ruin.
Any list of the top ten most highly-charged issues in human life would surely include these three: religion, sexuality, and being a teenager. In this engaging novel by Alex Sanchez, all three of these issues are woven together in a poignant and moving coming-of-age story for people of faith. Many in the baby boomer generation were certainly bereft of any resources at all that brought together religion and sexuality in helpful ways, let alone all the angst that goes along with being an adolescent. This novel bridges that gap and one can only hope that it will get into the hands of those who today need it most - lesbian and gay teenagers in repressive religious homes or churches with no one to talk to about their lives.
Harry Knox, the director of the HRC Religion and Faith Program, notes that sometimes fiction is exactly the right medium for exploring faith and sexuality. "I only wish," he says, "'The God Box' was around when I was a teenager!" Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, more pointedly observes how this novel "evokes the crucifying experience of adolescents wrestling with their sexual identity and their identity as Christians. This book is a gift not just to teenagers, but to those who love and work with them." Perhaps more pointedly still, the Rev. Dan Peeler, from the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, says that "this book will save lives."
Peeler is certainly not wrong about that. Far too many LGBT people commit suicide every year for religious reasons; one would be too many. Some estimates put that number as high as 1,200 - per year! Today's youth deserve so much better, and this novel is at least one way to get an affirming religious message into their hands. In fact, Sanchez has a whole series of novels that can prove helpful (and entertaining) for both teens and adults
As the AIDS crisis dawns in the early 1980s, two small town gay men make a commitment to one another. While a good deal of gay fiction focuses on sex, one author takes a closer look at what it means for two men to have a meaningful relationship. That author is Nick Poff, recently awarded the Gold medal in Gay/Lesbian fiction by ForeWord Magazine. In his third novel "The Handyman's Promise," Poff continues the tale of Ed Stephens and Rick Benton.
Ed is a handyman in Porterfield, Indiana. Former mailman Rick is a real estate agent who is returning to Porterfield after time away to gather more experience in his new career. The two men are partners, determined to keep their relationship strong. But obstacles get in the way--time away from each other, small town homophobic mentalities, and then the dawn of the AIDS crisis.
Readers of "The Handyman's Dream" and the "The Handyman's Reality" have watched Rick and Ed date, then become a couple. The two men have gone from the euphoria of falling in love, to lovers' squabbles, and learning how to make their relationship work. Now in "The Handyman's Promise" they continue their lives as a married couple, in a time and place where the thought of two men being married is not even a remote possibility. Regardless, their love bonds them together. They are determined to see their relationship through the long-term.
Handyman Ed knows other people can be cavalier about their promises, but he will not make a promise he cannot keep. The commitment of Ed's relationship with Rick is refreshing in a genre where sex, drugs and dysfunction have often been the focus. With the help of a supporting cast of well-loved characters, Ed the Handyman shows that promises can be kept.
Nick Poff has stated he intended to write a trilogy of Handyman novels, but already fans are asking for more. His domestic emphasis, devoid of sensationalism and erotica, is a breath of fresh air in gay fiction. Poff's chronicling of the modern gay culture provides a new perspective from two committed small town men. Behind the story is the music soundtrack of the 1980s, so that the novel reads like romantic comedy films from that era. Anyone who loves a good romance, male or female, straight or gay, will love "The Handyman's Promise."
About the Author Nick Poff is a life-long Hoosier. After a long career in radio broadcasting, he decided to pursue his first love: writing
Madonna is said to be furious that her brother Chris Ciccione is telling all about her private life in a book out later this month. 
