07.01.08 -- The buzz: Greenwood Press will
publish a three-volume encyclopedia titled LGBTQ America Today
in November 2008. 
According to an article written by Guy Trebay in The New York
Times, the book that pregnant father Thomas Beatie was contracted
to write, has been shelved.
Simon Spotlight Entertainment will publish Christopher Ciccone's
Life With My Sister Madonna, based on his life and forty-seven
years of growing up with and working with his sister, written
with Wendy Leigh.
University of Wisconsin Press will publish The Diva Complex:
Gay Men on the Women Who Shaped Their Lives, an anthology
edited by Michael Montlack, and including writers such as David
Trinidad, Lloyd Schwartz, and Wayne Kostenbaum, paying passionate
homage to a wide range of divas — among them Julia Child,
Wonder Woman, Virginia Woolf, and Margaret Cho.
Keith Stern's Queers in History, a reference book of
the hundreds of prominent people throughout history who were gay,
lesbian, or bisexual, will be published by BenBella Books.
Alyson will publish Out Traveler Atlanta by Jordan McCauley
with Matt Burkhalter.
Del Ray will publish Michael Thomas Ford's Jane Bites Back,
a novel about Jane Austen as a modern-day vampire and her frustration
with her inability to get another novel published.
Senator Larry Craig has announced that he is writing a book.
Savannah Knoop, who played the role of JT Leroy in public, is
writing a book about the charade for Seven Stories titled
Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy.
Harmony Books will publish a memoir by Tony winner Patti LuPone,
for release in 2010.
Novelist Philip Galanes is writing a new etiquette column for
The New York Times.
Matthew Bourne is choreographing an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's
novel The Picture of Dorian Gray that will premiere in
Edinburgh in August.
The New York City Opera has commissioned an opera based on "Brokeback
Mountain," the Annie Proulx short story that became the basis
for the Oscar-winning movie. Charles Wuorinen will compose the
opera, which is set to premiere in the spring of 2013.
Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, which had announced
plans to close at the end of June has a new owner and will stay
in business, according to the Star Tribune. Ruta Skujins, a St.
Paul native, will become the first sole owner of the bookshop
that was started 38 years ago as a workers' cooperative.
Publishers Weekly reported that John Mitzel, proprietor
of Calamus Books in Boston, along with 40 other booksellers, had
been named in a lawsuit filed by author Larry Townsend for copyright
infringement. The suit stems from a dispute over unpaid fees allegedly
owed the author by his distributor, Oklahoma-based Nazca Plains
Corp. Townsend is the author of The Leatherman's Handbook
(and its follow-up, The Leatherman's Handbook II).
OutLoud Bookstore in Nashville has been put up for sale by co-owners
Ted Jensen and Kevin Medley.
Lambda Literary Foundation now has a MySpace page. The Foundation’s
2nd annual Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers will be held August
10 - 17, 2008.
The Atlanta Queer Literary Festival is set for October 15-19,
2008. For more details visit: www.atlqueerlitfest.blogspot.com.
A three part
video of the Fellow Travelers project, a collection of images
of Gay male liberation pioneers taken by Mark Thompson, can be
found on YouTube.
Julio Vasconcellos and the online Experience Project, have compiled
video, photographic, and written testimonials of the recent gay
weddings in California. www.experienceproject.com/topics/gay_lesbian.php?r=g1.
And Metaversal Village is releasing a new video game based on
the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
David, David, and more David: Hachette Book
Group USA is offering a digital download of the audiobook version
of David Sedaris's new When You Are Engulfed in Flames
for sale via their Web site — the first time the company
has sold directly to consumers from their site. The Observer noted
that the book has been characterized as fiction by Barnes &
Noble in their weekly bestseller lists. Sedaris told The New
York Times, "I've always been a huge exaggerator, but
when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true,
I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because
3% of it isn't true." Sedaris also brought a crowd of over
500 people to Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, setting a new record
at the store for staying power—Sedaris, after reading to
fans, stayed and signed books for nine and a half hours.
Events of Note: The Lavender Library: The House
of Homosexual Culture, Tuesday July 15, 2008, 7.30 p.m., Queen
Elizabeth Hall, London. A special festival event celebrating queer
literature. Julian Clary, Dave McAlmont, Andy Bell, Maureen Duffy,
Stella Duffy, Paul Burston, Karen Mcleod, and Rupert Smith champion
their favorite books, and reveal how they've inspired their life
and work. More details here: www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Michael Luongo
will be conducting a special photo lecture at the Smithsonian
Institute on Buenos Aires, Argentina on Thursday July 17, 2008
in Washington, DC. 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m., The Smithsonian, S. Dillon
Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, SW (near 12th Street, SW).
(This location is on the Mall next to the Smithsonian Castle.)
Metro: Smithsonian Mall Exit (Blue/Orange) Event Code: CODE: 1M2-370.
Buy advance tickets at www.residentassociate.org.
Kudos: Canadian poet Rachel Zolf received the
Trillium book prize for best poetry book for Human Resources.
The Trillium Awards, awarded by the Ontario government, is the
province's leading award for literature.
Robin Blaser received the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize, the world’s
most lucrative poetry award for a single book. Blaser won for
his collection The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser,
which includes poems written over 50 years. Poet John Ashbery
received the international Griffin poetry prize for Notes From
the Air: Selected Later Poems. Both awards carry a $50,000 prize.
Manuel Muñoz
was among the writers awarded a fiction fellowship from the New
York Foundation for the Arts.
cobs’ book Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach
won the Delaware Press Association’s 2008 First Place Award
for non-fiction humor. Two of her columns from the magazine Letters
from Camp Rehoboth were also singled out for prizes.
Woof! A Gay Man's Guide to Dogs by Andrew De Prisco
was awarded the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Gay/Lesbian
category. Claude J. Summers, general editor of glbtq.com,
received the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award at the Lambda Literary
Foundation Awards ceremony in West Hollywood, California.
The Monette-Horwitz Trust Awards were established in
the will of the late novelist Paul Monette to recognize his relationship
with the late Roger Horwitz and to honor individuals and organizations
for their significant contributions toward eradicating homophobia.
The Queer Foundation has announced the recipients of its college
scholarships for 2008–2009. They are Christopher Chavez
of Phoenix, AZ, Geoffrey Mino of Newtown, PA, and Ericka Sokolower-Shain
of Berkeley, CA. Chavez, whose award-winning essay is titled "In
or Out," will attend the University of Chicago. Mino's essay
is titled "New Youth Rising." He will attend Brown.
Sokolower-Shain, who will study at Wesleyan, was recognized for
her essay "Beyond the Line." Read more about 2008–2009
recipients at queerfoundation.org.
Golden Crown Finalists: The Golden Crown Literary
Society, a literary and educational organization for the study,
discussion, enjoyment, and enhancement of lesbian literature will
have their 2008 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, from July 31 -
August 3, 2008. The Fourth Annual GCLS Literary Awards will be
presented on August 2, 2008 at the Wild Horse Pass Resort. Finalists
have been announced in eleven categories, including Debut Author,
Trailblazer, Popular Choice, Poetry, Dramatic Fiction, Romance,
Mystery, Erotica, Speculative Fiction, Anthology, and Short Story,
Collection, and can be found on the Society’s Web site:
www.gclscon.com/2008GCLSAwards-Finalists.html.
Open Calls: Wendell Ricketts, who edited Everything
I Have Is Blue, an anthology of writing by working class
queers, is seeking fiction, memoir and poetry submissions for
the online Still Blue Project: More Writing By (For or About)
Working-Class Queers. Working-class writers of all genders
are welcome to submit. There are no limits on subject matter,
other than that erotica is not eligible for submission. More details
can be found at the Web site: www.everythingihaveisblue.com/still_call.html.
Passages: Native American poet, novelist, and
scholar Paula Gunn Allen, whose work cleared the path for many
Native writers, particularly Native Two-Spirit/GLBTQ folks and
Native feminists, died May 29, 2008. She was the author of numerous
books and editor of several collections, including Life Is
a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995 and The Sacred
Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions.
Her writing was inspired by Pueblo tales and is noted for its
strong political streak. Her novel, The Woman Who Owned The
Shadows, was published in 1983. The story revolves around
Ephanie, a mixed-blood like Allen herself, and her struggle to
express herself creatively. Allen was awarded a 2007 Lannan Foundation
Fellowship and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's
Circle of the Americas in 2001. In 2004 she received a Pulitzer
Prize nomination for her book Pocahontas: Medicine Woman,
Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat.
Jonathan Williams, the founder of the Jargon Society, the small
publishing house in the western mountains of North Carolina, died
on March 16, 2008 in Highlands, N.C. He was 79 and lived and worked
in Scaly Mountain, N.C. The cause was pneumonia. Williams authored
more than 25 books during his lifetime. Williams was also an accomplished
photographer whose images of writers, artists, gravestones and
natural landscapes are housed at Yale University. Williams founded
The Jargon Society at age 21 and published 113 books during his
lifetime. Guided by his quixotic mission — "To keep
afloat the Ark of Culture in these dark and tacky times"
— it spotlighted talented but neglected poets, writers and
artists, including Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Guy Davenport,
Louis Zukofsky, Paul Metcalf, Mina Loy and Lorine Niedecker. Among
his awards were a Guggenheim fellowship and NEA grants. Williams
is survived by his partner of 40 years, Thomas Meyer.
Michael Jon Shernoff, a psychotherapist for more than 30 years,
a prodigious writer, a professor, and an LGBT, AIDS, and environmental
activist, died on June 17, 2008 at his home in New York City at
the age of 57. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, according
to his partner of nine years, John Goodman. Gay City News
reported that Shernoff published more than 60 articles, mostly
related to mental health issues involving gay men, sexuality,
and mental health. He edited seven anthologies, including Gay
Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner. In 2006, Routledge
published Shernoff's book, Without Condoms: Unprotected Sex,
Gay Men and Barebacking. Donations in his memory can be made
to the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York 10011;
The Nature Conservancy, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington,
Virginia, 22203; and Lambda Legal, 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500,
New York 10005.
