THE NAME “Ivor Novello” is perhaps only recognized on these shores by those Robert Altman movie fans who saw the director’s stylish British manor house whodunit Gosford Park (2001).

THOMAS GLAVE describes himself as “a Jamerican” to reflect both his Jamaican and his American heritage. Indeed, he often has difficulty reconciling these two identities: traveling back and forth between the two countries, he often wonders “which passport to use on this trip or that one, Jamaican or U.S.-which citizen will I be this time (re-)entering ‘my’ country?”

… a fast-moving novel about the artists and writers who flocked to Luhan’s salon in New Mexico in the 1930’s. …

THE CHALLENGE for any writer of a memoir is to make the story interesting to someone else who, unlike a psychotherapist, isn’t being paid to hear it. A writer’s fame can guarantee an audience, but those lacking fame often resort to hyperbole and sensational drama. This is not true of Wade Rouse in his coming-of-age memoir, America’s Boy. …

GAVIN BUTT’S BACKSTAGE exposé of the New York art world of the 1950’s careens between artsy jargon and artsy gossip. He rather defensively lays out his thesis in a lengthy introduction peppered with breathless 55-word sentences stating his themes. Doubtless the author is on his guard because he incorporates hearsay, rumor, and urban legend into dissection of this pivotal post-World War II Manhattan subculture.

A “RICE QUEEN” is generally defined as a white man who’s attracted to Asian men, while a “potato queen” is an Asian man who’s attracted to white men. The terms are often used disparagingly, with rice queens seen as sexual imperialists and potato queens as self-hating race traitors. For this reason, it takes some nerve for an author to come out as either on the cover of a book. But the authors of the two books under review have done just that …

A GATHERING OF ANGELS, by gay Texas poet Larry Dean Hamilton, relates a remarkable life story through a lyrical, sometimes dreamlike prose style. …

“YES, ABSOLUTELY, this was the greatest day of my life,” declares Trisha Driscoll, the fourteen-year-old outer suburbanite narrator of Michelle Tea’s latest whirlwind street-girl adventure, Rose of No Man’s Land. …