IN LIPSHITZ SIX, or Two Angry Blondes, T Cooper writes the story of four generations of the Lipshitz family. In 1903, after an especially horrific pogrom, Hersh and Esther and their four children emigrate from Kishinev, Russia, to the United States.
More
“HANGATURE” is a new word that you’ll learn from Scott Poulson-Bryant’s second book, Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America. It’s one of those words you know only a gay man could have coined. … The author defines it as “the amount of ability a dick had to hang.” In other words, it’s all about the size.
More… this is a remarkably dry-eyed journal, which jumps between entries written in 1992, when Katan was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer in her right breast, and those written ten years later, when she was diagnosed with cancer in her other …
More… Robert Hofler’s cultural biography of [Henry] Willson focuses heavily on his greatest known creation, Rock Hudson, but the book also tells a story about the Hollywood system in a bygone era, in a sense setting the story straight about gay Hollywood.
Willson is a figure worthy of a biography in part because of his key role in shaping the careers of many stars … As a star maker, Willson “invented” the Hollywood hunk and its other great incarnation, the teen idol, exemplified in his creation of Tab Hunter.
Hunter tells his own version of the story in his new memoir …
MoreIn part, it is the life of a gay celebrity. Rorem came of age in the years after World War II. He was a gifted composer, … [and]
Now we have his Selected Letters. …
More
FEW PEOPLE alive today would be able to conceive of an American university purging its student ranks of “undesirables” along the lines of Stalin’s purges or Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts of the 1950’s. Students on most college campuses today … have the freedom to live their lives in relative safety without interference from Big Brother. Thus one would be surprised to learn what happened at America’s premier Ivy League institution, Harvard University, in 1920.
More… Perhaps the best way to approach an understanding of transsexualism is to encounter the personal stories of those who have lived it. This is the impetus for Sexual Metamorphosis, edited by Jonathan Ames, a popular writer and performing storyteller. …
MoreWITH HIS DEBUT NOVEL, Wesley Stace (known to music lovers as John Wesley Harding) creates a world of repressed sexuality, confused identity, and deception lurking behind every corner. …
More
Short reviews of Casa Susanna and Kings in Their Castles.
More
THE BIBLE for writing quality fiction advances the following three commandments: avoid clichés, develop a distinctive voice, and show rather than tell. Occasionally, there comes a novel that stands in direct opposition to these commandments and still manages to render a decent narrative. Frederick Smith’s debut title, Down for Whatever, is not such a novel.
More