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Based on the strange behavior of Drs. Jekyll and Frankenstein and their preoccupation with male spaces, we may question what they are hiding...

Dumas’ novel not only depicted lesbians in a positive light but gave them a happy ending and an escape from society.

Starting in 1887, Prime-Stevenson subverted the boy book form by injecting overt same-sex love between adolescents.

Hahm aimed to create a unified lesbian and trans movement. By 1930, she headed an organization for Berliners regardless of their gender presentation.

Queer amateur movie-making between the 1930s and 1960s was an exciting period of experimentation with self-representation.

THE INFLUENTIAL literary critic, writer, and activist c (1902–1950) measured writers by the degree to which they could express the spirit of the times in which they lived. He lifted this idea from T. S. Eliot, about whom Matthiessen wrote an early book. But even before The Achievement of T. S. Eliot (1935), he hadMore

Wilde’s comments on the Greekness of Whitman’s poetry and physical appearance seemed to carry a hidden message.

Phil Melanson keeps Florenzer engaging by setting this novel about Leonardo da Vinci amid a power struggle between the Pope and the Medici family of Florence.

DON BACHARDY’S prolific sixty-year career as an artist—his body of work encompasses about 17,000 portraits—would be reason enough for a 400-page book about him.

IN THE WORDS of queer musicologist Philip Brett, “all musicians, we must remember, are faggots in the parlance of the male locker room.” Author Jon Savage seeks to demonstrate this point across almost 800 pages of The Secret Public, tracing the connection between music and queerness from the 1950s to about 1980, but he also goes well beyond.

Brian T. Blackmore begins To Hear and to Respond, his history of Quaker support of homosexuals, in the years following World War II, when the U.S. was engulfed in a wave of homophobia. Police entrapment of men seeking sex with men filled prisons with convicted sex offenders.

Brief reviews of the books: The CBGB Conspiracy; Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950; Maryville; and Caravaggio: 1571-1610; and the film, Kiss of the Spider Woman.

In The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick: Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS, author Martin Padgett pays tribute to Hardwick, the plaintiff in the 1986 case. In doing so, ...

Gregory Hischak, curator of the Edward Gorey House since 2020, and the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, which manages his creative legacy, have collaborated on E Is for Edward: a fittingly overstuffed tribute to the prolific artist.

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE’s absorbing novel opens on the dancefloor of New York’s Limelight, the iconic nightclub known for its theatricality, excess, and drugs. This beginning invites readers into the world of Terry Dactyl, the trans lesbian narrator whose (mis)adventures are the subject of the tale.

OUTLIVING MICHAEL is a touching, reflective collection of poems remembering a dear friend lost to AIDS. In clear, direct lines, almost like prose, poet Steven Reigns captures Michael Church in his fullness.

IN HIS deeply researched chronicle For a Spell, author Jason Ezell focuses on a subculture of self-proclaimed gay “sissies” who lived in the American South (particularly Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina) between 1976 and 1981.

IN ERIC C. WAT’S short story collection, Daddy Issues, the author reveals hidden responsibilities, roles, and rules that shape the lives of his queer, Asian-American protagonists, who have come of age in L.A. and now must contend with adult life.

THE GAY BDSM biker movie Pillion fits surprisingly well into the romantic comedy formula, deftly interweaving comedy, drama, and romance. But those expecting a trope-heavy film about love and acceptance ...

WHETHER you’re queer or not, we all sometimes police our feelings or hold back our true selves, an internal struggle that can build anxiety and compel us to ask what it means to live truthfully. Gay writer-director Carmen Emmi explores these conundrums in his evocative feature debut, an edgy psychological thriller titled Plainclothes ...

SINCE LATE LAST YEAR, social media have been abuzz about the Canadian TV series Heated Rivalry, a titillating tale of forbidden love between two professional hockey stars. In the show, Russian rebel Ilya Rozanov and Canadian choirboy Shane Hollander begin casually hooking up as teens shortly before their rookie season, then realize gradually, over aMore

BOOTS Created by Andy Parker Netflix   WHILE YOU WERE busy watching the sports romance Heated Rivalry as it crashed a Zamboni named Desire into a wall of spectators, you may have missed Boots. It too is interested in gay history and the closet in a traditionally masculine milieu—sans the ice skates, six-packs, and unsexyMore

THE GREAT Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) was renowned throughout the world by the time of his death. His major works, including the First Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, Romeo and Juliet, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the opera Eugene Onegin, and the ballets Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, were lauded in Russia, Europe,More

IF THERE’S ANYTHING poet Jack Spicer (1925–1965) and his archivist-biographer, the late Kevin Killian, can teach a reader, it’s that anything can be a poem, even a letter. The letter, as a literary thing, is one of several “occasional” forms, like “Dedication to Your Swimming Pool” by the Roman poet Statius, written to crash aMore

THE FEMALE NUDE has been the subject of art for at least 30,000 years. Since the Venus of Willendorf to the present day, the meaning of the female body has remained a flashpoint in art and culture.

Takes on news of the day.

Readers' thoughts.

  THIS ISSUE takes us back to the dawn of LGBT identity as we explore some of the 19th-century writers who first put legibly queer characters and behaviors on the page. Though it was 1868 before Karl Maria Kertbeny coined the term “homosexual,” and it didn’t become widely used for another couple of decades, ourMore

“THAT THIS, the most perfectly natural & necessary & easy joy in the world should be branded as abominable, is so utterly silly, that I almost fail to believe the idea can be seriously entertained, & almost fail to realise the risk.” Geoffry Wheatly Cobb, the wealthy owner of Caldicot Castle in Wales, wrote thisMore

THE NEWS came as a shock. Only two days after legendary German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim had shared photographs of his wedding to longtime partner Oliver Sechting—images full of celebrity guests from the film world, a cake topped with a giant penis, and Rosa himself looking radiant in pink despite being in a wheelchair—his husbandMore

  galveston 1977 our first spring break we shared a beach house though it was april it was chilly and we saw only puffy dowagers in bathing caps enormous dull yellow dogs we tapped our typewriters sang wistful pop and roasted hens traced the surf for hours fizzy suds between toes you composed plays andMore