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Tóibín knows a thing or two about famous writers who were repressed homosexuals.  Mann was not afraid to recount his furtive gay encounters in his journals.

VETERAN ACTIVIST Peter Staley attained a new level of notoriety after appearing in David France’s Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague (2012). The film follows several key members of ACT UP as they perform various acts of political theater, from occupying the headquarters of a big pharma corporation to draping a giant condom over the houseMore

Tripp made a point of letting Kinsey know that he was homosexual and was writing a book on the subject (which became The Homosexual Matrix).

In 1927, Arnold Pyle (1909–1973), one of Wood’s former students, became his assistant. Pyle was eighteen and Wood, 36. Good-looking, tall, athletic, with thick black hair, the heterosexual Pyle epitomized the type of man Wood continued to fall for, over and over, throughout his life.

Willa Cather aspired to the status of Artist while living with, and getting help from, a very intelligent woman (Edith Lewis) who had given up the arts to earn a living by selling soap.

NO ISSUE on “the Heartland” would be complete without an article on Chicago, undoubtedly the beating heart—or is it the brain?—of this vast expanse. With this realization, I immediately thought of John D’Emilio as the logical person to contact for a targeted tutorial on Chicago’s LGBT history and culture. A longtime contributor to this magazineMore

            The title character, Better Davis, is a drag queen who comes vividly to life in her own story. There is great humor in this account as she portrays Bette Davis going blind in the movie Dark Victory.

IN THIS SWEET debut collection of love poems, What Are the Men Writing in the Sugar?, Matty Bennett puts a first serious gay relationship on a pedestal to admire it from every angle.

            As happens in so many memoirs by gay men, Sharif was bullied as a child. His parents were divorced and he was shuttled from home to home when he was young, from Canada to the Middle East, wherever his family members lived. Still, he came of age in what most would consider a comfortableMore

            The world of The Membranes is familiar to us in 2021 but was quite prescient in 1996. In this version of Earth, the planet has been ravaged by climate change, humans have retreated to domes under the ocean, cyborgs have become cheap labor, and giant media conglomerates control what information we have access toMore

THE CALM, beautifully aged face of the poet Adrienne Rich gazes at the reader from the new book by her friend, Ed Pavlic, who explains that his relationship with Rich began when she (as a contest judge) chose his first book of poems for a prize, and they began exchanging letters in 2001.

Reviews of Of Solids and Surds, Occasional Views, Volume 1 “More about Writing” and Other Essays by Samuel R. Delany; Home Stretch by Graham Norton; and Take Down Portraits: Drawings and Portraits by Larry Stanton by Winthrop Smith

            The overall message in ¡Hola Papi! is that each of us is in charge of the narrative we tell ourselves about our lives. Indeed, each story is a variation on the idea that it’s important to unlearn a tendency to be overly critical of oneself, or, as he puts it, to marshal “the courageMore

ONE THEME of this extraordinary exploration of a hidden gay story concerns the lessons parents teach their children—two sons, in this case, coming from vastly different circumstances.

            For many people, these paintings seemed to expose the true, animal nature of humanity, which, after the devastation of two world wars, could no longer be viewed as civilized or a force for good.

            Vice Patrol is a compelling and important book. It shows us how the diverse interests and competing claims about the policing of gay lives in the postwar years played out in the courts. It reminds us how the criminal justice system was deeply enmeshed in, and transformed by, the larger cultural struggles over theMore

            Although King would have you believe she is a great champion for social justice, she’s closer to Booker T. Washington than to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Like Washington, a master fundraiser and consummate people pleaser, King has always played to the crowd and kept an eye on the bottom line.

            The idea that Hansberry came out of nowhere to become an overnight success with A Raisin in the Sun is one of the misperceptions that’s dispelled by two new books on Hansberry, which show her to be a passionate and dedicated writer, artist, thinker, and activist.

WHY DOES Eve Adams, born Chava Zloczewer, in Mlawa, Russian Poland, in 1891, matter to us today? The answers to this and a host of other mysteries can be found in Jonathan Ned Katz’ new biography, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams.

  MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) by Lil Nas X Columbia Records   LIL NAS X’s 2021 music video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” challenges traditional categories. This multitemporal fantasy is divided into three acts representing the biblical book of Genesis, Græco-Roman mythology, and the Harrowing of Hell, retold with a queer,More

            Murray’s list of unheralded accomplishments is a long one. Among many firsts, she was the first African-American to receive a Yale law doctorate (1965) and the first Black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Her signal contribution occurred in the field of jurisprudence.

HUNGERHEART (1915) is a pioneering, semi-autobiographical lesbian novel written by British author Christabel Marshall under the masculine pseudonym Christopher St. John. The novel is a first-person narrative of Joanna “John” Montolivet that follows her on her quest for love.

An interview with Daniel Heath Justice by Neil Ellis Orts. Justice currently teaches at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) in their First Nations and Indigenous Studies program. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He has published extensively in literary theory and history, his best-known book being Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.

  War Heroes  Another episode in the annals of people rising up in defense of minority rights: the residents of a town in Oregon banded together to put up a giant gay pride flag after the Newberg School Board voted to ban all “political speech” from its schools, including such “divisive symbols” as gay prideMore

Readers' thoughts.

  LAST JUNE, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Fulton v. Philadelphia) that the city of Philadelphia must resume offering contracts to a religious organization that discriminates against same-sex couples seeking to adopt foster children. With this decision, the Court has authorized discrimination against LGBT people under the false pretext of “freedom to exercise religion.”More

  WE’VE DEVOTED an issue to New York City and visited the West Coast many times, but don’t wish to fall into the familiar trap of neglecting the part of the country between the coasts that’s justly called “the Heartland.” Whether there’s anything discernibly “Midwestern” or “Prairie” about the people featured here in some culturalMore

           Maritime commerce in general, and whaling in particular, provided a haven for men of all races and creeds in the 19th century.

    THREE AMERICAN LESBIANS whose importance to activism and literature cannot be overstated died within a few months of each other this year. Each was responsible for a remarkable number of “firsts,” either individually or with associates, some of which are noted in what follows.   Madeline Davis was the author of Stonewall NationMore