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THE STORIES in Foolish Hearts remind us that the short story was once a mainstream art form for ordinary folks to read and enjoy. Most of these stories are gay romances that end either happily or poignantly and, for the most part, don’t spend much time in the bedroom.

Palmerino is a beautifully written and well-structured work, and after reading Vineta Colby’s 2003 biography titled Vernon Lee, I can say that Palmerino is based very closely on the life of Violet Paget (1856–1935)

  The Animals:  Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy Edited by Katherine Bucknell Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 481 pages, $30.   THIS EXTENSIVE COLLECTION of the letters between Christopher Isherwood and his longtime partner Dan Bachardy feels like a perfect companion volume to the excellent 2007 documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story, whichMore

Radio is the story of a middle-aged gay filmmaker returning to his homeland after living for over a decade in Paris. The book begins with the unnamed narrator musing to himself about the differences between euros and Estonian currency ...

[Wilfred] Owen collected antiques, even searching for them while on leave from the Front, hoping perhaps to sell them professionally after the war. He was inordinately attached to his mother, … [and] was obsessed, too, with growing older, something he never experienced given the mortal wound that killed him at age 25 just weeks beforeMore

Reviews of the books: Gender Failure, Body Geographic, Changing Lives, Making History: Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, and For Today I Am a Boy; and the film: Valentine Road.

  Under My Skin by Orville Lloyd Douglas Guernica Edition. 80 pages, $15. Haiti Glass by Lenelle Moïse City Lights/Sister Spit. 79 pages, $10.95 The Road to Emmaus by Spencer Reece Farrar, Straus and Giroux 124 pages, $24. Blue Hanuman by Joan Larkin Hanging Loose Press. 78 pages, $18.   ORVILLE LLOYD DOUGLAS concludes hisMore

THESE TWO BOOKS provide excellent examples of Hervé Guibert’s talent and style. A French writer and photographer who died from AIDS in 1991 at the age of 36, Guibert drew much of his work from his own life and his love of photography.

  Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America by Rachel Hope Cleves Oxford.  296 pages, $29.95   IT IS EARLY 19th-century America. Two New England women come to live and work together for more than forty years. They are respected in their community for their excellent tailoring skills, for their industrious support ofMore

  Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement by Ralf Dose Translated by Edward H. Willis Monthly Review Press. 128 pages, $23.   THIS SHORT BIOGRAPHY of Magnus Hirschfeld—about 100 pages, minus the extensive bibliography and notes—first appeared in a German series of “Jewish Miniatures.” Its author, Ralf Dose, seems to assume aMore

   Survival vividly recounts the story of this involvement.SEAN STRUB is the stereotypical “boy from Iowa” who came East as a teenager, landing first in Washington, D.C., where he was an elevator operator at the U.S. Capitol, and then, a couple of years later, in New York City. By the late 1970s, he was anMore

  LAST MAY, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took a major step toward transforming HIV prevention in the U.S. by recommending that healthcare providers consider prescribing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to uninfected patients who are at substantial risk of becoming infected. The CDC issued new clinical guidelines that could lead to a significantMore

  IT TOOK LARRY KRAMER nearly thirty years to get a film made of The Normal Heart. His play about the AIDS crisis opened at the Public Theater in New York in 1985. The movie rights were bought in 1986 by Barbra Streisand, for whom Kramer wrote a screenplay, but for one reason or anotherMore

IT’S EXHAUSTING being nice. I don’t even want to speak to the woman with neuropathy from Long Island that I sit beside on a bench outside the New Orleans airport on my way home from the literary festival Saints and Sinners, when she tells me she smells something burning. But, when I go over toMore

  BRITISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS—an educational institution roughly the equivalent of the elite private male boarding school in the United States, but far more influential in the formation of social identity and public policy—“are the nurseries of all vice and immorality,” harrumphs a character in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. In Boys Together: English Public Schools 1800-1864More

  WHEN I WAS in the grip of despair about a situation of unrequited love, I decided to make a list of the benefits of that state. Alas, I cannot find that list, and I don’t remember a single thing I wrote in an effort to assuage my pain. What I do remember, though, areMore

Reviews of the book: Autobiography by Morrissey; and the albums: In the Company of Strangers by Hannah & Maggie, and Human by Joseph Eid.

  Quipping for Equality  It was one of those stage-managed events in which a politician visits a popular venue and has a few awkward encounters with “real people” for the local press. But this time—at the Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas—President Obama met his match when he went to pay for his burgers and fries,More

  The following essay will appear in the forthcoming Male Sex Work and Society, edited by Victor Minichiello and John Scott (Harrington Park Press). Reprinted with permission. THE HISTORY of male prostitution extends deep into the past, mirroring the historical depth of what was referred to (wrongly, and with negative implication) as “the world’s oldestMore

  FOR YEARS I had heard stories of the fabled sex club, the Lab.oratory, located in an abandoned power station in East Berlin. Described by The Lonely Planet as a well-equipped “lab” with “plenty of toys and rooms for advanced sexual experimentation,” the name of the club alone should give us pause, reminding us thatMore

  The Case Against 8 Directed by Ben Cotner and Ryan White Moore’s Filmed Goods and Services, Tripod Media   IT HAS BEEN over a year since Prop 8 and DOMA were struck down, and events have been moving rapidly on the marriage equality front as the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling have rippled acrossMore

  A deeply divided Supreme Court ruled late last June in the “Hobby Lobby” case that companies can deny coverage of certain birth control methods if the company’s owners oppose them on religious grounds. While the ruling seemed quite narrow, many seasoned observers of the Court cautioned that the “religious exemption” could be extended toMore

  FEW PEOPLE expected the announcement last year of the creation of an LGBT literary award in South Korea, the first such book prize in the “Confucian cultural sphere,” which includes China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The announcement came at a time when LGBT issues are gaining increased, though still insufficient, exposure in Korean media.More

  CAROL QUEEN, PhD, is an author and activist whose work as a sex-positive feminist began in the 1970s and continues to this day. She was an early organizer for LGBT equality, an AIDS activist in the ’80s, and a sexologist who has lectured and written on all aspects of  human sexuality. She has servedMore

  Cabaret Directed by Sam Mendes Roundabout Theatre Company, New York City   IF YOU ONLY KNOW the musical Cabaret from the iconic Bob Fosse film starring Liza Minnelli and Michael York, then you know a version of the Christopher Isherwood “Sally Bowles” story that is no more or less true to its literary source thanMore