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I have never mentioned a book’s cover in a review, but this time I must. The leafy photo of a tender, teenage Ashbery picking cherries in the family orchards was taken by his father Chet, an accomplished photographer as well as a farmer. Its use as the entire cover, with a superimposed “postcard home” bearingMore

Male homosexuality appears to have arisen via human evolution because of its potential benefits for the functionality and survivability of the family.

The attacks on Alger Hiss came from none other than the future president Richard Nixon, who was hoping to win his first term in the U.S. Senate. Also attacking Hiss was the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose purge of suspected Communists was in full swing, and his lawyer Roy Cohn, a closeted gay man.

This interview was conducted by telephone in late September 2017.

The irony that lies behind a fascinating new collection of the two men’s letters, The Luck of Friendship (expertly edited by Peggy L. Fox and Thomas Keith), is our knowledge that Williams wanted both commercial and literary success.

What made Kallman a better candidate for Auden’s affections than previous attachments was their shared class origins, Kallman’s precocious intelligence, and his passion for language.

IT’S QUITE POSSIBLE that only a few readers of this magazine will know who Charles Henri Ford was. Yet here we have a lengthy and heavily annotated book from Bloomsbury Press about his work—or, rather, about certain aspects of his work.

IT HAS BEEN three decades since Andy Warhol died at New York Hospital (on February 22, 1987) of complications from gall bladder surgery. In 2017, over a dozen books about Warhol or his art, ranging from the frivolous to the academic, were published. After Andy and 3D Warhol can be found at either end ofMore

OVER A QUARTER CENTURY ago, Allan Bérubé’s groundbreaking book Coming Out Under Fire (1990) brought attention to the plight—and the heroism—of thousands of gay and lesbian Americans in the armed services during World War II. A monumental piece of scholarship, it justly deserved the awards and accolades it received.

The story of Studio 54 is that same paradox of chaos married to order, bohemians hobnobbing with establishment titans. The club’s very name, in contrast to London’s aspirational “Heaven,” mundanely announced its spot on the grid, 254 W. 54th Street.

Maupin’s latest book, the memoir Logical Family, is his first book of nonfiction, yet he brings to it the unique storytelling gifts that have animated his fiction, and he more than delivers on the “tap dancing” that will win his readers’ attention and engagement.

  The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne Hogarth. 580 pages, $28.   JOHN BOYNE has published nine novels in Ireland and a number of books for young adults, including the international bestseller, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He is not, however, known for featuring gay characters or themes, which is perhaps why theMore

Reviews of Writers Who Love Too Much; David Bowie Made Me Gay; Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture; and Our Horses, Ourselves.

  Charles Ludlam Lives! Charles Busch, Bradford Louryk, Taylor Mac, and the Queer Legacy of the Ridiculous Theatre Company by Sean F. Edgecomb Michigan. 246 pages, $70.     FOR THOSE who liked Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre Company in its heyday in the 1960s, what can one say? There was a lot to like. It was a theaterMore

ONE STRIKING ASPECT of this book is the author’s animus toward the literary executors and biographers of the Romantic poets Shelley and Byron. John Lauritsen is correct that until the early 1980s most academics and biographers resisted acknowledging “homoeroticism in the works and lives of canonized authors.” This resistance is now more historical artifact thanMore

WHEN MICHAEL AUSIELLO spotted Christopher “Kit” Cowan at a New York event for gay athletes, it was a match made in Manhattan, but there is no happy ending to this boy-meets-boy love story. To say so is not to ruin anything for the reader. The author reveals the unhappy ending to this memoir in itsMore

IN THIS POWERFUL MEMOIR, filmmaker Parvez Sharma describes the physical, emotional, and spiritual journey he embarked on while going on the Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES recounts what was in fact the battle of the decade: the women’s movement and the sexual revolution versus the inevitable male chauvinist backlash, all telescoped into a single event in 1973.

Fun Home avoids simple resolution of complex issues, and the musical feels faithful to the tone and storyline of Bechdel’s 2006 memoir. But memoir and musical are distinct forms. The former relied on its author’s childhood journal and an astonishing cache of saved letters, memorabilia, notes, photos, news clips, and literary quotes to generate drawingsMore

JUAN BASTOS is a portrait painter whose work was on exhibit at a major retrospective at the Denenberg Fine Arts Gallery in West Hollywood, CA, in November. Included in the exhibition were the covers of several issues of The Gay & Lesbian Review that featured Juan’s art.             I had a lively conversation with Juan about hisMore

  Three Photos in No Need of a Punchline They pretty much speak for themselves. They come from around the world, and all three involve matters of questionable taste as locally defined. For anyone who missed this sign in front of the Bella Vista Baptist Church in Edgewater, Florida, which went TV viral in earlyMore

  Author Questions Basis for Review To the Editor: I was disappointed in your review [Nov.-Dec. ’17] of my novel Our Time: San Francisco in the 70s. Your reviewer found my resume more important than his job as a reviewer to comment on the style and content of the novel. Did he read the wrong thing?More

    I CAN REMEMBER every time I have used a men’s restroom since coming out as a man. The first time, I was walking through my university with a friend, and I hesitated at the door as the outline of a male stick figure drilled into my gaze, my hesitation prompting my friend toMore

At the 1977 Boston Gay Pride march, Shively became infamous for burning pages from the Bible—as well as his Harvard diploma and a teaching contract—as a protest against oppressive institutions. This act of incendiary and effective political theater—it nearly caused a riot—later obscured his work as an organizer, scholar, poet, and publisher.

IN KEEPING WITH this magazine’s annual tradition, we remember here the activists, writers, artists, entertainers, and other notable members of the LGBT community, and some allies, who died over the past twelve months.