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“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 otherMore

... 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 ...

... 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 hisMore

In 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. ...

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.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. ...

WITH 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. ...

Short reviews of Casa Susanna and Kings in Their Castles.

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.

THE POWER of performance art-its ability to connect with you viscerally-is in the fact that it’s performed live. You the viewer may or may not commit to the performer on stage (or wherever), but when you do, there’s no hiding the effect. Indeed the reaction of the audience is intrinsically connected to the performance itselfMore

This piece was first published in Boston’s Bay Windows, 10/6/05.

Born in 1966, Kirkman gradated from North Carolina State and received an M.A. from the New School for Social Research in New York. He now spends his time between New York and Silverlake, a hip part of East Los Angeles. This in-person interview was conducted in LA last October.

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“AS HOMOSEXUALITY becomes more socially acceptable, we may even begin to find families based on homosexual ‘marriages’ with the partners adopting children.” So said Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, the 1970 publishing sensation that introduced Americans to “information overload” and assorted other innovations he predicted for the coming years.

  This article was excerpted and adapted from one that first appeared in Sexuality Research & Social Policy: Journal of National Sexuality Resource Center, an on-line academic journal. Copyright © 2005 by the National Sexuality Research Center, San Francisco State University.   THE INTERNET is transforming American politics, and it’s happening at a remarkably rapidMore

IT’S HARD to pinpoint exactly the way in which the computer has changed gay life. The gay community as we knew it in the 1970’s and 80’s would have vanished anyway (though it’s hard to admit): AIDS, assimilation, generational shifts would have accomplished that. And, of course, the computer has been famously liberating: ...

... IT USED TO BE that going to a gay bar meant being in the thick of gay community, gay culture, and gay activism. There would be fliers up on a bulletin board somewhere near the pay phone. There might be a fundraiser for the local LGBT community center or there might be some politicalMore

The following is excerpted and adapted from an article that first appeared in the Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 49, Number 1, 2005.

FAN FICTION, in its simplest definition, is fiction written by the fans of any popular narrative, be it a novel, a TV series, or a film. While private fan fiction may be as old as fiction itself, its origins as a genre for public (albeit esoteric) circulation can be traced back to the start ofMore

There were far too many deaths in our community of arts, letters, and politics in late 2004 and in 2005. Herewith is our annual tribute.

AFTER the major media success and publicity in 2000 of Rome World Pride, the group behind the event, InterPride (International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Coordinators), elected the organization Jerusalem Open House to organize a similar event entitled “Love Without Borders” in Jerusalem in August 2005. On May 14, 2005, however, ...

At the time of this interview, Albee ... was at home in his art-filled loft in New York City’s Tribeca district. He’s an avid collector of modern painting (Kandinsky, Lipshitz, Arp) and African sculpture, whose minimalist and Cubist lines reflect his own unique style of communication.

Within the GLBT community, misunderstanding as to what the UN can reasonably be expected to accomplish is at least as pervasive as it is in other communities. ...

... The problem is exacerbated by the current political climate, which treats gays and lesbians as a marginalized population. It is our hope that this piece will spark concern and promote action by gay and lesbian organizations and individuals to address this under-reported but widespread social ill that afflicts our community.

ALTHOUGH PHOTOGRAPHER Robert Mapplethorpe has been dead for sixteen years, New York City’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has a vested interest in keeping his images, and public interest in them, alive. The late photographer left a sizable legacy to the museum (there’s a gallery named for him), and since 1992 the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation hasMore