January-February 2025
I FIRST BECAME AWARE of Henry Van Dyke’s 1965 novel Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, which was reprinted for the first time last year, when I read on the website Literary Hub the Foreword to it by Van Dyke’s nephew, Erik Wood. My immediate response was to ask: How is it possible that I, an English professor with an interest, both personal and professional, in gay literature, had never heard of this brilliant novel, or its Black and gay author?
More
Butterfly Man makes it clear that Levenson must have been entirely familiar with the gay demimonde that it depicts.
MoreThe following is by a grant recipient in a program launched in 2022 by The G&LR, our Writers and Artists Grant, which was awarded to three recipients in 2023. The purpose of this grant is to assist advanced students engaged in LGBT-related research, and awardees are expected to produce an article for this magazine as part of their project. This is the third of three articles from 2023’s recipients.
More
A Little Queer Natural History shows two things: a) that we are not the only animals to have homosexual sex; and b) that our version of sex is hardly the only one in nature.
More
WITH A WINK to Oscar Wilde, R. Tripp Evans’ The Importance of Being Furnished celebrates four influential Americans—Charles Leonard Pendleton (1846–1904), Ogden Codman Jr. (1863–1951), Charles Hammond Gibson Jr. (1874–1954), and Henry Davis Sleeper (1878–1934)—whose imaginative houses, now public museums, marked a pivotal shift toward personal expression in home design.
More
KNOWN for her large-scale collage portraits of Black women, the critically acclaimed artist Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971. Introduced to art as a child by her mother, fashion model Sandra Bush, she earned her BFA from New York’s Pratt Institute and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She has accepted various artist residences and received numerous prizes. She now lives and works in Brooklyn with her partner and frequent model Racquel Chevremont.
More
Written for lay readers, Straight Acting discusses complex issues in a readable style and includes an extensive bibliographical essay and footnotes. Each chapter begins with a fictional scene from a particular period in Shakespeare’s life.
More
TRANS HIRSTORY in 99 Objects has been my most popular coffee table book this summer. It has beautiful typography and color plates. It has the heft of art books by Taschen, but it’s published by another German art publisher, Hirmer Verlag, in conjunction with the Museum of Trans Hirtory and Art (motha). And it’s the catalog for an exhibition that has yet to happen!
More
Short reviews of BLOOD LOSS: A Love Story of AIDS, Activism, and Art by Keiko Lane and LONG LIVE QUEER NIGHTLIFE: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution by Amin Ghazian.
More
The Gay Imagination is a collection of pieces about poetry and music, areas in which the author proves to be a sharp and knowledgeable writer. [Contreras] applies a keen intelligence and a cultivated taste that reveal an impressive familiarity with a wide range of poetry.
More
