I’ve been writing about Matthew Shepard, or at least the image of Matthew Shepard clouded by eleven years of martyrology and media distortion. If the gay rights movement has a patron saint, it is the smiling face of Matthew haloed by his longish blond hair. Harvey Milk’s face has been edited out of history by that […]
Paperback, 204 pagesPublished by Lethe PressISBN: 9781590210536 Steve Berman’s young adult novel opens with all of the elements for a clichéd teen horror movie: alienated goths, check; nearly Halloween, check; and an ouija board, check. But he promptly destroys a reader’s expectations and gives me one of the best YA novels I have read to date. […]
I sometimes wonder if I am missing the boat about short stories. What I know about writing fiction could fit through the eye of an oarlock. Some rules on writing apply across the board, but I feel that fiction takes a certain knack that I lack. Perhaps writing poetry and essays, I can always anticipate […]
I stumbled across a collection of essays at work by Thomas Lynch called “Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade.” Lynch, a poet, also works as an undertaker. He writes about how one trade informs the other. Nancy Peacock the award-winning author is another writer who had a nonliterary job to pay the bills. She […]
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of two novels, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008) and Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003). Sycamore is the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, most recently Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007) and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies […]
Paperback, 204 pagesPublished by Lethe Press, November 2008ISBN: 9781590210666 Visiting one of my favorite gay bookstores, Lambda Rising in Washington D.C., I picked up a copy of Sea Swallow Me and Other Stories. Here I am again, telling you about my travels and the books that I buy. Gidney’s collection of short stories run the […]
Paperback, 150 pagesFrom Hyperion(May 31, 2006)ISBN: 978-1401308940 “She was no longer wrestling with grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.” –George Eliot Grief by Andrew Holleran is a quiet one hundred and fifty pages of reading. Entering into this book’s pages is akin […]
Paperback: 256 pagesFrom City Lights Publishers (September 1, 2008)ISBN: 978-0872864689 When I began reading So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I knew that the book had been called “experimental” and that its publisher City Lights Books had a reputation for publishing avant-garde work. Words like “ground-breaking” […]