Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.

    The bestselling author of And the Band Played On follows with a book of even greater power and sweep as he investigates the situation of gays in the military over the past three decades, revealing for the first time that some of the most celebrated soldiers in American history were homosexual (including the Father of the United States Army).

    in works from 'Our Lady of the Flowers' to 'The Screens', he created a scandalous personal mythology while savaging the conventions of his society. His career was a series of calculated shocks marked by feuds, rootlessness, and the embrace of unpopular causes and outcast peoples. Now this most enigmatic of writers has found his ideal biographer in novelist Edmund White, whose eloquent and often poignant chronicle does justice to the unruly narrative of Genet's life even as it maps the various worlds in which he lived and the perverse landscape of his imagination.

    Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity.

    Gunn has made a speciality of playing style against subject as he deals with the out-of-control through tightly controlled meters and with the systematized through open forms.

    Here he recounts his life growing up in London. "I learned very early in my life that nothing was forever; so I should have been aware of disillusion in early middle age: but, somehow, we try to obliterate early warnings and go cantering along hopefully, idiotically. . . ."

    In the spring of 1991 they decided to grapple with the beast, taking a theatrical tour that would exaggerate their differences. By turns enraptured by and disdainful of America and its obsession with celebrity they brushed shoulders with the famous (Axl Rose, Liza Minelli and Joni Mitchell) travelled, played and uttered their detached commentary on what was happening. Throughout they were shadowed by the author Chris Heath and photographer Pennie Smith.

    Featuring essays by such prominent scholars as Judith Butler, John D'Emilio, Kobena Mercer, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader explores a multitude of sexual, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic experiences.Ranging across disciplines including history, literature, critical theory, cultural studies, African American studies, ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, classics, and philosophy, this anthology traces the inscription of sexual meanings in all forms of cultural expression. Representing the best and most significant English language work in the field, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader addresses topics such as butch-fem roles, the cultural construction of gender, lesbian separatism, feminist theory, AIDS, safe-sex education, colonialism, S/M, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, children's books, black nationalism, popular films, Susan Sontag, the closet, homophobia, Freud, Sappho, the media, the hijras of India, Robert Mapplethorpe, and the politics of representation. It also contains an extensive bibliographical essay which will provide readers with an invaluable guide to further reading.Contributors: Henry Abelove, Tomas Almaguer, Ana Maria Alonso, Michele Barale, Judith Butler, Sue-Ellen Case, Danae Clark, Douglas Crimp, Teresa de Lauretis, John D'Emilio, Jonathan Dollimore, Lee Edelman, Marilyn Frye, Charlotte Furth, Marjorie Garber, Stuart Hall, David Halperin, Phillip Brian Harper, Gloria T. Hull, Maria Teresa Koreck, Audre Lorde, Biddy Martin, Deborah E. McDowell, Kobena Mercer, Richard Meyer, D. A. Miller, Serena Nanda, Esther Newton, Cindy Patton, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Joan W. Scott, Daniel L. Selden, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Barbara Smith, Catharine R. Stimpson, Sasha Torres, Martha Vicinus, Simon Watney, Harriet Whitehead, John J. Winkler, Monique Wittig, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano

    Excerpts from the novels, plays, and poems of the French convict, prostitute, and literary artist join notes from his film, The Penal Colony, letters, essays, and a rare interview, all edited by a contemporary biographer.

    Illustrations and photos.

    

    In this unforgettable memoir, John Foster recounts the life and death of his lover, Juan Cespedes. This unlikely love story takes in much of the twentieth century seen from the angle of the outsider: Juan is the refugee from oppression, the immigrant trying to make it, the early victim of a spreading plague. John is the sophisticate from a first-world culture, who fully embraces his unexpected love. This is the rarest of things--a book full of intelligence and laughter that tells of terrible events with intimacy and grace.

    In essays on literary images of lesbianism from Defoe and Diderot to Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes, on the homosexual reputation of Marie Antoinette, on the lesbian writings of Anne Lister, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Janet Flanner, and on Henry James's The Bostonians, Castle shows how a lesbian presence can be identified in the literature, history, and culture of the past three centuries.

    You Got to Burn to Shine, his first book in many years, collects intensely rhythmic, sexual and philosophical poetry spanning two decades. Here, too, are deeply personal memoirs, including the story of his friendship with Andy Warhol (Giorno had an occasionally sexual relationship with Warhol, met his mother, and starred in Warhol?s first film, Sleep); an anonymous sexual encounter with Keith Haring, an aspiring painter who recognized Giorno in a subway station toilet; and notes toward a Buddhist understanding of death in the age of AIDS. This title features an introduction by William S. Burroughs.

    Set in downtown New York City, Whores of Lost Atlantis features Julian Young, a performer and playwright who tells the story of his acting troupe's hilarious struggle to assemble an Off-Broadway production of Julian's play, Whores of Lost Atlantis, in which Julian acts in drag. The novel's unforgettable cast of characters includes Joel, a perfect English gentleman from Indiana; Roxie, an actress/librarian with moxie; Buster, a voluptuous young alcoholic; Camille, the fiery wig designer Julian considers having an affair with; Perry, Julian's best friend, with a weakness for plastic surgery and peroxide; and Kiko, the wonderfully wicked performance artist who tries to sabotage Julian's career. Getting his play produced proves to be a picaresque adventure with plenty of surprises, leaving the reader feverishly turning pages to see if the show can go on.

    

    Dominic is probably dying in Los Angeles. Jasper, older by almost a generation, was for many years Timothy's lover. Among Jasper's infidelities was a brisk fling with Dominic. Timothy and Dominic are having dinner in Los Angeles after viewing Dominic's taped appearance on a nationally televised quiz show. They have maintained their ambivalent friendship for twenty years. Tonight their conversation is lively but guarded. Timothy has not told Dominic of Jasper's death; Dominic doesn't inquire into Timothy's own state, and this is a question Timothy is in no hurry to answer. Through Timothy's eyes, we see that though AIDS can be deadly, it can also be taken, as Timothy chooses to, as a challenge to live. His thoughts are filled by memories of Jasper, and he takes the reader on a vivid tour of male sex at its most untamed - as it was in the seventies and the eighties - when the explosion of AIDS forced thousands of men to take a new direction. We feel the press of bodies along the waterfront of Manhattan, in the boites, and even the streets of Paris. It is possible Timothy will even come away from this dinner with a heightened understanding of Jasper, and of their long and lost romance. It is certain that the reader will be rewarded by the deeper insights of this harrowing (and often hilarious) account of love between men in such times.

    With a heady command of language and the ability to work in a variety of forms, she continues her thematic explorations of love objects and death subjects.

    But at the centre of Fred's universe is Jonathan, the boy who followed him a long a rainy street to sell him a newspaper ...In his recounting, Fred looks for the patterns in his life which might explain his nature.This is a powerful story which replays ancient themes of sex, guilt, power and, above all, love.

    Benson, Preston here collects 30 years' worth of essays and lectures on a wide variety of topics with one common theme: sex. The work offered here runs the gamut from the essential and enlightening to the downright silly, with "A Modest Proposal for the Support of the Pornographic Arts" definitely falling into the later category. Preston's sex-positive stand on safer-sex education as the only truly effective AIDS-prevention strategy will certainly not win him any conservative converts, but AIDS activists will be shouting their assent. As the title suggests, Preston celebrates a time when homosexuality was defined in more purely sexual terms, which gives some of the work an oddly nostalgic quality. Despite some contradictions that weaken a few of the more conceptual arguments, Preston's book is a bridge from the sexually liberated 1970s to the more cautious 1990s, and Preston has walked much of that way as a standard-bearer to the cause for equal rights. Recommended for special collections and larger libraries where the topic will be of interest.- Jeffery Ingram, Newport P.L., Ore.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

    He hires a former adversary, personal-injury lawyer Joe Miller, to sue for damages and help win back his job. This book has been made into a film starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.

    Smith devoted her life to lifting the veil of southern self-deception about race, class, gender, and sexuality. Her books, essays, and especially her letters explored the ways in which the South's attitudes and institutions perpetuated a dehumanizing experience for all its people--white and black, male and female, rich and poor. Her best-known books are Strange Fruit (1944), a bestselling interracial love story that brought her international acclaim; and Killers of the Dream (1949), an autobiographical critique of southern race relations that angered many southerners, including powerful moderates. Subsequently, Smith was effectively silenced as a writer. Rose Gladney has selected 145 of Smith's 1500 extant letters for this volume. Arranged chronologically and annotated, they present a complete picture of Smith as a committed artist and reveal the burden of her struggles as a woman, including her lesbian relationship with Paula Snelling. Gladney argues that this triple isolation--as woman, lesbian, and artist--from mainstream southern culture permitted Smith to see and to expose southern prejudices with absolute clarity.

    In this searingly powerful, daring, vitally important work from the front lines of the crisis, Andrea Vaucher explores, for the first time, the impact of AIDS on the work of artists who have tested HIV-positive themselves, from their own perspective, in their own words. Through intimate and revealing interviews, men and women from the worlds of literature, film, theater, dance, music, and the visual arts discuss the effects of AIDS on their own artistic evolution and on the creative process. Edmund White, Kenny O'Brien, Peter Adair, Paul Monette, Robert Farber, Arnie Zane, David Wojnarowicz, Bo Huston, Cyril Collard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marlon Riggs, Herve Guibert, Larry Kramer, Tory Dent, Essex Hemphill, Carlos Almaraz, and Keith Haring are some of the artists who have had the generosity and sheer guts to share this most private side of their lives. Here they speak with freshness, vigor, and sometimes painful honesty on such subjects as anger, alienation and isolation, death and loss, activism and politics, freedom, spirituality, symbolism, sexuality, immediacy, and legacy as they relate directly to their work. The life of the artist has always been a kind of hero's journey, which AIDS only intensifies. Many of the artists living with the AIDS virus find themselves possessed of new and extraordinary energy, channeling fear and frustration into a kind of creative fire, finding new means of expression, changing the way they work and the way they perceive the ultimate meaning of that work. This transformation has far-reaching implications for the whole of late-twentieth-century art and beyond. Defiant, insightful, funny, tough, and tender, this is a book about courage, perseverance, and transcendence - and essential reading for

    G. Jung called individuation. Here eighteen prominent therapists and writers offer thought-provoking insights into the deep meaning of homosexuality. Contributions from: Robert A. Johnson, Christine Downing, Robert Bosnak, Joseph Henderson, John Beebe, Robert H. Hopcke, Howard Teich, Morgan Farley, Caroline T. Stevens, Will Roscoe, Karin Lofthus Carrington, Lyn Cowan, Scott Wirth, Suzy Naiberg, Donald Sandner, David J. Tacey, Eugene Monick, and Susan Griffin.

    With profound literary courage, Chekhovian compassion, and humor, Currier writes not only about those who are living with AIDS and those who have died from it, but also about the friends, families, and lovers who nurse and care for the sick and remember them afterward.

    Welcome to the seductive pictures of Pierre et Gilles. Again and again they show people in kitschy scenarios against a background of flowers and hearts. When they are not snapping portraits of the well-known - most of whom are close friends like Marc Almond or Nina Hagen - and not-so-known, they photograph themselves. Bizarre, and full of obscure significance, the photographs are reminiscent of stills from film melodramas.They are always colourful and presented with beguiling polish. They plunder the repertoire of historical presentation as though they were leafing through a collection of fabrics, and assume identities as though they were part of a mail-order catalogue. Now the latest and most comprehensive collection of the works of these two photographers can be presented to the public - in a format designed by the artists themselves. In matt skin-colour, with a golden edging, the embossed cover is reminiscent of a quilted counterpane and promises a cuddly experience within. Once between the covers one can frolic at will in a soft, artificial world of pictures. This saccharine collection of kitsch encompasses all aspects of homosexuality and offers them in an appetising form even to those who abhor them. A straight challenge is issued to all readers to participate - at least with their eyes - in this unbridled celebration of a life beyond guilt and expiation.

    Hailed as “powerful…unforgettable…phenomenal,’ it launched the writing powerhouse of Southern author Jery Tillotson, a former prize-winning journalist. The 25 stories deal with heart break (“Barbed Wire”) to the humorous (“The Bastard of the County”) to the haunting (“The Last of the Seven Beauties”), and presents a dazzling gallery of complex men you won’t forget. Jocks, convicts, bad boys and evangelists—they’re all here. Read ERIC’S BODY and discover why tens of thousands of readers around the world have hailed it as one of gay literature’s most enduring classics!

    For the first time, lesbians and gay men from India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries tell stories of coming out and challenging prejudice.

    The city has elicited writing from Milton, Sade, Proust, Dostoevsky and Tournier, among others. This work contains an anthology of Sodom texts spanning several centuries. Paul Hallam has also provided his own reading of these languages of prejudice, obsession and desire in an extensive essay.

    

    This fully updated edition offers features you won't find in any other travel guide, including: Betty and Pansy's top ten cruising spots by night and day, favorite places to be seen after 2 A.M., best pinball and billiard clubs, and their annual calendar of events that no self-respecting GLBT person ought to miss.

    

    

    The second edition of the best-selling "Facets Gay & Lesbian Video Guide" includes descriptions and sources for more than 400 new lesbian and gay films all readily available on video -- now including a list of nearly 1000 titles.

    Following on from Flesh and the Word, this book contains erotic offerings from top writers, porn stars and literary stars representing a celebration of sexuality, real and imagined, and an affirmation that the gay erotic imagination, so long repressed, is coming out for good.

    Bruno Schultz said that images from childhood were like "filaments in a solution around which our senses of the world have crystalized." A Year of Rhymes consists of a succession of these images, these vignettes which, though limited and particular, add up to a single year, and movingly and convincingly convey an entire fictional childhood. The time is the 1950s; the place southern California. The story is told by Burt, a boy whose older brother, Bob, is a private detective who works for their father, Irving Zerkin, a divorce attorney. Their relationship is close, special, and the story is as much a mystery - though the mystery is that of sexuality - as it is a coming-of-age. Burt witnesses his brother's involvement with two girlfriends: the seductive and eccentric Marion Hirsch, whose maturing artistic ambitions and skewed humor fascinate the entire Zerkin family, and Janet Cotter, the phlegmatic but steadfast Baptist nurse upon whom the whole family depends when Bob becomes ill with leukemia. Though Burt is exposed to the vicissitudes of adult love through his brother and his parents, Burt's most compelling realization is his burgeoning physical attraction to men. He must begin to learn to negotiate his own desire in the course of this year, the final year in his brother's life. He learns that the body is both an object of desire and subject to decay. And with the help of his brother, and Marion and Janet, he must contend with the equally difficult mysteries of love and loss.

    Episodes of exile, murder, drug-taking, wild homosexual orgies and court cases are woven into an original study of a significant theme in European culture. The myth of a homoerotic Mediterranean made a major contribution to general attitudes towards Antiquity, the Renaissance and modern Italy and Greece.

    "Finely wrought".--The Village Voice.

    On a year's retreat from her career, she returns to her alma mater as a visiting professor, determined to write a "significant" play. Enter George McBeth, a gay local actor ten years her junior, who dreams of making it big. Each seduces and openly uses the other as a means to private ends, setting the stage for rude awakenings. Laced with an abundance of wit, sensuality, and suspense, "Rehearsing" will have lasting appeal to thoughtful readers, gay or straight.

    Poetry. Queer. LGBT studies. Poetry. Letters to women. Love poems.Jane Eaton Hamilton distinguished herself with Body Rain (1991) a tough, passionate lyrical book written out of a woman's anger and a woman's love. Steam-Cleaning Love, Hamilton's second book of poetry, is "ginger root tough and jelly edgy"-spicy, sweet, biting; it overwhelms, inundates, the palate. This new book revives the angry, biting, funny, loving, randy voice that won readers to her first volume, but sets that voice in a gentler space. These are passionate poems that celebrate women as friends and lovers, and the beauty, the delight, the desire of women's bodies."There is joy in these poems, and a vibrant healthiness. Her poems are about many things we might like to call ordinary, but they’re written in a way that’s anything but."--sub-TERRAIN"Her poetry is often ribald, and sometimes it is frankly lewd--and how, these days, one welcomes a bit ofhonest lewdness."--BC Bookworld"Hamilton has an attractively skittish voice that lends the work a very individual cast. An accomplished collection."--Books in Canada"I was impressed by the amazing insights; an incredible rendering of the pain and joys of truly loving relationships."--ARC"...Hamilton knows how to forge tough language and difficult truths into poetry, and this collection includes many well-wrought and satisfying poems.The first section, “How We Are Counted,” contains poems that are primarily centred on the body, with a smattering of poems on mysticism and betrayal. Some of these poems struck me as brave, particularly “Apology”: “Eventually I was the liar… I betrayed you easily / as rain falls, as earth thirsts, / my fledg-ling hunger / parting its beak / for the worm, for the for the kiss, / the satisfying thrust.”Hamilton seems at her best when talking big poems with big subjects; some writers need the added weight of a big poem in order to really show some of their muscles, and this seems to be the case here. In “Barbara’s Garden,” written for a woman whose lover has died of cancer, Hamilton shows great facility with language: “the sky above Stanley Park feckled with stars, / the candles on our table unwavering…” The narrator imagines Barbara “listening for the vibration of life,” and “her articulate flight / through the thicket of the body.”It’s in the third section, “Window Box of Bruises,” that many of the tough and hard-won poems rise up. “Rising” shows the narrator shadowed by her dead friend in “October, that hell month… Four weeks / of changing clocks, of sparklers / moaning on the streets. Let Diane / tell you, using my tongue, gibbling / her story with my larynx and these / ugly teeth.” --Sarah Van Arsdale, Lesbian Review of Books"Reading [these poems] is like reading other people's letters until, by the transforming magic good poems have, you discover they are all for you." -Jane Rule

    

    Laney is plunged into an undreamed-of foment of darkness, homicide and passion when she gets involved with a married woman and a homicide.