Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea.Words: 97556 Complete

    Ari can't. Dante is articulate and self-assured. Ari has a hard time with words and suffers from self-doubt. Dante gets lost in poetry and art. Ari gets lost in thoughts of his older brother who is in prison. Dante is fair skinned. Ari's features are much darker. It seems that a boy like Dante, with his open and unique perspective on life, would be the last person to break down the walls that Ari has built around himself.But against all odds, when Ari and Dante meet, they develop a special bond that will teach them the most important truths of their lives, and help define the people they want to be. But there are big hurdles in their way, and only by believing in each other―and the power of their friendship―can Ari and Dante emerge stronger on the other side.

    Once loved and respected in their community and in their church, they are ostracized by their neighbors, led by their church leader, and a seventeen-year feud between the Delaneys and the church ensues. Ava and her family are displaced from the community even as they continue to live within it, trapped inside their creaky, shadowy old house.When a mysterious woman arrives unexpectedly for a visit, her presence stirs up the past and ghosts and other restless things begin to emerge. And something is reignited in Ava: the indifferent woman she has become begins to give way to the wild girl, and the passionate artist, she used to be. But not without a struggle that threatens her well-being and, ultimately, her life.Mia McKenzie is a winner of the Astraea Foundation's Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award. She describes herself as "a black feminist and a freaking queer." Her work has been recommended by The Root, Colorlines, Feministing, Angry Asian Man, and Crunk Feminist Collective, among others. She is the creator of the blog BlackGirlDangerous.org.

    He found his tribe in New York's East Village, a neighborhood noted in the 1970s and '80s for drugs, blight, and a burgeoning art scene. His creativity spilled out in paintings, photographs, films, texts, installations, and in his life and its recounting-creating a sort of mythos around himself. His circle of East Village artists moved into the national spotlight just as the AIDS plague began its devastating advance, and as right-wing culture warriors reared their heads. As Wojnarowicz's reputation as an artist grew, so did his reputation as an agitator-because he dealt so openly with his homosexuality, so angrily with his circumstances as a Person With AIDS, and so fiercely with his would-be censors.Fire in the Belly is the untold story of a polarizing figure at a pivotal moment in American culture-and one of the most highly acclaimed biographies of the year.

    Corral is the 2011 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, joining such distinguished previous winners as Adrienne Rich, W. S. Merwin, and John Ashbery. Corral is the first Latino poet to win the competition.Seamlessly braiding English and Spanish, Corral's poems hurtle across literary and linguistic borders toward a lyricism that slows down experience. He employs a range of forms and phrasing, bringing the vivid particulars of his experiences as a Chicano and gay man to the page. Although Corral's topics are decidedly sobering, contest judge Carl Phillips observes, "one of the more surprising possibilities offered in these poems is joy."From "Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso"I'm a cowboy        riding barebackMy soul is        whirlingabove my head like a lasso.        My right handa pistol. My left        automatic. I'm knockingon every door.        I'm coming on strong . . .

    Take, for instance, the Kentucky Club on Avenida Juárez two blocks south of the Rio Grande. It's a touchstone for each of Sáenz's stories. His characters walk by, they might go in for a drink or to score, or they might just stay there for a while and let their story be told. Sáenz knows that the Kentucky Club, like special watering holes in all cities, is the contrary to borders. It welcomes Spanish and English, Mexicans and gringos, poor and rich, gay and straight, drug addicts and drunks, laughter and sadness, and even despair. It's a place of rich history and good drinks and cold beer and a long polished mahogany bar. Some days it smells like piss. "I'm going home to the other side." That's a strange statement, but you hear it all the time at the Kentucky Club.Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a highly regarded writer of fiction, poetry, and children's literature. Like these stories, his writing crosses borders and lands in our collective psyche. Poets & Writers Magazine named him one of the fifty most inspiring writers in the world. He's been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center's prestigious award for young adult fiction. Sáenz is the chair of the creative writing department of University of Texas at El Paso.Awards:PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionLambda Literary AwardSouthwest Book Award

    Suddenly, a different sort of beauty catches her eye -- the vivacious track star, Kase-san. Although the two girls don't seem to have much in common, they soon start a romance where each must learn an important lesson in tending their budding relationship. Can the two girls, so different from each other, learn how to make their first love blossom?

    Eleanor startles them by insisting that they take turns reading aloud from Eleanor’s diaries of her life with Daphne DeMonet. Only after the diaries are read in her presence will Eleanor proceed with a full interview.Once Eleanor discovers that Bailey and Chelsea are ex partners, the diary readings take on a new meaning for her. Can they learn from the mistakes she and Daphne made as young lovers? Will that knowledge bring Bailey and Chelsea together again? Or is it too late to mend their broken relationship?79,000 words

    Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation’s imagination and the consequences of that loss.

    And when he comes home from National Service to be a policeman, Marion, a newly qualified teacher, is determined to win him. Unable to acknowledge the signs that something is amiss, she plunges into marriage, sure that her love is enough for both of them...But Tom has another life, another equally overpowering claim on his affections. Patrick, a curator at the Brighton Museum, is also besotted with his policeman, and opens Tom's eyes to a world previously unknown to him. But in an age when those of 'minority status' were condemned by society and the law, it is safer for this policeman to marry his teacher. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.Unfolding through the dual narratives of Marion and Patrick, both writing about the man at the centre of their lives, this beautifully-told, painful, tragic story is revealed.It is a tale of wasted years, misguided love and thwarted hope, of how at a time when the country was on the verge of change so much was still impossible.Bethan Roberts has produced an intense and exquisitely raw yet tender novel, which proves her to be one of our most exciting young writers.

    If someone comes along and starts talking, quietly shoo them away, you're busy, you're a poet with a penny in your mouth. . . . Now get your pen and paper and write about POVERTY, write line after line about starvation and deprivation from the voice of one who has been Loved in this world.CAConrad's (Soma)tic exercises desire to literally crack open existence as we know it. A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon is an essential how-to book for anyone interested in breaking through their perceived limitations to become a more politically and physically engaged writer. Incorporating unorthodox steps in the writing process, these twenty-seven exercises and their corresponding poems confirm Conrad's unwavering belief in poetry as a necessary practice for being.CAConrad, a 2011 PEW Fellow in the Arts, is the author of five books of poetry, including The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010/Chax Press, 2009). He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

    Relief they'll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship--one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to "fix" her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self--even if she's not exactly sure who that is.The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

    It was an anthology of erotic comics, with contributions from some of the best and the brightest creators. There were three issues, and they were AWESOME. But that was it. The third Smut Peddler mini was followed by a years-long publishing hiatus...UNTIL NOW.

    Lauren Zuniga has made a name for herself for fearlessly confronting legislators and being an ambassador for the Heartland. This collection is the underbelly. No emotion is spared. No image is lost. It is a field guide to blisters and curtsies. It is a chronicle of women/children/animals coming together in a house named Clementine.

    A youngster named Julep, who lives in a forest tribe, insists on growing up to be a goblin rather than a fairy. The tribe learns to accept that Julep is a goblin at heart, eventually coming around to support the physical transition that must be made for Julep to live as a goblin.

    Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and history. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater. James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic. Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist. And the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture. But the change was only beginning. A new generation of gay writers followed, taking more risks and writing about their sexuality more openly. Edward Albee brought his prickly iconoclasm to the American theater. Edmund White laid bare his own life in stylized, autobiographical works. Armistead Maupin wove a rich tapestry of the counterculture, queer and straight. Mart Crowley brought gay men's lives out of the closet and onto the stage. And Tony Kushner took them beyond the stage, to the center of American ideas. With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men's ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative. Chronicling over fifty years of momentous change-from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond. Eminent Outlaws is an inspiring, illuminating tale: one that reveals how the lives of these men are crucial to understanding the social and cultural history of the American twentieth century.

    Raised by drug-addicted parents, she’s used to taking care of the people around her, to the exclusion of her own needs. But not tonight. After years of celibacy, she’s ready to pay for exactly what she wants: to surrender control, by having it taken away.Having worked as a high-priced escort for years, Nat Swayne not only enjoys her job—she’s damn good at it. Dangerously sexy, she knows precisely how to fulfill the fantasies of women who enjoy her special brand of make-believe—all without ever becoming emotionally involved.When their night of intense play turns into something more, Emily and Nat can’t help but pursue a connection in the real world. Unfortunately, old habits die hard, and love isn’t always enough.Or is it?

    The book would go on to inspire legions of women for decades and would later become the subject and title of a hugely popular movie in the fall of 2010. While the film was selling out movie theaters, young black gay men were literally committing suicide in the silence of their own communities.When a young Rutgers University student named Tyler Clementi took his own life after a roommate secretly videotaped him in an intimate setting with another young man, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry to inspire young people facing harassment. Their message, It Gets Better, turned into a popular movement, inspiring thousands of user-created videos on the Internet. Savage's project targeted people of all races, backgrounds and colors, but Boykin has created something special "for colored boys."The new book, For Colored Boys, addresses longstanding issues of sexual abuse, suicide, HIV/AIDS, racism, and homophobia in the African American and Latino communities, and more specifically among young gay men of color. The book tells stories of real people coming of age, coming out, dealing with religion and spirituality, seeking love and relationships, finding their own identity in or out of the LGBT community, and creating their own sense of political empowerment. For Colored Boys is designed to educate and inspire those seeking to overcome their own obstacles in their own lives.

    They also write about their relationship with their twin sister, and learning how to take care of their mental health within and without conventional institutions, identifying as genderqueer, getting sober, living a creative and meaningful life, and finding reasons to keep on going.At the heart and in its guts, 'Telegram' is about seeking magic in the smallest things, staying crazy in a world that wants us to fake sanity or die, and learning how to take good care of ourselves and each other.

    Not on this earth but elsewhere . . .Determined to make his mark like those before him, Pharus is hell-bent on being the best choir leader in the school's fifty-year history. First he must gain the respect of his peers, but he's an outsider in a world steeped in rites and rituals, a community that demands he conform.Tarell Alvin McCraney's piercing new play set in an all boys, all black American prep school scores a gospel refrain of the politics of minority and masculinity.Choir Boy premiered at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court, London, in September 2012. It was commissioned by, and is a co-production with Manhattan Theatre Club and was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

    Hot & Heavy rejects the idea that being thin is best, instead embracing the many fabulous aspects of being fat—building fat-positive spaces, putting together fat-friendly wardrobes, turning society’s rules into personal politics, and creating supportive, inclusive communities. Writers, activists, performers, and poets—including April Flores, Alysia Angel, Charlotte Cooper, Jessica Judd, Emily Anderson, Genne Murphy, and Tigress Osborn—cover everything from fat go-go dancing to queer dating to urban gardening in their essays, exploring their experiences with the word "fat," pinpointing particular moments that have impacted the way they think and feel about their bodies, and telling the story of how they each became fat revolutionaries.Ground-breaking and long overdue, Hot & Heavy is a fierce, sassy, thoughtful, authentic, and joyous collection of stories about unapologetically—and unconditionally—loving the body you’re in.

    In fact, Caleb looks forward to a fresh start in the scenic little area. Their new home, Wakefield House, sports large rooms, a big barn where Caleb can work on cars, and acres of forested land for privacy. But it also has a troubling past. In 1943, a boy who lived in the home vanished.Caleb hears the stories about what may have occurred so many years ago, but he passes them off as folklore until one day he's alone in the woods and hears the faintest whisper. "Did someone in the distance just call his name? And what about his discovery in the hayloft? Could there be something to those old stories after all?"The initial need to dismiss everything as coincidence becomes a soul-searching journey into the past where Caleb is determined to uncover the truth about what really happened to the missing boy. And in the process, he learns even more about himself and what's really important.

    Bayard Rustin has been called the “lost prophet” of the civil rights movement. A master strategist and tireless activist, he is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the U.S. He brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement and played a deeply influential role in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to mold him into an international symbol of nonviolence. Despite these achievements, Rustin often remained in the background. He was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Here we have Rustin in his own words in a collection of over 150 of his letters; his correspondents include the major progressives of his day — for example, Eleanor Holmes Norton, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Ella Baker, and of course, Martin Luther King, Jr.Bayard Rustin’s eloquent, impassioned voice, his ability to chart the path “from protest to politics,” is both timely and deeply informative. As the Occupy movement ushers America into a pivotal election year, and as politicians and citizens re-assess their goals and strategies, these letters provide direct access to the strategic thinking and tactical planning that led to the successes of one of America’s most transformative and historic social movements.

    The reader is pulled through Ryan's transition from infant to child, child to body-obsessed teenage girl, teenage girl to eating-disordered young woman, female to male, daughter to son, and finally a beloved partner to a cherished fiance'. A unique lens on life and love. Ryan candidly shares his struggle to find love and acceptance; a struggle that transcends through every layer of society. He nearly died from an extreme case of anorexia as an insecure female college student. The only thing that saved him was his inner spirit begging for a chance to live. ? Second Son chronicles Ryan's battle with his family, his romantic partner, and his body. He unblinkingly focuses on the empowerment he achieved as he underwent gender reassignment surgeries and traces his evolution into manhood. ? It took twenty-nine years for Ryan to find himself. The world is now ready for this intimate and honest autobiography that will educate and empower men and women around the globe. At a time when fighting to find oneself is popular, Ryan's story will resonate with people everywhere who are journeying to find their own destinies, love, and life.

    Through her poetry, essays, stories, and performances, Ryka Aoki has challenged, informed, and shared with queer audiences across the United States. Available on Amazon, as well as directly from the press at Trans-Genre.net.

    Lockpick Pornography, originally published in 2005, is a gender-queer adventure story that was not widely available until now. We All Got It Coming presents the experiences of a young couple dealing with the aftermath of an act of violence. From kidnapping the son of a "family values" politician to violent confrontation, these are characters who fight back.

    Not a book exclusively about artists who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, Art and Queer Culture instead traces the shifting possibilities and constraints of sexual identity that have provided visual artists with a rich creative resource over the last 125 years.

    This book celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all.No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel (whose book Fun Home was named Time Magazine's 2006 Book of the Year), Howard Cruse (whose groundbreaking Stuck Rubber Baby is now back in print), and Ralf Koenig (one of Europe's most popular cartoonists), as well as high-profile, cross-over creators who have dabbled in LGBT cartooning, like legendary NYC artist David Wojnarowicz and media darling and advice columnist Dan Savage. No Straight Lines also spotlights many talented creators who never made it out of the queer comics ghetto, but produced amazing work that deserves wider attention.Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades.These comics have forged their aesthetics from the influences of underground comix, gay erotic art, punk zines, and the biting commentaries of drag queens, bull dykes, and other marginalized queers. They have analyzed their own communities, and their relationship with the broader society. They are smart, funny, and profound. No Straight Lines will be heralded by people interested in comics history, and people invested in LGBT culture will embrace it as a unique and invaluable collection.

    Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.

    When Andrew discovers that Rahul is still interviewing girls sent by his parents for an arranged marriage, he gives Rahul an ultimatum-stop living a lie, or give up their relationship. In response, Rahul tells Andrew a story. About a boy who lived in a palace. A boy named Rahul. Set in San Francisco today and in India in the early 1970s, My Magical Palace is a sensitive tale about a boy's coming of age, and the many hurdles he must cross to heal and find himself.

    So it's about time to dedicate a whole photo book to his fabulous art. "Masculinity" sums up everything that makes Stokes' work special: strength, sex appeal and the perfection of the male body - staged in brilliant pictures that focus on the essential without denying the artist's eye for details. Michael Stokes certainly is a stunning talent to watch out for!

    In If It's a Choice, My Zygote Chose Balls: Making Sense of Senseless Controversy, Jeremy continues that style, blending a unique mix of memoir and social commentary that argues for equal rights based on relatable human principles.Hooper leads readers through his own life story, revealing the positive and unnecessarily encumbered aspects of growing up gay in contemporary society. The noted author and activist writes in a sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, but always sharply informed style, opening a window into the realities of family rejection and acceptance. Whether offering direct guidance for would-be straight allies or sharing the inner monologue of a boy who knew who he was long before early adulthood would allow him to own it, Hooper provides a wealth of insight and argument to push the equality conversation forward."From constant talk about marriage to the popular parlor game 'Which celebrity is gay?' our world is, in many ways, obsessed with LGBT topics," says Hooper. "However, there is serious neglect in terms of actually tackling the issues at hand. I want to address the weighty topics head on, but in a relatable way."As someone who spends ten to twelve daily hours slogging through the "culture war" for his celebrated website, Jeremy Hooper knows better than anyone how far the LGBT community still has to go in order to obtain full equality. At the same time, his focused lens had led him to believe that some of the usual LGBT activism has isolated the fight and stories, leaving much of the continued struggle to go unrealized by the population at large. So Hooper's answer is to present relatable tales that are just as proactive in changing hearts and minds as any textbook gay rights treatment, but doing so in a package that pops with universal heart and wit. Hooper calls out the B.S. for what it is, while keeping an equal focus on uniting folks from all walks of life for the common causes of peace, equality, acceptance, and, ironically enough-family values. All of this while remembering to keep his tongue in or around the cheek region.Written to engage and entertain, as well as inspire further discussion and action, the book is aimed at a wide range of readers interested and open to learning.

    CioranIf chaos theory applied to anyone, it’s Will and Tom. Best friends since childhood, life takes very different courses for them until they’re thrown back together in the middle of their own individual chaos. Surviving the terrors of war in Northern Ireland and the heartbreak of childlessness and a broken marriage, Tom learns that bravery isn’t about daring death, it’s about facing life. For Will, it’s about being yourself – or in his case, herself, as he starts an unusual journey towards being just that; the woman, Billie.Chained Melodies is the extraordinary story of how two men find not just courage, but self-belief and the true nature of love."Touching and almost heart-breaking, this is a novel to tickle your heart strings."“...breath-taking and intriguing...”“...a 'must read" novel.'”“..quite beautiful, with a certain poetry in the tone."

    With little adult supervision, they feed and care for each other, making up the rules as they go. But when Kenny's and Benji's relationship becomes more than friendship, and Edith shoots something she really shouldn't shoot, the formerly indifferent outside world comes barging in whether they want it to or not.

    Even the call to police that a black man was "going crazy with a gun" was hardly unusual in this urban setting. Nobody could have imagined that the arrest of two men for a minor criminal offense would reverberate in American constitutional law, exposing a deep malignity in our judicial system and challenging the traditional conception of what makes a family. Indeed, when Harris County sheriff’s deputies entered the second-floor apartment, there was no gun. Instead, they reported that they had walked in on John Lawrence and Tyron Garner having sex in Lawrence’s bedroom.So begins Dale Carpenter’s "gripping and brilliantly researched" Flagrant Conduct, a work nine years in the making that transforms our understanding of what we thought we knew about Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark Supreme Court decision of 2003 that invalidated America’s sodomy laws. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Carpenter has taken on the "gargantuan" task of extracting the truth about the case, analyzing the claims of virtually every person involved.Carpenter first introduces us to the interracial defendants themselves, who were hardly prepared "for the strike of lightning" that would upend their lives, and then to the Harris County arresting officers, including a sheriff’s deputy who claimed he had "looked eye to eye" in the faces of the men as they allegedly fornicated. Carpenter skillfully navigates Houston’s complex gay world of the late 1990s, where a group of activists and court officers, some of them closeted themselves, refused to bury what initially seemed to be a minor arrest.The author charts not only the careful legal strategy that Lambda Legal attorneys adopted to make the case compatible to a conservative Supreme Court but also the miscalculations of the Houston prosecutors who assumed that the nation’s extant sodomy laws would be upheld. Masterfully reenacting the arguments that riveted spectators and Justices alike in 2003, Flagrant Conduct then reaches a point where legal history becomes literature, animating a Supreme Court decision as few writers have done.In situating Lawrence v. Texas within the larger framework of America’s four-century persecution of gay men and lesbians, Flagrant Conduct compellingly demonstrates that gay history is an integral part of our national civil rights story.

    It's a dangerous time to be gay. Nobody knows that better than closeted prosecutor Paul Winters, the rising star in the L.A. District Attorney's office. But when the police insist a gay man arrested for soliciting committed suicide in custody--and Paul knows it was murder--he risks everything to uncover the truth. Thrown together with a strikingly handsome vice cop with a dark past, the two men race to expose a conspiracy at the highest levels of government that threatens to tear the city apart. THE YELLOW CANARY is the first book in The L.A. AFTER MIDNIGHT Quartet, a four-book four-decade spanning saga of gay life from the 1950s to the 1980s in America's most corrupt city.

    Coyote's wry, honest stories about gender and identity have captivated audiences everywhere. Ivan's eighth book is her first for LGBT youth, written for anyone who has ever felt different or alone in their struggles to be true to themselves. Included are stories about Ivan's tomboy youth and her adult life, where she experiences cruelty and kindness in unexpected places.Funny, inspiring, and full of heart, One in Every Crowd is about embracing and celebrating difference and feeling comfortable in one's own skin.Ivan E. Coyote was also featured in the anti-bullying anthology It Gets Better.

    Seth is sixteen, in the closet, and about ready to give up on life. But for his brother Jory, making an unexpected visit home from college, nothing is more trouble than it's worth to keep his little brother alive.Author and Editor royalties from this book will go to The Trevor Project.

    Twelve years of terror end with a world in flames. Behind filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s stirring footage of a million joyous patriots, the horror of Nazi Germany slowly unfolds. It engulfs Katja Sommer, a “good German” with dangerous desires; Frederica Brandt, a traitor to her homeland; Rudi Lamm, a homosexual camp survivor and forced killer for Hitler; and Peter Arnhelm, a half-Jewish “terrorist” who lives with tigers. Under the scrutiny of the familiar monsters of the Third Reich, their enablers, and their hangers-on, these four struggle for life and for each other. Love does not conquer all, but it’s far better than going to hell alone.

    1971. Born in the wrong body Jack finds himself lost and trapped in a town where he feels out of place. Acceptance – or even tolerance – doesn’t exist in Union, or within his family. When Jack attempts suicide following his mother’s death, Jack’s sister Emma has him committed to Meadow Field Psychiatric Hospital, where they continue to try and change him, convince him that how he feels and who he is, is wrong. But in this most unlikely place, among the most unlikely friends and unspeakable fear, Jack learns that all acts have consequences, some things cannot be changed, and love isn’t defined by the body it comes in.*This book contains strong language, violence, disturbing acts, and mild sexual content. Not intended for readers under 17.

    But in the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov's acclaimed novel Pale Fire, it's a fiction from start to finish. It opens with Francesca's early life. We learn about her childhood love, the chess genius Lisa Sinsong, as well as her rivalry with her brilliant sister Isabella, who publishes an acclaimed volume of poetry at the age of twelve. She compensates for the failings of her less than attentive parents by turning to her grandmother who is loyal and adoring until she learns Francesca is a lesbian, when she rejects her. Francesca flees to a ramshackle cabin in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, working weekends at the flea market. She breaks into the gloomy basement of a house, where she begins her life as a painter. Much to her confusion and even dismay, fame comes quickly.Interspersed with Francesca's narrative are thirteen critical "essays" on the paintings of Francesca deSilva by critics, academics, and psychologists—essays that are razor-sharp satires on art, lesbian life, and the academic world, puncturing pretentiousness with every paragraph. Art on Fire is a darkly comic, pitch-perfect, and fearless satire on the very art of biography itself.Art on Fire is the latest winner of the Bywater Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Heekin Foundation Award, the Dana Awards, and the Story Oaks Prize. It was mistakenly awarded the nonfiction prize in the Amherst Book and Plow Competition. It was also awarded the 2014 Barbara Gittings Literature Award by the Stonewall Book Awards Committee.

    The result is laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking, challenging, inventive, informative, and invites the reader to explore what truly makes a man a man.Includes a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Alison Bechdel (Fun Home, Are You My Mother?)

    Monster Pop! is a fun and fresh romcom slice of life webcomic about George Tinsely, your average fun-loving, leaps before she looks cyclops, and her adventures in friendship, love, and growing up.

    Through images, poetry and prose, Clementine Morrigan examines the processes of destruction and creation which are fundamental to healing.

    It is not a political negativity that we must locate in our queerness, but rather a vicious anti-politics which opposes any utopian dreams of a better future residing on the far side of a lifetime of sacrifice. Our queer negativity has nothing to do with art, but it has a great deal to do with urban insurrection, piracy, slave revolt: all those bodily struggles that refuse the future and pursue the irrationality of jouissance, enjoyment, rage, chaos. Ours is not the struggle for an alternative, because there is no alternative which can escape the ever-expanding horizons of capital. Instead we fight, hopeless, to tear our lives away from that expanding horizon and to erupt with wild enjoyment now. Anything less is our continued domestication to the rule of civilization.”

    to become Jane Allan at the age of twenty-eight.Follow his life through a series of flashbacks, through his schooling and military career, up to the moment he attempts to win round his bigot of a father.The join Jane as her life begins to go right, after three decades of being wrong, but still an emotional roller-coaster nonetheless.

    His work began primarily from photographs he took of young men on the street in Harlem that he remixed with a fusion of historic painting styles, including elements of the French rococo. As rich visually as it is conceptually, Wiley’s work has drawn attention since his earliest shows in 2001. In the last decade, he has become one of the most important artists of the moment, with work as relevant and resonant to the hip-hop generation as it is to high-end collectors and major museums.This volume—the only comprehensive monograph on Wiley’s work—offers an in-depth understanding of this important artist’s work. It chronicles both the earliest paintings and photographs and his recent forays into sculpture—bust portraits in bronze in the manner of Renaissance artists.

    Somewhat reminiscent of the Disney film Prep & Landing, THE ADVENTURES OF TULIP, BIRTHDAY WISH FAIRY gives an inside look into what exactly happens to all those wishes, what Wish Fairies eat for lunch, and what kinds of tools they're issued. Tulip receives a wish from a child known as David who wishes to live as Daniela. He doesn't understand how to help, so he seeks the wise counsel of the Wish Fairy Captain and learns some new Wish Fairy Skills (while also introducing the concept of trans-identified children in a friendly, sympathetic way). Tulip gets in a little hot water, but ultimately his compassion and thoughtfulness win the day, while serving as a model for readers.

    

    Style traces the life and career of the iconic photographer through a compelling selection of renowned, as well as previously unpublished, photographs and two insightful essays. Herb Ritts (1952–2002) was a Los Angeles-based photographer who established an international reputation for distinctive images of fashion models, nudes, and celebrity portraits. During the 1980s and 1990s, Ritts was sought out by leading fashion designers such as Armani, Gianfranco Ferrè, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Valentino, and Versace, as well as magazine editors from GQ, Interview, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair, among others, to lend glamour to their products and layouts. Largely self-taught, Ritts developed his own style, one that often made use of the California light and landscape and helped to separate his work from his New York-based peers. From the late 1970s until his untimely death from AIDS in 2002, Ritts’s ability to create photographs that successfully bridged the gap between art and commerce was not only a testament to the power of his imagination and technical skill, but also marked the synergistic union between art, popular culture, and business that followed in the wake of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s.An exhibition of the same name will be on view at the Getty Center from April 3 through August 12, 2012; at the Cincinnati Art Museum from October 6 through December 30, 2012; and at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, from February 23 through May 19, 2013.

    She lives with her mother, works a mundane job to support them, and makes no waves among the ladies of her sleepy 1920's Canadian town. Secretly, though, she watches the flappers and so-called "loose women" with envy, dreaming of what glamorous lives they must have. And that's before Clark walks into her life. Clark embodies the world that Edith wishes she could be a part of. He's slick and dangerous and sexy in a way Edith has never experienced. So when Clark offers her a window into his world, she dives through without thinking. On the other side, though, her black and white world explodes into shades of gray, challenging Edith in ways she never imagined.Length: 9,600 words (24 pages)

    Volume One contains the first three novellas in the series: SEVEN (Snow White), BRAIDED (Rapunzel) and CRUMBS (Hansel and Gretel), compiled together in an enchanting omnibus edition. * SEVEN: A Lesbian Snow White The strange witch girl Neve has skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and a dark secret. Her father Lexander, an alchemist, harbors an evil obsession, and Catalina, his newest bride, made the grave mistake of becoming his wife. When Catalina finds herself falling in love with his daughter, Neve, instead, the deepening bond between the women sets in motion the final chapter of a story that began long ago, with a desperate longing and a handful of apple seeds. Together, Neve and Catalina must venture into the Huntsman's haunted forest to undo what has been done and set themselves free. * BRAIDED: A Lesbian Rapunzel Zelda is cursed to spend her days on a platform in an ancient, holy tree, growing her hair long enough to touch the ground. But it wasn’t her curse to bear: Gray, the witch’s daughter, was meant for that lonely fate. Gray visits Zelda each day, mourning their switched fates, and falling deeper in love with the cursed girl, until one night, at the Not-There Fair, an extraordinary creature outlines a magical plan that could set both of them free. Will Gray’s love for Zelda be strong enough to survive the strange dream world of Chimera, or will Zelda remain a prisoner of the curse forever? * CRUMBS: A Lesbian Hansel and Gretel Greta's never ventured beyond the refuge of the Heap. Outside, the Ragers lurk, ever hungry and hunting. But Greta and her brother, half-starved and now alone, must risk death for the dream of safety they hope to find within the metal forest. Once there, nothing is as it seems: in the confines of a crumbling old candy factory, the woman who rescues them with sweet words and sweeter treats harbors a dangerous secret.

    The collection is edited by leading scholars in the field and presents:individual introductory notes that situate each work within its historical, disciplinary and theoretical contextsessays grouped by key subject areas including Genealogies, Sex, Temporalities, Kinship, Affect, Bodies, and Borderswritings by major figures including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, David M. Halperin, Jose Esteban Munoz, Elizabeth Grosz, David Eng, Judith Halberstam and Sara Ahmed.The Routledge Queer Studies Reader is a field-defining volume and presents an illuminating guide for established scholars and also those new to Queer Studies.

    One is a broken almost was at the end of his career, the other an arrogant rising star tipped for greatness. It should have been a straightforward tournament. It really should have been. How were they to know that a chance encounter would change everything?

    28 authors from North America converge in a single volume to showcase the future of trans literature and the next great movements in queer art.

    Andrea looks eagerly forward to Backwards Day every year, so she can turn into a boy for the day. But one year she doesn't turn along with everyone else. She's miserable. The very next day, however, she turns into a boy - and stays that way! He's delighted, but his parents are distressed, and take him to the big city to consult with Backwardsologists. When they finally figure out what's happened, the miracles of Backwards Day are fully revealed to the reader."

    In this new collection of creative nonfiction, people who’ve tangled with the sex industry write about the complications that arise in the mix of sex and money. From the accounts of love and loss, occupational hazards and tricks of the trade to personal stories of hope, resistance and survival, Prose & Lore is a fiery collection of narratives by people who have walked the walk, and are now telling their tales.The contributions in the book were written by the participants of the Red Umbrella Project’s first memoir writing workshop, which took place in Fall 2012.

    Intricately formal but saucy and contemporary in diction, Advice for Lovers walks a fine line between the anything-goes orthography of the Elizabethans and the shifting etymologies of James Joyce. Sexy, kinky, disquieting, Advice for Lovers blazes an erotic trail into the twenty-first century."What if I'm spirited away to live in a torch song?—Where the landscape is a lover's discourse? Julian Talamantez Brolaski has me in thrall! In this enchanting book, Julian jacks up the artifice and jacks up the feeling." –Robert Glück"Advice for Lovers is the type of book that makes you see language with fresh eyes, challenging you toward something fiercer and more honest yet. It leaves you bruised and aching to be bruised again, and isn’t that what you were asking for after all?" —The Rumpus Author of gowanus atropolis (2011) and editor at Aufgabe and Litmus Press, Julian Talamantez Brolaski studied with Nathaniel Mackey, Elizabeth Willis, and Robert Hass. Xe rejects gendered pronouns and lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at The New School.

    When she finally realizes that being the best girl - and woman - she can be is no match for being the man she's supposed to be, there's only one solution, and it's not another purse, pair of pumps, or push-up bra. Teeny Weenies and Other Short Subjects takes a long, hard look at getting the short end of the stick, both before and after transition from female to male. This collection of humorous essays from award-winning author and transsexual man Matt Kailey explores identity, sexuality, and growing up female in a world with two sexes, two genders - and no exceptions.

    Smith investigates our fascinations with the body, gender, and entertainment in poems that are critically observant, darkly funny, darkly angry, and, sometimes, heartbreaking.Whether he is cataloging shirtless men in films and bad television, lyricizing the anxieties of childhood, or redrawing the lines of cultural membership, Appetite attacks its subjects with wit, candor, and compassionate intensity. These poems announce their presence with a style that is as beautifully wrought as it is provocative.In the America of Appetite, the usual hierarchies are obliterated: the disposable is as valuable as the traditional, pop culture is on the same level as the sacred, and the pleasurable simultaneity of past and present are found in high art and the tabloid. Smith’s work engages our contemporary moment and how we want to think of ourselves, while nodding to rich poetic, cultural, and personal histories.

    But the ensuing romance proves short-lived as Jimmy dies of an AIDS-related illness. The grieving Seamus is obliged to keep a promise to Jimmy: “Take me back the way I came.”    And so Seamus sets out by bicycle on a picaresque journey with the ashes, hoping to bring them back to Buffalo. He meets truck drivers, waitresses, college kids, farmers, ranchers, Marines, and other travelers—each one giving him a new perspective on his own life and on Jimmy’s death. When he meets and becomes involved with a young Native American man whose mother has recently died, Seamus’s grief and his story become universal and redemptive.

    Horlick's poems vibrate with spontaneity and yet retain an intimacy that is emotionally intoxicating. Whether reflecting on her coming of age moments within her family or measuring the impact of both the rural and urban prairie landscapes on her life, Horlick never strays far from how her identity as a queer writer has been shaped.

    We learn what it’s like for them to play football and come up short. We feel their lingering effects of bullying. We experience the undeniable power of seasons affecting their moods as they ache for a meaningful connection. We learn what it means to celebrate in spite of the odds against them. But more than anything, we discover anew through their poems the redemptive power of love and renewal among the leaves growing and falling.“The poetry in Among the Leaves crackles to life across plains both arid and wintry, from first crushes on grain-fed jock boys to fathers brandishing Bibles, guns, and catcher’s mitts. The Midwest is brought into sharp focus by a group of top-notch poets unafraid to explode the myth of the American heartland and expose the gritty, hard-scrabble realities of growing up gay there. I can’t remember an anthology so full of varied voices and styles that so deftly defines a region.” — Collin Kelley, author of Render and Slow to Burn http://www.squaresandrebels.com/

    Abdur-Rahman interrogates and challenges cultural theorists' interpretations of sexual transgression in African American literature. She argues that, from the mid-nineteenth century through the twentieth, black writers used depictions of erotic transgression to contest popular theories of identity, pathology, national belonging, and racial difference in American culture. Connecting metaphors of sexual transgression to specific historical periods, Abdur-Rahman explains how tropes such as sadomasochism and incest illuminated the psychodynamics of particular racial injuries and suggested forms of social repair and political redress from the time of slavery, through post-Reconstruction and the civil rights and black power movements, to the late twentieth century.Abdur-Rahman brings black feminist, psychoanalytic, critical race, and poststructuralist theories to bear on literary genres from slave narratives to science fiction. Analyzing works by African American writers, including Frederick Douglass, Pauline Hopkins, Harriet Jacobs, James Baldwin, and Octavia Butler, she shows how literary representations of transgressive sexuality expressed the longings of African Americans for individual and collective freedom. Abdur-Rahman contends that those representations were fundamental to the development of African American forms of literary expression and modes of political intervention and cultural self-fashioning.Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman is Assistant Professor of English at Brandeis University."Against the Closet is an important and much-needed book, a significant contribution to African American literature, cultural studies, sexuality studies, and critical race theory. Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman's close readings of fictional representations of race and sex are nuanced and illuminating, and the history of racial thought and sexual science that she presents is indispensable."—Maurice O. Wallace, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775–1995"In this significant and timely text, Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman complicates and expands our understanding of the queerness of blackness, making a welcome contribution to black cultural studies, black queer studies, literary studies, and work on lynching and the making of post-slavery whiteness."—Christina Sharpe, author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects

    As a result of this condemnation, LGBT people have been subjected to great spiritual, emotional and physical abuse and violence. This issue has taken on a particular urgency in light of the horrific string of suicides over the last year of young LGBT people who were subjected to harassment and bullying by their classmates.Cheng argues that people need to be liberated from the traditional legal model of thinking about sin and grace as a violation of divine and natural laws in which grace is understood as the strength to refrain from violating such laws. Rather Cheng proposes a Christological model based upon the theologies of Irenaeus, Bonaventure and Barth, in which sin and grace are defined in terms of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.This book will serve as a useful resource for all people who struggle to make sense of the traditional Christian doctrines of sin and grace in the context of the 21st century.-ChurchPublishing.org

    But when Colorado police recruit her to find her own brother, Zeb, a confessed murderer, she knows skill alone will not sustain her. Willa is thrown back into the past, surfacing memories of a childhood full of intense love, desperate mistakes, and gentle remorse. Trekking through exquisite New Mexico and Colorado landscapes, with Zeb two steps ahead and the police two steps behind, Willa must wrangle her desire to reunite with her brother and her own guilt about their violent past.In this remarkable debut, Loren’s lyrical prose gives voice to the wildlife and land surrounding these beautifully flawed characters, breathing life into the southwestern terrain. Within this treacherous and mesmerizing landscape, Theft illustrates the struggle to piece together the fragile traces of what has been left behind, allowing for new choices to take shape. This is a story about family, about loss, and about a search for answers.

    reposted from LJ. Words: 21,277

    These are the stories hearts tell. "Once and Future Lovers" illuminates these and other tales by shining a light on the critical moments in which men and women take the great risk that is loving. In this provocative collection of short fiction, characters grapple with the courage it takes to love once while discovering the inherent challenge put to all lovers: embracing or denying the possibility of loving again, and again.

    They choose chatrooms over love, and scrawl on their friends with ballpoint pen. The girl/animal's lessons in geography, architecture, anatomy bewilder: learning is painful, filthy, slick with mucous and steeped in joy. Kristen Stone has degrees in anthropology, women's studies, and creative writing; she lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she works as a youth advocate.

    Fluctuating between descriptions of the exterior world and the speaker’s interior world, these stories are at once lyric and narrative, funny and heartbreaking, beautifully rich and stark. Here the subjective collides with the objective. These short, compelling stories show Lisicky at the top of his form.

    Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly, animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns.Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead toy panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, Animacies illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world.Mel Y. Chen is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley."Animacies is a book about 'reworldings,' as Mel Y. Chen traces the myriad ways that objects and affects move through and reshape zones of possibility for political transformation and queer resistance to neoliberal biopolitics. At the same time, Animacies itself generates such transformations: grounded in a generous, expansive understanding of queer of color and disability/crip critique, Chen's study reworlds or reorients disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory, animal studies, affect studies, and linguistics. In all of these critical spaces, Animacies might be described as the breathtaking and revivifying book we have been waiting for."—Robert McRuer, author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability"This ambitious transdisciplinary analysis of the relations between humans, nonhuman animals, and matter charts a compelling and innovative rethinking of the biopolitics of 'animacy.' Mel Y. Chen animates animacy, a concept of sentience hierarchy derived in linguistics, to offer a far-ranging critique that implicates disability studies, queer of color critique, and postcolonial theory. The generative result is a timely and crucial intervention that foregrounds the oft-occluded import of race and sex in the rapidly growing fields of posthumanist theory, new materialisms, and animal studies."—Jasbir K. Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

    In The Harder She Comes, we meet girls salivating at the sight of well-filled and packed jeans and bois dreaming of having a beautiful girl’s red lipstick smeared across their mouths. D. L. King has curated a singular set of stories filled with sexy sirens luring unsuspecting butches to their demise on the rocky shores of love and hot, confident women in silk and lace during the day who will do anything to serve their daddies' needs at night. The Harder She Comes is great writing with characters that will stay with the reader for a long, long time — sometimes sweet, always sexy, often romantic, and more than a little dangerous.

    It offers a view that will educate everyone about the trans experience. It offers emotional support to family and friends close to someone experience transition and educations to those who may not fully understand what the “T” in LGBTQ means. What do mothers really think of their transgender and gender variant children? Sharing stories of love, struggle, and acceptance, this collection of mother's voices, representing a diversity of backgrounds and sexual orientations, affirms the experience of those who have raised and are currently raising transgender and gender variant children between the ages of 5-50.  There are stories here of birth mothers and adoptive mothers, single mothers and married mothers, stepmothers and grandmothers, and heterosexual mothers and lesbian mothers. They have children of all ages, ranging fro six to sixty. Their children are gender nonconforming, gender variant, gender queer, transgender, and “pink boys.” Many mothers are active in PFLAG groups and other community based support groups. Often "transitioning" socially and emotionally alongside their child but rarely given a voice in the experience, mothers hold the key to familial and societal understanding of gender difference. Edited by Rachel Pepper, a gender specialist and co-author of the acclaimed book The Transgender Child, Transitions of the Heart includes both a glossary of terms as well as a resource guide. It will prove an invaluable resource for parents coming to terms with a child's gender variance or transition.

    This optimistic book challenges advocates for LGBT rights in the U.S. to aspire beyond the narrow framework of equality. It outlines a more substantive politics with race, class, and gender at its foundation, and suggests that such a politics will produce greater and more meaningful change for a larger number of people.Irresistible Revolution is intended for a broad and general audience. The book turns an experienced and thoughtful lens onto many common controversies, rhetoric, and strategic questions that face contemporary social change movements: pursuit of broad or narrow agendas, integration of economic and racial justice, integrating sexual orientation and gender identity in human rights frameworks, the persistence of sexism, the dilemmas of bipartisanship, and the challenge of seeing beyond the short term to secure gains made for the long run.

    Her rise to prominence as the spoken word artist known as Cheryl B brought with it a series of desctructive girlfriends and boyfriends and a dependence on drugs and alcohol that would take nearly a decade to shake.In the months following her death, members of Burke’s close-knit writing group, who had met continuously for nine years, worked to compile her drafts, essays and emails into a completed manuscript which was eventually synthesized into its final form by Burke’s close friend, novelist Sarah Schulman. This autobiography tracks her struggle to transcend her working class New Jersey roots and define herself as an artist against the backdrop of an unforgiving city, a series of disastrous girlfriends and boyfriends, and an intense, intimate relationship with drugs and alcohol. By the time Burke got sober in 2001, she had witnessed–and made major contributions to– one of the most remarkable artistic transformations that New York City has ever experienced.

    A wild wedding hangover. In love-poems, conversations, intimate jokes from a hundred parties, five prisons, and three beloved bars, Jill McDonough's second book tells where we live, and how: each day fresh with the gift of it. Often frankly autobiographical, her poems are also peopled with others’ stories, and vivid with reality. Above all these are poems of love and desire—ardent, funny, and erotically charged.

    Yet, whether the tales or verses are grotesque or sinister, Poe's narrators are Outsiders, dealing with emotions that so many LGBT individuals feel: isolation and abandonment as well as loneliness and lost love. In Where Thy Dark Eye Glances, editor Steve Berman has assembled a range of tales that queer the prose and poetry of the Poe, the man himself, as well as dark and eerie stories about reading Poe's work.Twenty-six poems and stories by:Christopher Barzak • Steve Berman • Richard Bowes • Satyros Phil Bucato • Seth Cadin • Máiréad Casey • Matthew Cheney • Ray Cluley • Peter Dubé • L.A. Fields • Alex Jeffers • Kyle S. Johnson • Collin Kelley • Terra LeMay • Chip Livingston • Heather Lojo • Clare London • Ed Madden • Ronna Magy • Nick Mamatas • Jeff Mann • John Mantooth • Silvia Moreno-Garcia • Tansy Rayner Roberts • Cory Skerry • Daniel Nathan Terry

    Kumbier argues that queering the archive (thinking through queer interests, experiences, explanatory frameworks, and cultural practices) allows us to think critically about established archival principles and practices. This project describes -- and supports -- the work of archivists, community documentarians, activists, and scholars seeking to preserve materials documenting queer lives and experiences, and imagines how we might respond to the particular demands of archiving queer lives. Further, this project intervenes in the repetition of practices that may exclude LGBTQ constituencies, render our experiences less-visible/less-legible, or perpetuate oppressive power relations between archivists and users or documented subjects. The project aims to make work by scholars in history, performance studies, queer studies, and other areas of the humanities who are encountering the limits of archives -- and are developing strategies for working with them -- legible and relevant to archivists and librarians. The book supports its conceptual work with concrete examples of collecting and documentation projects, a research ethnography, and analyses of popular media that represent -- and critique -- archival spaces and practices.

    His father has rejected him and turned him out because he is gay. Richard Mathews is 50 years old, and his life is a mess. His business has grown and is now self-perpetuating and did not need him any longer. Richard hasn't made a decision about his life for years. Cory and Richard's lives were in ruins, but something amazing happened. They met.

    A comical memoir about a klutz's sex change, Bumbling into Body Hair shows how a sense of humor - and true love - can triumph over hair disasters, resurrected breasts, and even the most crippling self-doubt.

    This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world's most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the debates of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women's movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and other minorities produce power and pleasure.Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, sex educator, and feminist pornographer. She is the author of seven books including The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and Opening Up. She runs the adult film production company Smart Ass Productions and is an exclusive director for Vivid Entertainment.Celine Parreñas Shimizu is an associate professor of film and performance studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and founding editor of Camera Obscura. She is the author of Straitjacket Sexualities and the 2009 Cultural Studies Book Award winning, The Hypersexuality of Race.Mireille Miller-Young is assistant professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her forthcoming book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography (Duke University Press) examines African American women’s sex work in the porn industry.

    

    Jessica or Elizabeth? How will the story end? Try each option on for size and see what happens; twinned blondes in blue eyes never seemed so spooky. Featuring special appearances by the Baby Sitter's club and others. Or as the author says: "An emphatically nonparodic exploration of compound female subjectivity and codependent dyadic relationships, constrained agency and unstable identity all via those all-american blonde bombshells with the sparkling blue-green eyes the Wakefield twins."purchase here: birdsoflace.etsy.com

    Snowflake finds the poet awash in an extended and distressed landscape mediated by technology and its distortion of time and space. In different streets, the poet returns home, to the familiar world of human connection. Two books meet as one: more Eileen Myles, more indelible connection, more fleeting ecstasy.

    Bearing passionate testimony to private and public memories, this gathering of poems and prose fragments documenting the intimate challenges of homosexual longing gives voice to an invisible minority still struggling to be recognised today. Now published at last, this book, full of fierce confessions, ambivalences and flinty epiphanies, will shock and devestate. Here is an uncompromising confluence of unfulfilled desires wrought through language by one of Singapore's most outspoken and critical voices.

    Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill began a small collaborative project on a comic entitled The Unspeakable Mr. Hart, which appeared in the first four issues of Cyclops, England's first comics magazine for an adult readership. Soon after, Burroughs and McNeill agreed to collaborate on a book-length meditation on time, power, and control, and corruption that evoked the Mayan codices and specifically, the Mayan god of death, Ah Pook. Ah Pook is Here was to include their character Mr. Hart, but stray from the conventional comics form to explore different juxtapositions of images and words.Ah Pook was never finished in its intended form. In a 1979 prose collection that included only the words from the collaboration, Ah Pook is Here and Other Texts (Calder, 1979), Burroughs explains in the preface that they envisioned the work to be "one that falls into neither the category of the conventional illustrated book nor that of a comix publication." Rather, the work was to include "about a hundred pages of artwork with text (thirty in full-color) and about fifty pages of text alone." The book was conceived as a single painting in which text and images were combined in whatever form seemed appropriate to the narrative. It was conceived as 120 continuous pages that would 'fold out.' Such a book was, at the time, unprecedented, and no publisher was willing to take a chance and publish a "graphic novel."However, Malcolm McNeill created nearly a hundred paintings, illustrations, and sketches for the book, and these, finally, are seeing the light of day in The Lost Art of Ah Pook. (Burroughs' text will not be included.) McNeill himself is an exemplary craftsman and visionary painter whose images have languished for over 30 years, unseen. Even in a context divorced from the words, they represent a stunning precursor to the graphic novel form to come. Sara J. Van Ness contributes an historical essay chronicling the long history of Burroughs' and McNeill's work together, including its incomplete publishing history with Rolling Stone's Straight Arrow Press, the excerpt that ran in Rush magazine, and the text that was published without pictures.

    His work was very controversial, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which he would continue editing and revising until his death, described in his time as obscene. Whitman was deeply influenced by deism and he denied any one faith was more important than another, and embraced all religions equally. Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians". Beyond this, he was hailed as America's first "poet of democracy". This collection, contains his complete works, in their original editions: Leaves of Grass, Drum-Taps, Good-Bye My Fancy, Specimen Days, Collect, November Boughs, Memoranda, The Wound Dresser; poetry, essays & letters. Review, design and indexing by Century eBooks

    Murry Johnson combines two never before paired genres: black gay and vampire fiction. Set in Louisiana, Image of Emeralds and Chocolate masterfully explores the past and the present. The novel speaks to all who have ever dreamed of finding romance, and captures the national obsession with vampires. The story follows Eric Peterson, a talented high school senior enrolled in a creative writing course at Loyola University. Insecure and inexperienced, he often daydreams about finding love. His fantasies quickly become reality when a strikingly attractive new student, Marquis LeBlanc, is assigned as his writing partner. But the man of Eric's dreams is hiding something. Marquis has been severely depressed for a very long time. His therapeutic motive for enrolling in a writing class is abruptly derailed when he unexpectedly falls in love for the second time in his life. If Marquis reveals his secret, will Eric accept him...or even believe him?

    

    Zi is drawn with yellow and she is optimistic. First appearance of Pon & Zi was in 2007.This volume collects the cartoons in one beautiful hardcover edition.

    It is being renewed and validated by the haunting images of ancestors. It is the ebullient voices of kinfolk on Sunday afternoons. It is the tongues of the brothers and sisters who have struggled and sacrificed, reclaiming their language. It is the spirit proclaiming and exalting in life and love beyond the limitations of gender and constructed notions of masculinity. This is the emotion that grows inside me as I enter the world of Tim'm West's Red Dirt Revival. West is a bold critic of the status quo. He speaks many truths to the complexities of power. As he declares the notion of Black Men loving Black Men as a revolutionary act, he also challenges the limitations of gender in an in depth essay, A letter to Helen Cixous. West writes, "My mutha gave birth to a Toya, my lil' sista'. I sometimes wonder if I was supposed to be her and she me, or both of us indistinguishable —both with affinities for whatever color boyblue and girlpink make when they consolidate. What color would that be?" In Red Dirt Revival language is used to validate cultural identity. The words of the "folk" who are at family reunions, on street corners, behind academic or prison walls, become a collective voice in the work of Tim'm West. It is the phonetic harmonies that West brings to his poems and observations that has moved me to cry, smile or just sit and think awhile. He signifies, he rhytes, he speaks "blakk" at you and with you, he praises, he religiously creates a lens for us to see the ambiguous and contradictory nature of human classifications. Yah dig? West is an observer of love and human relationships. He expresses the urgency of this human need for a deeper spiritual love of one another, transcending labels and identities that are not easily defined. In "Magnetix" he writes: `I have loved black men/ agitated by the thick of it/ guarded like when they anticipate/the sting of a racial slur/or a gender reprimand /for not being a manly enough boy…" Tim'm West is a political thinker, deconstructing how one's identity determines their fate. In "Pro-Lifer" he says "Metaphors don't come sweet these days/Cause niggaboys and girls/Are pronounced dead at birth". I feel in Red Dirt Revival, we are being asked to challenge and praise the blakkness in ourselves. We are being pushed to inwardly examine our concepts of queerness, femininity, and masculinity. And what does love got to do with it? It is through his words that Tim'm West allows us entrance into our own revivals. We are given permission to feel the pain, joy, and bewilderment from our shared existence, and our individual lives.

    Sarah Pinder's poems navigate domestic and "natural" spaces as landscapes charged with possible violence and desire while they scan scenes as an outsider or camera eye to unsettle and fray familiar settings. Using hyper-focus and the long gaze, they draw the eye to the corners and seams of these spaces, slowing us down, shifting our focus to worn detail, asking us to seek pattern and possibility in a hyper-paced present tense. These are little ominous films, documenting the minutiae around us that can be our undoing.Let their ribs stretch out – there is no figurewhich is not also a ground inits arctic plane. Cutting rooms as luckwould have it have academic sincerity.Sarah Pinder was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. This is her first collection.

    These are also letters to the anonymous, the proud, the panicky, the petrified, and particularly the lonely, written everywhere—upon ripped bodies and diner napkins, upon bathroom stalls, and in Craigslist personals and Miss Lonelyhearts columns.Ranging from the rhapsodic to the epigrammatic with his dangerously experimental narrative that snorts the alphabet, Daniel Zomparelli imbues the fast-paced drug and party culture of Davie Village’s young gay males with grand poignancy and pathos. Stitching serial poems into this imaginary patchwork in the fashion of Robert Duncan, with drag queens and porn fantasy figures in tow, Zomparelli brashly faces up to fears of HIV and gay bashing. On this poetic street that is a universe, we turn away from violence, “dance fight, or turn it into a musical / West Side-like.”With poetic tributes to his Vancouver idols Billeh Nickerson, George Stanley and Michael V. Smith, Zomparelli demonstrates, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

    Jon Benet meets Kathy Acker in a rollicking coming-of-age tale set in the snow globe of Boulder, Colorado. With guest appearances by Little Lord Fauntleroy, H. P. Lovecraft, the Blue Fairy, a wind-up Walter Benjamin, a soft-toy Cthulhu, O (form The Story of O), and many more. Neither tribute nor pastiche, Memoirs investigates the “self” of very-late-capitalism in a collage of all that is right, and terribly wrong, in America.The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker is published as part of the TrenchArt: Surplus Series, with an introduction by Peggy Kamuf and visual art by Klaus Killisch. PRAISE FOR The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker “Du Plessis’s is the art of a ventriloquist so artful he can carry many voices inside other voices. […] Memoirs knows a world in which dolls are as real as the children who are as fake as dolls.”- from the introduction by Peggy Kamuf

    A summer of pillow-forts, drinking & numerous re-watches of Dirty Dancing ensues. Non-magical AU set in Warwick Castle.

    It is a critique of how privilege theory
and cultural essentialism have incapacitated antiracist, feminist, and queer
organizing in this country by minimizing and misrepresenting the severity and
structural character of the violence faced by marginalized groups.According to privilege theory, white supremacy is primarily a psychological
attitude which individuals can simply choose to discard instead of a material
infrastructure which reproduces race at key sites across society – from racially
segmented labor markets to the militarization of the border. Even when this
material infrastructure is named, more confrontational tactics which might
involve the risk of arrest are deemed “white” and “privileged,” while the focus
turns back to reforming the behavior and beliefs of individuals. Privilege
politics is ultimately rooted in an idealist theory of power which maintains that
psychological attitudes are the root cause of oppression and exploitation, and that
vague alterations in consciousness will somehow remake oppressive structures.This dominant form of anti-oppression politics also assumes that demographic
categories are coherent, homogeneous “communities” or “cultures.” This
pamphlet argues that identity categories do not indicate political unity or
agreement. Identity is not solidarity. The violent domination and subordination
we face on the basis of our race, gender, and sexuality do not immediately create a
shared political vision. But the uneven impact of oppression across society creates
the conditions for the diffuse emergence of autonomous groups organizing on the
basis of common experiences, analysis, and tactics. There is a difference between
a politics which places shared cultural identity at the center of its analysis of
oppression, and autonomous organizing against forms of oppression which
impact members of marginalized groups unevenly.This pamphlet argues that demands for increased cultural sensitivity and
recognition has utterly failed to stop a rising tide of bigotry and violence in an
age of deep austerity. Anti-oppression, civil rights, and decolonization struggles
repeatedly demonstrate that if resistance is even slightly effective, the people
who struggle are in danger. The choice is not between danger and safety, but
between the uncertain dangers of revolt and the certainty of continued violence,
deprivation, and death. There is no middle ground.

    Piercingly intimate and beautifully candid, these images capture the vibrant world of acquaintances, friends, and collaborators Baldwin cultivated while living intermittently in Turkey from 1961 to 1971.Following publication of "Notes of a Native Son" and "The Fire Next Time," James Baldwin's literary star approached its peak during the turbulent 1960s. His burgeoning role as celebrity, prophet, and leader heaped an unsustainable amount of pressure and responsibility onto his slight frame in an American landscape that doubly punished Baldwin for being both black and gay, and he often turned to Turkey for sanctuary. Bearing Witness to Another Place includes essays by writers and scholars who use his sojourns to Turkey as a lens to understand Baldwin as a human being and his need for sanctuary in order to continue to bear witness to America's dream of racial equality.

    A typical Christian kid, that is, until she developed a searingly deep crush on another little girl playing afterhours in church, and more importantly, until Jesus—a tiny, imaginary Jesus, one that stays “safely tucked behind the baseboard or the petals of a peony”—became her invisible friend and constant companion.Heartbreakingly honest and hilarious, My Almost Certainly Real Imaginary Jesus shows just how easy it can be to fall headlong into fundamentalism, venturing into the very heart of enemy territory and the church’s false promises of altar calls and sexual cures. In the spirit of Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, this debut memoir is plainspoken, speaking with candor and insight. Barth particularly addresses the disconnect between the radical and very human Jesus of history and the church’s supernatural savior. She asks the question to all in the closet—both closet Christians and closet homosexuals: Which is more difficult, admitting to being Christian or admitting to being gay?An answer is found in her own hard-won journey, a hopeful answer that is an “attempt to leave a record of the early signs of the turning and softening of a collective heart.” Giving voice to many who have searched for sanctuary in a church that has largely rejected them, this story pauses at the threshold of one of a growing number of churches which, in opening the door to her and other homosexuals, welcome Jesus back inside as well.

    If pressed, Fleming will say that the stories explore how love and disappointment, and humour and resilience, are twinned."Sentence by sentence, Anne Fleming is one of the finest writers I've ever read"The Globe and Mail"[Fleming's] evenhanded, sharp-eyed and often hilarious narratives traverse the frenzied chaos of urban life with ease and precision"The Georgia Straight

    This first book by Rae (who uses "they" as a pronoun) is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in rural Canada.The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel, the narrator finds solace and safety in the company of their siblings, in their nascent feelings for a girl at school, and in their growing awareness that they are not the person their parents think they are. With a heart as big as the prairie sky, this is a quietly devastating, heart-wrenching coming-of-age book about escaping dogma, surviving abuse, finding love, and risking everything for acceptance.Rae Spoon lives in Montreal, Quebec.