I definitely want to read
First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far), a collection of personal essays by 41 assorted North American LGBT types, edited by Richard La Bonte and Lawrence Schimel. Here's Bay Window's review.
UK poet Gregory Woods (author of definitive books on gay lit) has a new collection just out.
Gay poet from Singapore makes TIME magazine. That right there makes me want to read him!
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer Achy Obejas has a new book, “This is What Happened in Our Other Life” a collection of poems about love, desire and exploring her roots as a Cuban-born Jewish lesbian. Feast of Fools
interviews her (audio!).
Rigoberto Gonzalez suggests Ronald Johnson in his latest Poetry Foundation blog post. He particularly recommends Johnson's book
The Shrubberies.
Peter points out someone new to me,
Daryl Hine.
Gonzalez writes:
I stumbled upon this book in my never-ending quest for gay poet role models. And although Johnson was out of the closet, and he did pen “Blocks to Be Arranged in a Pyramid,” a long poem in memory of AIDS victims—he had witnessed firsthand the devastating plague that claimed the lives of many while he was living in San Francisco in the eighties—The Shrubberies is a book concerned with rhythm and sound
Richard Labonte's Between the Lines column has some interesting reviews and his this note about books to watch for:
Barnes & Noble has decided it will not carry "Fucking Daphne," reports the blog of publisher Seal Press - because of the title. The collection of "mostly true stories and fictions" has writers imagining what it would be like to have a sexual encounter with San Francisco-based performance poet Daphne Gottlieb. The book is coming from the Perseus group next spring... REDBONE PRESS has reissued the 1991 Alyson Books anthology "Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men," edited by Essex Hemphill, who took over the project after its original editor, Joseph Beam, died of AIDS in 1988; Hemphill died of AIDS in 1995. The book has a new introduction by University of Texas anthropology professor Jafari Sinclaire Allen, and an afterword by Chuck Tarver, a friend of Hemphill's. Redbone plans to reissue Beam's 1986 anthology, "In the Life" - a seminal collection of black gay writing - in a few months. Both books have been out of print for several years... C. BARD COLE'S "This Is Where My Life Went Wrong" is one of five finalists in the "Novel of Novels" contest conducted by BLATT Books, with the winner promised publication next spring. Cole's gay short story collection, "Briefly Told Lives," was published by St. Martin's in 2000.
And for a little international flavor...
Marshall (who must read all the time!) writes me:
David Malouf, the gay doyen of Australian letters, has a new collection of poetry out entitled "Typewriter Music" which I don't think has been released yet in the US. However, his "The Complete Stories" was published in the US this summer.
David Plante, the gay Canadian novelist, has just brought a collection of poetry by his long-time partner, Nikos Stangos (who died in 2004) entitled "Pure Reason". Stangos had a huge influence poetry and gay poetry in particular as well as the art world. As editor of the Penguin Modern Poets series, he was the first to publish in England the American poets John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Kenward Elmslie and James Schuyler; and as co-editor, with Al Alvarez, of Penguin Modern European Poets, he brought the work of the poets Marina Tsvetaeva, Fernando Pessoa and Yannis Ritsos (the latter translated by Stangos himself) to the attention of English readers for the first time. Here's Stangos' impressive obit:
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