Gay Fiction Speaks

A collection of in-depth analytical interviews with twelve of the best-known gay novelists writing in English today, including Armistead Maupin, David Leavitt, Alan Garganus, and others.

Today's most celebrated, prominent, and promising authors of gay fiction in English explore the literary influences and themes of their work in these revealing interviews with Richard Canning. Though the interviews touch upon a wide range of issues—including gay culture, AIDS, politics, art, and activism—what truly distinguishes them is the extent to which Canning encourages the authors to reflect on their writing practices, published work, literary forebears, and their writing peers—gay and straight. Edmund White talks about narrative style and the story behind the cover of A Boy's Own Story. Armistead Maupin discusses his method of writing and how his work has adapted to television. Dennis Cooper thinks about L.A., AIDS, Try, and pop music. Alan Hollinghurst considers structure and point of view in The Folding Star, and why The Swimming-Pool Library is exactly 366 pages long. David Leavitt muses on the identity of the gay reader—and the extent to which that readership defined a tradition. Andrew Holleran wonders how he might have made The Beauty of Men "more forlorn, romantic, lost" by writing in the first person.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Bad Feminist shares a collection of stories about hardscrabble lives, passionate loves and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister’s marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls’ fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Roxanne Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America with her “signature wry wit and piercing psychological depth” (Harper’s Bazaar).

'There is something special about literature . . . that addresses our innermost sexual and amatory selves. Gay stories offer us vindication, fellowship, validation and a sense of shared identity that we need now as much as ever,' writes Stephen Fry in the foreword to this anthology. In this exciting new collection of gay short stories, we hear from authors imagining, surmising, and revealing aspects of gay life from a multitude of perspectives, ages, eras, locations, cultures and political climates. Contributors range from those emerging into a life of writing to those who have enjoyed international mainstream success. Some, such as Felice Picano, were pioneers of not only gay writing but also gay liberation itself. Others are recipients of world-class awards, including Vestal McIntyre, whose Lake Overturn: A Novel was named Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review and Out magazine, and a Best Book of 2009 by the Washington Post. It also won the Grub Street National Book Prize and Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. The premise for stories included in this anthology was very simple - other than the stipulation that a major component of the story be in some way concerned with gay life, there were no restrictions. The aim was to bring together fictional reflections of gay life from the minds of authors approaching 'gay' from very different angles. As a result, genres in this collection range from action to sci-fi, from thriller to fantasy. The stories are set in countries including Australia, Cuba, England, Greece, Italy, Kenya, Portugal, Russia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, and the USA. The youngest contributor is in his twenties, the oldest in his eighties. Readers will find themselves immersed in an engaging set of stories remarkably different from one another, yet, as Stephen Fry notes, offering a surprising sense of shared identity. With stories by: Nick Alexander; Tim Ashley; James Robert Baker; Damian Barr; Neil Bartlett; Sebastian Beaumont; Scott Brown; Michael Carroll; Robert Cochrane; Alfred Corn; Neal Drinnan; Royston Ellis; Nigel Fairs; Hugh Fleetwood; Ronald Frame; Patrick Gale; Damon Galgut; John R. Gordon; Drew Gummerson; Matt Harris; Cliff James; Francis King; Joseph Lidster; David Llewellyn; Paul Magrs; Vestal McIntyre; Brent Meersman; Joseph Olshan; Diriye Osman; Tony Peake; Felice Picano; David Robilliard; Jerry Rosco; Jeffrey Round; Lawrence Schimel; Rupert Smith; Colin Spencer; Joshua Winning; Ian Young; and Richard Zimler.

Lambda Literary Award-winning editor Richard Canning brings together all new work by Edmund White, Dale Peck, James McCourt, Andrew Holleran, and others.

**Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, and St. Louis Public Radio** The New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy is back with exactly the book we need in these unsettling times. Margaret Roach of The New York Times says, “Yes, please. I'll have another dose of delight.” In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

The author of the acclaimed Gay Fiction Speaks brings us new interviews with twelve prominent gay writers who have emerged in the last decade. Hear Us Out demonstrates how in recent decades the canon of gay fiction has developed, diversified, and expanded its audience into the mainstream. Readers will recognize names like Michael Cunningham, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours inspired the hit movie; and others like Christopher Bram, Bernard Cooper, Stephen McCauley, and Matthew Stadler. These accounts explore the vicissitudes of writing on gay male themes in fiction over the last thirty years—prejudices of the literary marketplace; social and political questions; the impact of AIDS; commonalities between gay male and lesbian fiction... and even some delectable bits of gossip.

Where does the story start? Marie-Louise Gay explains the creative process with typical fun and whimsy. Many children want to know where stories come from and how a book is made. Marie-Louise Gay’s new picture book provides them with some delightfully inspiring answers in a fictional encounter between an author and some very curious children, who collaborate on writing and illustrating a story. Marie-Louise has scribbled, sketched, scrawled, doodled, penciled, collaged and painted the words and pictures of a story-within-a-story that show how brilliant ideas creep up on you when you least expect it and how words sometimes float out of nowhere asking to be written. Any Questions? presents a world inhabited by lost polar bears, soaring pterodactyls, talking trees and spotted snails, with cameo appearances by some of Marie-Louise’s favorite characters — a world where kids can become part of the story and let their imaginations run wild... and just maybe they will be inspired to create stories of their own. At the end of the book, Marie-Louise provides answers to many of the questions children have asked her over the years, such as “Are you Stella?” “How did you learn to draw?” “Can your cat fly?” “How many books do you make in one day?” Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.6 Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.1 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.