The Danish Girl

Starring Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne and directed by Academy Award-winner Tom Hooper, this major motion picture portrays an unforgettable celebration of love. It starts with a question, a simple favour asked by a wife of her husband, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate. Einar Wegener and his American wife Greta Waud have been married for six years, but are yet to have a child. Both painters, they live a life of bohemian languor in Copenhagen until one day their lives are irreversibly altered. The Danish Girl eloquently shows the intimacy that defines a marriage and the nearly forgotten story of the love between a man who discovers that he is, in fact, a woman, and his wife who would sacrifice anything for him. Set against the glitz and decadence of 1920s Copenhagen, Paris and Dresden, and inspired by a true story, The Danish Girl is about one of the most passionate and unusual marriages of the twentieth century. 'a story of true love, suffering and sacrifice' - Sunday Telegraph

In 1930 Danish artist Einar Wegener underwent a series of surgeries to live as Lili Ilse Elvenes (more commonly known as Lili Elbe). Her life story, Fra Mand til Kvinde (From Man to Woman), published in Copenhagen in 1931, is the first popular full-length (auto)biographical narrative of a subject who undergoes genital transformation surgery (Genitalumwandlung). In Man Into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition, Pamela L. Caughie and Sabine Meyer present the full text of the 1933 American edition of Elbe's work with comprehensive notes on textual and paratextual variants across the four published editions in three languages. This edition also includes a substantial scholarly introduction which situates the historical and intellectual context of Elbe's work, as well as new essays on the work by leading scholars in transgender studies and modernist literature, and critical coverage of the 2015 biopic, The Danish Girl. This print edition has a digital companion: the Lili Elbe Digital Archive (www.lilielbe.org). Launched on July 6, 2019, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) where Lili Elbe was initially examined, the Lili Elbe Digital Archive hosts the German typescript and all four editions of this narrative published in Danish, German, and English between 1931 and 1933, with English translations of the Danish edition and the typescript. Many letters from archives and contemporaneous articles noted in this print edition may be found in the digital archive.

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist Winner of The Ferro-Grumley Award for Gay Fiction Award-winning short stories from the author of The Danish Girl and Pasadena “Passion for us all will remain a troublesome thing.” The Rose City combines a collection of unforgettable characters with Ebershoff’s trademark emotional insight and intelligent prose in seven stories about young men and boys as they discover and rediscover themselves in a world that never really works out as planned. Often tragic but lacking in despair, The Rose City delves into the tribulations of youth, identity, sexuality – and longing for something just out of reach. Written with compassion and truth, these stories present characters who live at the margins of the world at the moment they take their first steps toward acceptance and love.

Set in the 1920s and '30s in Copenhagen, Paris and Dresden, and inspired by a true story, The Danish Girl is about one of the most passionate and unusual marriages of the 20th century. Einar Wegener and his American wife Greta Waud have been married for six years, but have yet to have a child. Both painters, they live a life of bohemian langour in Copenhagen until one day their lives are irreversibly altered. An opera singer whose portrait Greta is painting fails to turn up for her sitting. Greta asks her husband if he would put on the soprano's stockings so that she can continue her portrait. Einar agrees and as he pulls on her stockings, slips into her yellow shoes and finally draws over his head the soprano's dress, he stirs up in himself a remote sensation that he might be in part be a woman. Einar dresses more and more as Lili - the name given to her by Greta - and what started off as a game becomes a way of life for Greta and Einar. With Lili as her muse, Greta's painting begins to flourish. A Parisian art dealer spots her work and the couple move to Paris so that Greta can pursue her career as an artist. Lili is liberated too and increasingly becomes Greta's companion. As Einar fades into memory they decide that a choice has to be made: Lili or Einar. Greta finds a doctor in Dresden who is researching sex-change operations and Einar travels to Germany to become once and for all Lili Elbe. This elegantly written, sensual and engrossing novel is a wonderful celebration of love. With great sensitivity and intelligence, David Ebershoff tells the story of this extraordinary marriage, which survives the hardest test any couple could face. The Danish Girl is an unusually powerful and moving debut.

From the outside, Brendan Chase seems to have it pretty easy. He's a star wrestler, a video game aficionado, and a loving boyfriend to his seemingly perfect match, Vanessa. But on the inside, Brendan struggles to understand why his body feels so wrong why he sometimes fantasizes having long hair, soft skin, and gentle curves. Is there even a name for guys like him? Guys who sometimes want to be girls? Or is Brendan just a freak?

Winner of Randy Shilts Award In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts—the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights organization, the first Institute for Sexual Science, the first sex reassignment surgeries—exploring and educating themselves and the rest of the world about new ways of understanding the human condition. In this fascinating examination of how the uninhibited urban culture of Berlin helped create our categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, Robert Beachy guides readers through the past events and developments that continue to shape and influence our thinking about sex and gender to this day.

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain. Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense. It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife. Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’ s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith. Praise for The 19th Wife “This exquisite tour de force explores the dark roots of polygamy and its modern-day fruit in a renegade cult . . . Ebershoff brilliantly blends a haunting fictional narrative by Ann Eliza Young, the real-life 19th “rebel” wife of Mormon leader Brigham Young, with the equally compelling contemporary narrative of fictional Jordan Scott, a 20-year-old gay man. . . . With the topic of plural marriage and its shattering impact on women and powerless children in today's headlines, this novel is essential reading for anyone seeking understanding of the subject.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The Girl Who Fell from the Sky can actually fly." —The New York Times Book Review Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop. Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity. This searing and heart-wrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society’s ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.