The L Word

The official companion guide to the critically acclaimed Showtime series, this volume features behind-the-scenes photos and all-new interviews with the show's cast, crew, and creators.

Reclaiming the "L" Word is a book about renewing congregations by recognizing and living out the core teachings of the Lutheran faith. Primarily written for those who call themselves Lutheran and, specifically, those who are members of ELCA congregations, this little book helps us answer these central questions: Who are we? What DOES it mean to be a Lutheran today, anyway? And, why does it matter. Inspirational, engaging, and challenging, this book is a must-read for pastors and congregational leaders!

During the summer of 2006, California high school student Adam Freedman is sent to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City where she introduces him to a wild, lesbian subculture complete with underground clubs, drinking and a new crowd who assumes he is transgendered. Original. 25,000 first printing.

The complete and groundbreaking "The L Word" is now out on DVD and this book makes the perfect companion, covering the series in its entirety. "Loving The L Word" picks up where Reading "The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television" (I.B. Tauris, 2006) left off. With new, updated chapters by many of the same television writers and scholars who contributed to the first volume, as well as essays by some newcomers, "Loving The L Word" explores the series' quantum contribution to the ongoing evolution of queer television. Whether you loved "The L Word", hated it, or loved to hate it, this book recognizes that the show transformed the post-Ellen LGBT television landscape, fulfilling a long-neglected, visceral desire for lesbian stories and images. In the process, it reshaped the communities that follow and talk about queer television and care about the narratives and characters that drive it. Including complete Character/Actor, Film/TV and Episode guides, the book also proceeds from the understanding that while "The L Word' ended in 2009 it manages to live on - in the lives of its fans, as well as in a new reality spin-off, "The Real L Word".

"The L Word" captured international attention when it first appeared on American screens in January 2004. The groundbreaking primetime drama from Showtime is about a group of lesbian and bisexual friends living and loving in Los Angeles, and challenges traditional notions of relationships, queer life styles, gender identities, race and ethnicity and sex and sexuality. "Reading the L Word" is the first book about this television phenomenon. With an introduction by Sarah Warn, the founder of premier lesbian entertainment website, AfterEllen.com, and a foreword by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the collection brings together leading academics, feminist critics, scholars and award-winning journalists to discuss "The L Word". There is also a complete episode guide, as well as a series of interviews with the actors Erin Daniels, Katherine Moennig, and the writer, Guinevere Turner. Analytical, often humorous and sometimes provocative, "Reading the L Word" uncovers what makes this show both so compelling and groundbreaking.

In a world where a left swipe means you could be alone and sexless forever and taking a chance could mean you find 'The One', the question we often find ourselves asking is, what is love? When romance writer Aastha Atray Banan found herself getting asked questions about the daily struggles of love she decided to start a podcast, Love Aaj Kal, that dealt with everything about love and relationships. The L-Word is about modern love: from ghosting, polyamory, love in the times of social media to more every-day problems like dealing with heartbreak, infidelity and getting out of toxic relationships. Love can be many things - sometimes intimidating, frustrating, and often exhilarating - this book tells you how to make sense of it.

In January 2004, Showtime debuted The L Word, the first prime-time commercial drama to center around lesbian characters. Over the course of six seasons, the show depicted the lives and loves of an evolving circle of friends in West Hollywood, California, and was widely read as evidence of changing social attitudes toward gay people. Building on immediate critical attention, the show reigned as Showtime's most popular for its first three seasons and earned a large and enthusiastic audience. In The L Word, author Margaret T. McFadden argues that the show is important for its subject matter, its extended and deeply literate commentary on the history of representation of lesbians in popular media, and the formal innovations it deployed to rewrite that history. McFadden shows that the program’s creators, led by executive producer Ilene Chaiken, were well aware of the assumptions and expectations that viewers would bring to it after a history of stereotypical depictions of lesbians on television. They sought to satisfy a diverse group of viewers who wanted honest and appealing portrayals of their lives while still attracting a large enough mainstream audience to make The L Word commercially viable. In five chapters, McFadden explores how the show tackled these problems of representation by using reflexivity as a strategy to make meaning, undertaking a complicitous critique of Hollywood, skillfully using a soap-drama format to draw in its audience, and ultimately creating its own complex representation of a lesbian community. While deconstructing the history of misrepresentation of lesbians, The L Word’s new modes of storytelling and new perspectives made many aspects of lesbian experience, history, and culture visible to a large audience. Fans of the show as well as readers interested in cultural studies and gay and lesbian pop cultural history will enjoy this astute volume.