• Queer publisher A Midsummer Night’s Press has two new titles available for the season. Gay poet, editor and educator David Bergman’s “Fortunate Light” (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2013), part of the press’s Body Language series, pulsates with sexuality. “Deleted Names” (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2013) is by Lawrence Schimel, the press’s prolific publisher.
Queer voices
• Consisting of interviews with queer youth, as well as essays by the author, “In A Queer Voice: Journeys of Resilience from Adolescence to Adulthood” (Temple University Press, 2013) by Michael Sadowski chronicles an unheard community and provides some of them with a forum in which to speak their minds.
• Author and film expert B. Ruby Rich, the woman behind the term New Queer Cinema, revisits the subject in the fittingly titled “New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut” (Duke University Press, 2013). In it she writes about LGBT film festivals, what makes a “good gay film,” analyzes queer filmmakers (including Todd Haynes, Jonathan Caouette, Gregg Araki and Gus Van Sant) and examines films such as “Go Fish,” “The Watermelon Woman,” “Itty Bitty Titty Committee” and “Brokeback Mountain.”
• In the new edition of “Inside The Vortex” (justinhernandez.net, 2013), Naked In New York City blogger Justin Hernandez reflects on his personal journey from actor/dancer to stripper/sex worker. From “Drinking the Kool-Aid” to “Coming Clean,” Hernandez frankly tells his story, sharing what he learned so that we may also learn something from his experience.
• Straight ally and outspoken supporter of same-sex marriage and parenting Anne Lamott co-authored “Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son” (Riverhead, 2012/2013) with her son, San Francisco-based Sam Lamott.
• Australian feminist/queer theorist Annamarie Jagose gets up close and personal with the illustrious and elusive orgasm in “Orgasmology” (Duke University Press, 2013). Jagose elevates the material beyond sex and sexual orientation, venturing into “agency, ethics, intimacy, modernity” and more.
Fictional accounts
• Published last year, “A Horse Named Sorrow” (Terrace Books, 2012) by award-winning gay novelist Trebor Healey is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, to be presented in June 2013. It’s not too late to read this acclaimed novel, set in San Francisco in the 1980s and `90s.
• “Sister Spit superstar” Ali Liebegott’s latest novel “Cha-Ching!” (City Lights/Sister Spit, 2013) is set in the 1990s, following “down-on-her-luck queer girl” Theo’s relocation from San Francisco to Brooklyn, where her new circle of friends includes her roommate, her girlfriend and a rescued Pit Bull named Cary Grant.
• William Klaber’s debut novel “The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell” (Greenleaf Book Group, 2013), is a fictionalized memoir based on the true life story of pioneering American lesbian Lucy Lobdell. Lobdell, who, beginning in 1855, lived her life dressed as a man, even managed to have what well have been the first same sex marriage when she wed Marie Louise Perry in Klaber’s fictional telling.
• Can’t get enough queer historical fiction? Consider “Fortune’s Bastard” or “Love’s Pains Recounted” (Chelsea Station Editions, 2013) by Gil Cole. Cole’s novel tells the tale of young Antonio, who in an effort to escape Renaissance Florence’s “religious hysteria” sets sail on the Mediterranean and encounters a series of adventures, including the opportunity to pursue his desires for other men.