Mike M.'s Kiss for the Spider Woman

The 11 of us who attended last week's discussion of Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman enjoyed a lively discussion of the novel. That prompted Mike Mazza to look up the review he posted on Amazon 25 years ago of Kiss of the Spider Woman and Two Other Plays.

Spoiler alert: Mike was (and is) a fan of Puig's work. Perhaps it might be worth our taking a look at the other two plays in that volume at some point?

TL;DR = DNF?

No, our blog hasn't suddenly become a conduit for mathematicians or cryptographers to pass secret messages! :-)

Many of you are probably already familiar with the term on the left side of the equation, which is shorthand for "too long; didn't read." It's most often applied to online articles and posts, and sometimes carries a whiff of disapproval about an overly indulgent author who expects readers to wade through dense writing that doesn't offer a payoff for the time spent.

Now "TL;DR" has spawned a new term for book lovers: DNF--"did not finish." This New York Times article explores the debate between completists--who insist that if you start a book, you should finish it--and readers who say life is too short to waste time on something you're not enjoying.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll note that I am a completist by nature. But as I grow older, and am increasingly aware of how many books I'll never get to, I'm becoming more and more sympathetic to the DNF perspective.

A Radiant Dawn at Little District Books

Little District Books, the LGBTQ bookstore now on Pennsylvania Ave. SE, is getting into the publishing game! For its first project, LDB is soliciting contributions to Radiant Dawn: A Queer Hopepunk Anthology, a short story collection it plans to publish in the spring.

Coined by author Alexandra Rowland, "Hopepunk" is defined by weaponizing kindness, community and optimism to overcome oppressive systems. It doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre, which offers authors a lot of options. Visit this site for more details on the project and submission guidelines.

A year after Andrea Gibson's passing...

Last year, I posted a couple of items about the late, great Andrea Gibson, who served as Poet Laureate of Colorado from 2023 until their passing on July 14, 2015. In her honor, Poets. org (which puts out the Poem-a-Day newsletter I so often reference here) recently published several of Gibson's poems:

Wellness Check

Spider

Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps

Photoshopping My Sister’s Mugshot

Anniversaries that should be less Secret

Last night, we discussed the final tranche of short stories in Lev Raphael's Secret Anniversaries of the Heart, published 20 years ago. I think I speak for those of us who have been discussing these stories in third-Wednesday Zoom meetings over the past year when I say that it has been one of the most satisfying anthologies in our group's history. (Thanks, Mike Mazza, for nominating it!).

If you have any interest in short-form fiction, you owe it to yourself to check out this book.

Happy 100th Birthday, Allen Ginsberg!

I'm a little late to the party, but did want to note that poet and activist Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926. Back in 2011, we read a graphic novel version of his most famous novel, Howl.

For a detailed list of centennial celebrations (a fair number of them happening in the Big Apple, appropriately), visit The Allen Ginsburg Project. And if you're interested in a less hagiographic take on the poet's legacy, I recommend this recent op-ed from The Guardian: "Beat legend, ‘boy lover’: How should we reckon with Allen Ginsberg’s complex legacy?"

Lavender Con is in two weeks!

Little District Books, Washington, DC's all-queer independent bookstore, will be hosting Lavender Con 2026 on July 25-26. The festival celebrates LGBTQIA+ authors and stories; tickets are available for either day or both.

A new Golden Age of LGBTQ lit?

Writing in the June 28 New York Times, Aaron Hicklin, a bookstore owner and former editor-in-chief of Out magazine, lays out a provocative thesis:

"It is not a stretch to call the past few years the richest period for queer fiction since 1978, when Andrew Holleran published Dancer From the Dance, Larry Kramer published Faggots and Edmund White published Nocturnes for the King of Naples." He goes on to assert that "This is not simply a story of representation getting its due. The audience for literary fiction has long skewed toward women and gay men. What has changed is the industry’s willingness to acknowledge that and the many straight women who are willing to read about gay characters."

I think Mr. Hicklin lays out a persuasive case, and Lord knows I want him to be right! Yet this paragraph, in particular, gives me pause: "According to data compiled from BookScan, sales of LGBT. fiction (excluding digital sales) were roughly $8 million in 2015, the year Hanya Yanagihara published A Little Life, heralded by Garth Greenwell as a great gay novel. By 2025, annual sales of LGBTQ. fiction had reached more than $80 million, a tenfold increase over a decade in which fiction more broadly has struggled. Over the same period, sales of literary fiction fell to around 33 million books per year from around 36 million."

Here's my question: Is being a bigger fish in a shrinking pool a sign of vitality or less competition? Or both? I encourage you to read the op-ed and decide for yourself.

The Guardian's readers weigh in

Back in May, I posted the results of a writers poll The Guardian conducted that compiled a list of "The 100 Best Novels of All Time."

Depending on how strictly one defines LGBTQ literature, between 10 and 15 of the novels would fit that rubric--including Virginia's Woolf's To the Lighthouse. wbich came in fourth. In fact, with five novels on the list, Woolf was the most-voted-for writer--beating Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, with four each.

Last month, the newspaper invited readers to nominate their favorite novels, and more than 3,000 of them did, producing this lineup. As one would expect, there is a lot of overlap between the two "top 100" lists, and the overall proportion of LGBTQ titles is also roughly the same. However, Woolf doesn't fare nearly as well here as she did in the previous poll, with only two titles represented (To the Lighthouse fell from #4 to #64). That may be a function of the fact that the readers' choices skew more late 20th- and 21st-century than the authors'.

On the positive side, this list includes three titles that were not in the first compilation: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (which we discussed back in 2015); Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (discussed in 2017); and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (discussed in 2021).

Finally, while the original poll put George Eliot's Middlemarch at the very top, the readers demoted it to #2 in favor of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Pride Month poetry, Part 1

As I noted in a previous post: In honor of Pride Month, the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter has devoted its June lineup to LGBTQ+ poetry. I've split those offerings up into three posts because there are so many of them. Enjoy!

Bildungsroman by Sam Sax (Note: He's the guest editor who selected this month's poetry; I've added this first set of poems from his oeuvre to the ones he actually chose for the newsletter :-).

Post-Diagnosis by Sam Sax

Pedagogy by Sam Sax

Objectophile by Sam Sax

Statement of Purpose by Kyle Carrero Lopez

At the end of the world, you tell me about the bees by Muriel Leung

Alexa for Seniors in Easy Steps by Alexis N. Garcia

Fidelity by William Ward Butler

Do You Know What Today Is? by Danez Smith

Bildungssonnet by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Summer City by travis l. tate

Pride Month poetry, Part 2

Here is the second set of LGBTQ+ poems disseminated this month via the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter. Enjoy!

Position Paper #53: National Archivist by Andrea Lawlor

Lube, Ars Poetica by Lan Lesmeister

Afterwards by Eva Candelaria Sosa

Gertrude Stein by Mina Loy

In Memoriam [±That after all this I have still chosen life.] by Jimin Seo

An Erasure of Senate Bill 111 by Moncho Alvarado

My earth which is mine will always make more of itself by Kamelya Omayma Youssef

I Was Born Again the First Time I Lost Time Watching a Woman by Shira Erlichman

The Shoes My Mother Hated, in Fairness, Were Ugly by Ariana Brown

Six Love Songs by Edward Powys Mathers

[last summer I folded my dresses into storage] by Isa Borgeson

Pride Month poetry, Part 3

And here is the third and final set of LGBTQ+ poems disseminated this month via the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter. Enjoy!

Deluxe Mourning Package by Rachel McKibbens

A Song [I was want] by Jos Charles

for goldfish that remember seaworld by D’mani Thomas

1915 by Robert Graves

I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer by Angel Nafis

[i love them still] by Fatimah Asghar

Nocturne by Oliver Baez Bendorf

New Moon Newton by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Dysphoria by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Evergreen by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf

It's a small world after all...

David Mendler attended the Queer Writer's Salon in Arlington this past Thursday and reports that Dominique Dickey, one of the contributors to Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, was there. Dickey lives in D.C. and read a section of their story, "Forever Won't End Like This," which we'll be discussing on Wednesday.

As David comments, "It was cool to be able to see a local author read their work a week before we are about to discuss it!"

Scientific American's alien book picks

In anticipation of this coming Wednesday's discussion of the first set of stories in Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, I found this article from Scientic American quite timely.

In it, the magazine's staff recommend 24 books that "have kept us curious about alien life and encounters with it that could change us as humans." Although I've always loved the science fiction/fantasy genre, I've only read a few of these (though I have read other works by some of these authors).

Only a handful of them have an LGBTQ connection, such as Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which we discussed in 2024, but one in particular intrigues me: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which the staffer who nominated it describes as follows: "This is the multispecies future I want to live in. A lovable crew of diverse aliens and humans work together to understand each other and the universe."

I plan to order it, and if it lives up to that description, I'll nominate it for our next reading list.

The even lonelier city

Exactly six years ago, in the midst of the pandemic, we read Olivia Laing's essay collection The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. If you weren't with us then, or want to refresh your memory about Laing's work, here is a link to the various posts on that subject on this blog.

I bring this up because Laing has just published a powerful op-ed in The Guardian that builds on the thesis of The Lonely City to argue that "Far-right groups prey on loneliness, using the feelings of being left behind, isolated, disregarded and ignored as a recruitment tool, and offering potent narratives that stoke grievances and displace vulnerability on to other bodies that can be hated and attacked." It's well worth your time.

A homegrown D.C. queer story

During our group's illustrious 27-year history (and counting), we've read just a handful of books set in Washington, D.C., or the region. (And most of those are political or policy volumes.) Happily, a new novel sounds like a contender for our next reading list, as a way to start rectifying that sin of omission.

Benny B. Peterson’s debut novel, The Maidenheads, tells the story of an experimental punk duo in the early 2010s. D.C. native Jamie, a singer who (in a somewhat fictionalized version of Jackson-Reed High School) meets an enchanting musical collaborator and first queer love in the bullheaded Mari. Together they create the Maidenheads, an experimental punk duo on the cusp of success when their precarious romance falls apart.

In a Washington Post article Peterson explains: “It’s important for people to know that there’s a real city here, with real people and real culture and real history and a really vibrant music scene and a really vibrant queer scene,” they said. “I wanted to show a world that a lot of people don’t realize exists.”

"Here's My Story"

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide has published Here's My Story, an anthology of articles from its popular online feature with that title. The compilation highlights personal stories centering queer people, in particular those about coming out and finding love and community.

Thanks to generous support from the Leonard-Litz Foundation, the G&LR is able to provide free copies of the ebook to LGBT groups and centers, including BookMen DC. Thanks, G&LR! I'll provide the link and further details in my weekly missive.

LGBTQ Poetry (pre-Pride Month edition)

I've been meaning to post one of my periodic compilations of LGBTQ+ poetry featured in the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter for months now, but never got around to it. But the AAP's announcement that it will spotlight that niche throughout June has given me the incentive to play catch-up by sharing LGBTQ+ poetry disseminated from February through May. Enjoy!

the art of losing by Rabha Ashry

[ ] by Ladan Osman

Window Art by Kwame Dawes

The Emperor Pats His Lips with a Napkin by Sanam Sheriff

Audience by Derrick Austin

Ladletime: Night Time by Hrayr Varaz

Our Book of Delights by Arielle Hebert

Love Poem to Taco Bell by Rebecca Bornstein

Aubade on Piazza del Popolo with Saxophonist and Chopin

by Ashna Ali

Assault by Diannely Antigua

Correct the Record, Can We? by Adam Falkner

The Guardian's 100 best novels list

As it has done roughly once a decade, The Guardian recently polled a panel of 170 writers, each of whom selected 10 books, to compile a list of "The 100 Best Novels of All Time."

Such efforts are inherently subjective, of course, but The Guardian cast a wide net: Any book published in English, but originally written in any language, was eligible. Depending on how strictly one defines LGBTQ literature (Does an author have to be "out" to count? What about straight authors who present gay love stories?), between 10 and 15 of the novels would fit that rubric--including Virginia's Woolf To the Lighthouse. That one came in #4, just after her arch‑rival James Joyce and his modernist epic Ulysses. In fact, with five novels on the list, Woolf is the most voted for writer–beating Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, with four each.

We haven't read that one (yet), but did discuss Orlando (#54) back in 2010. Other novels from the list we've discussed include: The Left Hand of Darkness (#89) by Ursula K. LeGuin, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (#87), Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (#84), James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (#44)--but not Go Tell It on the Mountain (#79)--Alice Walker's The Color Purple (#65), and E.M. Forster's Howards End (#60). Curiously, we've never discussed any Henry James novels, three of which made the list: The Turn of the Screw (#86), The Golden Bowl (#52) and The Portrait of a Lady (#21)--though we have read his short story, "The Beast in the Jungle" (still one of the most chilling works in that genre, in my own not-so-humble opinion).

Oh, and the top choice? George Eliot's Middlemarch.

The Rolling Stone explained

To save other readers the frustration I felt at trying to decode the title of the Chris Urch play we'll be discussing tonight, "The Rolling Stone," here is the answer: "It was inspired by the name of a Ugandan tabloid newspaper that in 2010 published the names, addresses and photographs of 100 supposedly gay Ugandan men, accompanied by the banner headline “Hang Them.” The paper, which bore no relation to the American music-themed magazine, was in existence for only four months before it was shut down by the Ugandan High Court. But not before a gay rights activist identified in the article was brutally murdered in his home as a result of the exposure."

That information comes from a review in the Hollywood Reporter of a 2019 production of the play. Spoiler alert: The critic was not at all impressed. However, this compilation of reviews of other presentations of "The Rolling Stone" includes some very positive ones.