GLBT Literature: Welcome
This site is devoted to Literature about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) experience. It is also the home of the Gay & Lesbian Reading Group; and it includes original GLBT film, music, and visual arts resources. The site map outlines the entire site.
Updated! GLBT authors announce the publication of their books. And a special welcome to the GLBT book and film discussion groups springing up around the globe that use the resources here, including ones in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, Japan, Spain, the UK and US. For suggestions on starting a group, or if you have any questions, email Jim.
Gay & Lesbian Reading Group
The Gay & Lesbian Reading Group, based in New York City, is a friendly and diverse discussion group founded circa 1982 — Happy 25th Anniversary! We welcome everyone interested in GLBT Literature, and appreciate all points of view. Join us the second Thursday of each month, 8:00pm at the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, NYC. You may participate or just listen. Bring your friends too.
The entire group votes on the books we discuss, alternating monthly between female and male authors. Anyone may nominate a work by a GLBT-identified writer, or any title with substantial GLBT content. We read contemporary and classic works of fiction, non-fiction, drama, and poetry, ranging from Sappho to Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson to James Baldwin, and current writers too. Here are the books we've discussed since 1997, and links to GLBT Literature Resources. (There is also a separate monthly group that discusses GLBT Science Fiction, Fantasy & Suspense Literature.) Remember, WWW can also stand for Whitman, Wilde and Woolf.
Upcoming Reading Group Discussions
| July 10: Earthly Powers  – 1980 novel by Anthony Burgess |
August 14: Ripley Under Ground  – 1970 novel by Patricia Highsmith |
September 11: Roman Nights and Other Stories – 1950s fiction by Pier Paolo Pasolini |
October 9: A Room of One's Own – 1929 essay by Virginia Woolf |
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GLBT Literature Resources
Below are selected resources related to GLBT literature, including various reading lists — there is also a complete list of GLBT Resources, with additional materials. Many features are original to this Website. To see an overview of this and all interconnected sites (film, GLBT cinema, Fassbinder, Pasolini, Jarman, more), use the streamlined site map.
Book Recommendations – GLBT Literature
Encompasses fiction, drama, poetry, and non-fiction, from ancient classics to contemporary works. All public domain titles link to FREE unabridged copies.
Book Reviews
New! Review of > Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz, edited by Klaus Biesenbach (a monumental, large-format 664-page analysis and tribute to Fassbinder's 16-hour masterpiece, including his complete screenplay in English translation, essays by Fassbinder, Biesenbach, and Susan Sontag, hundreds of color and black and white photos, more). New! Review of > Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, the landmark 1929 avant-garde novel that inspired Fassbinder's film. Book reviews at this site: > Hero, about a gay teen superhero, by Perry Moore; > Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films by Joseph Lanza; > Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities, edited by Stephen O. Murray & Will Roscoe; > Queer Cowboys and Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Chris Packard.
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GLBT Authors
Congratulations to these GLBT Authors, who have written to announce the publication of their books. Guidelines: If a GLBT author writes directly, with a one-sentence summary of your latest book and a link to your Website or Web page, I'll be happy to include your work. Disclaimer: Inclusion on this list does not imply endorsement; this is a service to help promote new GLBT writing in its diversity. In alphabetical order: > Andrew W. M. Beierle's acclaimed novel First Person Plural (about "the lives of rare conjoined twins of the type dicephalus (two-headed), one of whom is gay and one straight" — won Best Men's Fiction of 2007 from afterelton.com, and is nominated for a 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Men's Fiction); > Nona Caspers
GLBT Literature Resources (Complete List)
Lists all of the original materials at this site — including several not included in this highlights selection — plus anthologies, reference works, various "best GLBT books" lists, awards, and more. New! GLBT Resources Links to external sites.
GLBT Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror & Suspense/Mystery Literature
Features annotated lists of works in these four interrelated genres, and more resources. GLBT authors have created many classic genre works, from Dracula to Peter Pan to Conan the Barbarian to Woolf's Orlando. New! Review of Hero, about a gay teen superhero, by author/filmmaker Perry Moore.
Discussion Group: There is also a GLBT Genre Literature Discussion Group, founded in 2000 and based in New York City, has a monthly meeting focused on a GLBT-related work of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror or Suspense that members select. We meet one hour before the main Gay & Lesbian Reading Group (see above), and you are welcome at both discussions! Discussion – June 12: Strange Tales – Rudyard Kipling's Horror stories (details).
Outline of Gay Literature
From Gilgamesh (2,000 BCE) to today, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama written in Europe, North and South America, the Near East and more.
Overlooked GLBT Non-Fiction and Fiction Authors
Overlooked GLBT Non-Fiction Authors highlights outstanding writers on art, film, theatre, history, literature, music, philosophy, science, and more not included on the Publishing Triangle's list of 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Non-Fiction Books. There is also Overlooked GLBT Fiction Authors.
Resources for Selected GLBT Authors
These resources, for over a hundred authors, have been chosen from among all Websites devoted to each writer — at the page Books Discussed Since 1997.
Top 10 List
Introduces the diverse GLBT literary tradition, through ten outstanding and representative books. If you're new to GLBT literature, this is one place to start exploring!
Website of the Month
GLBT-related sites usually connected to literature; currently exists as an archive, with several years' worth of entries.
Why a GLBT Focus?
Brief essay that looks at why gay/lesbian/bi/trans aspects of a work are of interest.
Words of Wisdom from GLBT Authors
Including Sappho, Plato, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Melvlle, Whitman, Cather, Stein, Woolf, Cocteau, Baldwin, Kushner, and many more.
GLBT Film and Arts Resources
GLBT Cinema
Many resources, including 50 outstanding GLBT films and great directors, a Recommended GLBT Film of the Month, linked sites devoted to gay filmmakers/ authors/ artists Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Merchant of Four Seasons), Derek Jarman (Edward II), and Pier Paolo Pasolini (Teorema).
GLBT Cinema
is part of my Jim's Film Website, that includes 50 landmarks of film history, an original guide to film (covering dramatic structure, visual and sound aesthetics), 10-best lists in over 30 categories, and more resources — as well as dozens of original film-on-DVD reviews. New Reviews: Fassbinder's magnum opus Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Phil Jutzi's 1931 film of Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Films of Kenneth Anger, Donna Deitch's Desert Hearts, Alain Resnais's Muriel, author Jean Genet's only film as a director: Un Chant d'Amour, Tony Palmer's documentary Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was (about the great gay composer), Fassbinder's Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (for which I wrote the DVD's liner notes), Murnau's Phantom, Robert Houston's Shogun Assassin, Wolfgang Petersen's The Consequence, Jarman's The Last of England, more. Released on June 24, 2008: Glitterbox: Derek Jarman x 4, a major collection of Jarman features new to DVD: The Angelic Conversation, Caravaggio, Wittgenstein, Blue and Glitterbug, plus many special features.
GLBT Composers
Encompasses chamber and orchestral music, ballet, art songs, choral works, opera, musical theatre, and experimental pieces.
GLBT Visual Artists
Painters, sculptors, architects, designers, and photographers, from the ancient world to today.
Personal Recommendations
Thirty books, films, and works of music that have changed and enriched my life; not all are GLBT-related.
Site search
This search engine covers the entire website (GLBT literature, film, and all other pages) — results will open in a new window. You can also use the site map.