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 — special congratulations to the Reading Group's Bev Jafek, whose novella The Sacred Beasts is now published (details below). Thanks to filmmaker Ira Sachs for recommending the series QUEER/ART/FILM. 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, Italy, 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
| April 11: Aquamarine – Carol Anshaw |
May 9: Maurice – E.M. Forster |
June 13: O Pioneers! – Willa Cather (free public domain copy in many formats at Project Gutenberg) |
July 11: Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature – Colm Tóibín |
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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
INCLUDES > The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman by Niall Richardson, a study of Jarman's major films focused on their connections to gender, history, and politics. > 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). 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; > 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. Happily, this list has grown so large since its debut in 2006 that now only new entries appear there, while the complete New GLBT Authors list now has its own page.
NEW LISTINGS (updated April 16, 2013) (Author's name links to their Website, where available):
- Mike Breen's The Angel (from the author: "University of Hawaii college junior Christopher is brilliant in biogenetics and can crack every problem except how to capture fellow student Kaleo, whose evangelical beliefs forbid that he succumb to Christopher, though he does repeatedly, leading Christopher into a passionate and erratic chase that only the deepest love can endure.").
- Jae's Something in the Wine (from the author: "When her brother Jake sets up straight accountant Annie Prideaux on a blind date with lesbian winemaker Drew, they decide to turn the tables on him by pretending to fall in love.").
- NEW! Jaime Harker's Middlebrow Queer: Christopher Isherwood in America (from the author: "This is how Christopher Isherwood reinvented himself as an American writer through gay print culture of the postwar United States") [Isherwood is the author of the classic autobiographical Berlin Stories, that was musicalized as Cabaret].
- Bev Jafek's novella The Sacred Beasts appears in the Winter 2009 issue of the New Madrid Journal of Contemporary Fiction.
- LATEST! Bruce Littlefield's Moving In: Tales of an Unlicensed Marriage (from the author: "This is the true story of fixing up a historic old house in the country with my partner Scott, one of NYC's top realtors. Our baptism by fire, flood, mouse poop, and poison ivy is often riotously funny. Think gay Green Acres." — book trailer video at YouTube).
- Timothy McGivney's Vampalicious (from the author: "After barely surviving the first brutal days of a zombie apocalypse, doomsday lovers Joey and Walt find themselves at the mercy of two blood deprived vampires. Also caught in the crossfire is a lone vigilante, fearlessly searching for her beloved's killer.") and Timothy's first novel, Zombielicious (from the author: "In order to survive, five strangers band together amidst a zombie outbreak, where an anything-goes attitude has become the law of the land and lust, betrayal, true love, and redemption are all just a gunshot away.").
- André Carl van der Merwe's Moffie (from the author: "My debut novel Moffie (a derogatory Afrikaans term for a gay man) is a result of my need to make sense of the madness around me while I was doing compulsory military service in South Africa during the 1980's. I had nowhere to turn for help or understanding — not to my parents, my Church or my friends.").
- E.S. Parkinson's Somethin' Else (from the author: "Set on the cusp of the 60s, when everything seemed grey and staying put felt as scary as getting out, this is the story of Jim, a British working class lad determined to get to university, but dreaming of nights on the town and the promise of rock and roll. Jim feels trapped in the post-war housing development, the routine of work and school, and with the girlfriend he can't quite manage to fall in love with — until he meets Edward, full of passion and possibility, and in an instant, the world is turned upside down.").
- Timothy Wang's Slant: A Novel (from the author: "An Asian student from MIT will do anything to get his first boyfriend back while negotiating the pitfalls of the gay clubs, appeasing his tiger mom, and managing his own insecurities.").
- May Water's Seaside Surrender series (from the author: "Follow the bisexual foursome Molly, Jess, Michael and Evan as they explore their love and friendship while tackling the stresses of women's oppression, gay rights, and same sex marriage in turn of the century New England.").
- James Whalley's two new books: Flying Lobsters and Magic Tagines
("A comic adventure in Morocco... A young man decides to buy a house in order to learn Arabic and winds up with a horrific hotel!"), and The Hellespont
("A tragic love story of two schoolboys who decide to copy Lord Byron and swim the Dardanelles straits"). Mr. Whalley's exceptional career includes having produced Derek Jarman's first two classic films, Sebastiane and Jubilee, and having collaborated on the others. As Mr. Whalley wrote on March 24, 2012, he is currently "writing about Iran, before the revolution, where I spent 2 years."
- L.R. Williamson's comic novel Prairie Springs ("a young Jewish woman... and her gay best friend" move from Manhattan to a small Texas town; more than secrets come out).
- NEW! Cayr Ariel Wulff's Circling the Waggins; How 5 Misfit Dogs Saved Me from Bewilderness (from the author: Unflinching in its honest portrayal of two women and their life together, founded on the love of dogs. Her previous book is Born Without a Tail (true-life adventures of two animal rescuers living with an ever-changing house full of pets).
- COMPLETE LIST — including earlier titles.
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.
Discussion Group: The GLBT Genre Literature Discussion Group, founded in January 2000, has a monthly meeting focused on a GLBT-related work of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror or Suspense that members select. Because of logistical problems for some members attending in person, the group may move to online discussions beginning in early 2011. There would also be the possibility of occasional in-person meetings held in Manhattan, if the group so decides. Click here for more information about the GLBT Genre Group.
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: Four works by or about filmmaker/ artist Derek Jarman: his memoir Modern Nature (1992), his film War Requiem — based on Benjamin Britten's stunning choral work, Derek — the 2008 documentary about Jarman from filmmaker Isaac Julien and writer/ narrator/ actress Tilda Swinton, and the book The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman (2008) by Niall Richardson; James Whale's delightfully disturbing comedy The Old Dark House (1932 — Whale also made the 1930s Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and musical Show Boat; he's the subject of Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein, and its film version Gods and Monsters); Pasolini's horrific masterpiece about fascism, Salo. Recent Reviews: 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 (2008 has truly been Jarman's year on DVD), 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.
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.