The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered (30 page)

Jonathan Harper
is slowly but surely working on his thesis for his MFA in Creative Writing at American University. His fiction has most recently appeared in the anthology
Wilde Stories: 2008
edited by Steve Berman and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005. He lives in Northern Virginia.

Jim Marks
founded the Lambda Literary Foundation in 1996 and served as its executive director until 2005. He lives in Washington DC with his partner of 29 years. He is Treasurer of the DC GLBT Center, is a member of the board of the Rainbow History Project, and does bookkeeping for Metro DC PFLAG.

Sean Meriwether
has been trying to live up to his moniker as “The Naughty Harry Potter”. He has been working his own brand of magic on the page, drafting immersive fiction and erotica and transporting boys and girls into the tumultuous landscape inside his head. He has published over thirty short stories in venues including Best of Best Gay Erotica 2, Best Gay Love Stories 2006, and Lodestar Quarterly. His collection of short fiction and erotica, The Silent Hustler, will be published by Lethe Press (2009). 

Samuel J. Miller
is a writer and a community organizer. His work has appeared in literary journals such as
Fiction International
,
Fourteen Hills
,
Permafrost
,
Pindeldyboz
, and
The Minnesota Review
— who nominated him for a Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of a 2008 Literary Fellowship and Residency from the Bronx Writers Center. Visit him at
www.samjmiller.com
, and/or drop him a line at
[email protected]
.

Jesse
Monteagudo
has been reading, writing, collecting and reviewing gay men's literature for over thirty years. His syndicated book review column, “The Book Nook,” appeared in Miami's Weekly News and other gay publications from 1977 to 2006. Monteagudo currently writes a monthly book column for
AfterElton.com
. In addition to his book reviews, Jesse Monteagudo writes “Jesse's Journal,” a monthly opinion column, and contributes to The Guide,
GayToday.com
,
GayWisdom.org
, Bilerico and other print and online gay publications. Monteagudo's short fiction has been published in over two dozen anthologies.

Canadian-born, Sydney-based
Andy Quan
is the author of four books,
Six Positions
(gay erotica),
Calendar Boy
(short fiction),
Slant,
and
Bowling Pin Fire
(both poetry). His work has appeared in many anthologies of gay fiction and erotica in North America, Australia and Europe. He’s obsessed with succulents, is reviving the art of the mix-tape in CD form, practices reiki, sings songs, and occasionally updates his websites such as:
www.andyquan.com
.

Richard Reitsma
was born in California, and raised along the West Coast of Michigan. He himself was lost in libraries until he picked up the right book that told him who he was. This spark of literary identification launched an academic career. He received his B.A. from Grand Valley State University, his M.A. from Purdue University, and has studied abroad in Mexico, Cuba, and France. His Ph.D. studies in Comparative Literature from Washington University-St. Louis focused on issues of sexuality and race in plantation fiction from the American South and the Caribbean. He previously taught world literature at the College of William and Mary, and has served on the Spanish and Latin American Studies faculty at several universities, most recently Gettysburg College. He has also developed courses on Sexuality as Political discourse in Europe and Latin America. In addition, he has regularly served as a judge for the Lambda Literary Awards. He currently resides in Baltimore, MD. His research has branched out recently to examine gay themes in children's cartoons. He also continues writing both fiction and academic work.

Jerry Rosco
is the author of
Glenway Wescott
Personally:
A Biography
and co-editor (with Robert Phelps) of the journals of 1920s expatriate writer Wescott,
Continual Lessons
. He is selecting and editing Wescott's last journals, and working— too slowly as always— on other projects and stories. Jerry is also a veteran, star pitcher in New York's Big Apple Softball League.

Paul Russell
is the author of five novels:
The Salt Point
,
Boys of Life
,
Sea of Tranquillity
,
The Coming Storm
and
War Against the Animals.
He has also published a work of non-fiction,
The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present.
His poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in such journals and anthologies as
Carolina Quarterly
,
Epoch
,
The Black Warrior Review, The James White Review
,
Lumina
,
Queer 13
,
The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica
,
Gastronomica
,
Men on Men 4
and
Best Food Writing 2001.
He recently completed his sixth novel,
My Unreal Life: Memoirs of Sergey Vladimirovich Nabokoff
.

Rob Stephenson
’s writing has been most recently published in
Invert(e)
,
Golden Handcuffs
Review
,
Madder Love : Queer Men and the Precincts of
Surrealism
,
Entangled Lives
, and
American Book Review
. His novel
Passes Through
is soon available from Fiction Collective 2. The CD
dog
composed with Mikael Karlsson is now available from Please Musicworks or downloadable from iTunes or Amazon.
www.rawbe.com
.

Ian Rafael Titus
has written fiction and poetry for
Velvet Mafia
,
Into the Abyss
,
Frozen Tears II
and
III
, and
Visionary Tongue
, a writers’ workshop fanzine established by fantasy author Storm Constantine and Eloise Coquio. A queer vampire novel set in nineteenth-century West Indies is in the works.

Rick Whitaker
is author of
Assuming the Position
: A Memoir of Hustling
and
The First Time
I Met
Frank O'Hara
: Reading Gay American Writers
. He is Music and Theater Director of the Italian Academy at Columbia University.

Martin Wilson
was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and was educated at Vanderbilt University. He received his MFA from the University of Florida, where his short stories won a Henfield/Transatlantic Review Award. His debut novel, What They Always Tell Us, was published in 2008. He lives in New York City and is at work on his second novel. For more information, visit his web site at
www.martinwilsonwrites.com
.

Gregory Woods
is the author of
A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition
(1998) and
Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry
(1987), both from Yale University Press. He is professor of gay and lesbian studies at Nottingham Trent University. His was the first such appointment in the UK. His poetry books are
We Have the Melon
(1992),
May I Say Nothing
(1998),
The District Commissioner's Dreams
(1996) and
Quidnunc
(2007), all from Carcanet Press. His website is
www.gregorywoods.co.uk
.

Timothy Young
is a curator and archivist who has written on the nature of ephemera, why singers cover famous songs, how to introduce children to research libraries, the history of Peter Pan, and the relationship between Gertrude Stein and George Platt Lynes. His most recent projects include translations of works by Blaise Cendrars and editing a book of the world economic crisis of 1720.

Bronski, Michael.
Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps
. New York, St. Martin’s, 2003

Chauncey, George.
Gay New York: The Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
. New York, Harper Collins, 1994.

Crompton, Louis.
Homosexuality and Civilization
. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2003.

de St. Jorre, John.
Venus Bound: The Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press and Its Writers
. New York, Random House, 1994.

Gambone, Philip.
Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers
, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.

Picano, Felice.
Art and Sex in Greenwich Village; Gay Literary Life After Stonewall
. New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007.

Slide, Anthony.
Lost Gay Novels, A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century
. New York, Harrington Press, Inc., 2003.

Stryker, Susan.
Queer Pulp
. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2001.

Whitaker, Rick.
The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara: Reading Gay American Writers
. New York, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.

White, Edmund, Bergman, David, editor.
The Burning Library
. New York, Vintage Books, Random House, 1995.

White, Edmund. “The Loves of the Falcon: Books by and about Glenway Wescott,”
The New York Review of Books
, Vol. 56, No. 2, February 12, 2009.

Woods, Gregory.
A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition
. New Haven, Conn. Yale University Press, 1998.

Young, Ian.
Out in Paperback, A Visual History of Gay Pulp
. Toronto, Lester, Mason & Begg Limited, 2007.

The following writers and books, mentioned or discovered during the formation of this collection, might be of further interest to literary seekers and gay historians. This casually compiled list represents the spirit more than the breadth, quantity and quality of gay fiction that is currently out of print.

Christopher Bram: Almost History (1992); Gossip (1998); Hold Tight (1988); In Memory of Angel Clare (1989); Surprising Myself (1987)

Joseph Caldwell: In Such Dark Places (1978)

Peter Cameron: The Half You Don’t Know (1997); Leap Year (1990)

Renaud Camus: Tricks
(1981)