By Michael Luongo
for GayCityNews.com -- May 6, 2024

It’s a story of success that also acknowledges how important LGBTQ books are to New York, and how important New York is to those books.

“People come in from all over for this event — from the West Coast, the Midwest, Canada, and the Deep South,” said Perry Brass, one of the four main coordinators for the Rainbow Book Fair. “It is now the biggest LGBTQ book event in the world. I kind of wish it weren’t, that someone else was doing something bigger. But it’s New York’s good fortune, and a huge amount of work in the part of the four coordinators.” The three other coordinators are Sarah Chinn, Darrell Perry, and Daniel Kitchen.

The Rainbow Book Fair was held April 20 at the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street. The event spread over three floors, and is the second time it was held in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Brass said so many vendors and companies participated that they ran out of space for tables three weeks before the show. They expected about 1,500 attendees, and the event’s sponsors included the LGBT Community Center and CUNY’s CLAGS, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Publishers included academic houses such as New York University and Rutgers University. Many writers were self-published, presenting their books next to tables staffed by major New York publishing houses. The roster of speakers included Felice Picano, Torrey Peters, Samra Habib, Andrea Lawlor, and many more.

View this podcast at Patreon
(subscription required)

Dear Friends and Readers
I will be at the Rainbow Book Fair in Manhattan,
Saturday April 20th 2024 from Noon to 6 pm, signing books.

 Banned Books
2:00-3:00 pm  ~ Room 202

Felice will be speaking about the history and current state of banned books and the reissue of his now classic memoir of childhood in the 1950s, Ambidextrous: the Secret Lives of Children, one of the most controversial and banned books in the queer canon—copies of the book were burned on the docks in London rather than be allowed into the UK. "Book List" in Publishers Weekly described Ambidextrous as, "a revealing burst of sexual samizdat in incandescent prose." Picano is entertaining, frank, and unblushing. Expect to have your ears opened and your jaw drop.

The Male Muse at 50+
3:00-4:15 pm ~ Room 203

The Male Muse, A Gay Anthology, edited by Ian Young and published by Crossing Press in 1973, was the first openly gay anthology of poetry ever published. Other veiled, covert anthologies had been released, but nothing like The Male Muse, a bombshell in the poetry world. Panelists include Ian Young, poets Walter Holland, Philip Clark, Perry Brass, Felice Picano, and Bryan Borland, reading from and discussing this landmark collection. Moderated by Perry Brass, 6-time Lambda Literary Finalist and founding coordinator of the Rainbow Book Fair.

The event is free with a suggested donation of $3.00
The Center is wheelchair accessible.
Sign-language interpreters are available upon advance request.

Click here for more information!

Join Felice at the 21st Annual 
Saints & Sinners LGBTQ +Literary Festival,
March 22nd-24th in New Orleans, LA!

Welcome back! Saints and Sinners turns twenty-one and we’re excited to enter our third decade with you all in attendance.

Last year we focused on our amazing first twenty years but now it is time to look to our future and see how the next ten will unfold. Board President Lawrence Henry Gobble and Execuitve Director Paul J. Willis And while we must, as ever, remain vigilant in protecting our rights to exist, the year that has elapsed since the last festival has seen pushback against the hate groups. A lot of the ground made by the hate group takeover of local school boards was lost as voters stood up for dignity and humanity and love. Moms for Liberty took a particularly enjoyable beating at the polls this past year. We may never win the haters over, but we can outvote them. 

As we prepared for our twentieth anniversary last year, things did indeed seem bleak. Don’t Say Gay legislation, book bans (and book burnings) for school and public libraries, newly elected school boards that saw our community—particularly transpeople and drag populations— come under a loathsome attack from hate groups like Moms for Liberty had us all wondering what the future might hold for us. <read more at SASFEST >

     Tickets & Registration --> here

     Schedule of Events & Official Festival Guide Book --> here

From Booklife –PUBLISHER’s WEEKLY

Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children

By Felice Picano

Trailblazing novelist and poet Picano (author of Like People in History and The Lure, and co-author of The Joy of Gay Sex) shares, in this resurfaced memoir, a subversive, lubricious tale of his experience as a young boy in the 1950s with “most sinful of childhood crimes—precocious sexuality” and his wayward assembly of identity. Originally published in 1985 by Gay Presses of New York, and “destroyed by immolation” upon arrival in the UK, Picano’s controversial memoir-as-novel is, in this publication round, unedited, inviting readers into a proudly graphic coming-of-age, a revealing burst of sexual samizdat in incandescent prose.

Ambidextrous offers singularly vivid testimony of a queer child’s abrupt entrance to adulthood, plus some insight into the challenges of writing and publishing one’s truth in a “Puritan” America. Picano divides the memoir into three parts, set between fifth and seventh grade, corresponding to three different homosexual and heterosexual romantic situations and simultaneous intellectual and philosophical inflection points in the young author’s life. Picano the child is just as deeply affected by his premature sexual experiences as he is the works of Homer, Huxley, and Yeats, and in the concluding section, literature and sex combine to shocking effect. Scenes of troublemaking, school discipline, and disappointed parents all boast power, wit, and Picano’s brisk, assured storytelling and electric portraiture. Throughout, he captures each moment with striking detail—neighborhood gardens with “blue heads of flowers the size of a tricycle wheel”—and insights.

Picano does not shelter the reader from childhood sexual experiences, detailing adolescent encounters and “basement games” with candid precision but without judgment. Rather, Picano reveals the hidden story of how sex manifested in his early life and the lives of children in his vicinity in the mid ‘50s. His memoir offers visibility to this secret part of his upbringing and of human experience, and in doing so, builds a more complete picture of the human condition.

Takeaway: Memoir of a queer man’s intellectually and sexually active childhood

Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance, The Kingdom of Sand) and Felice Picano (Late In the Season, A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay) are considered founders of modern gay literature, along with other members of the The Violet Quill from the early 80s.

Both authors spent considerable time on Fire Island Pines in the 70s and 80s, turning their personal experiences into some of the most memorable literary descriptions of the liberated post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS era.

Last month Beinecke Library at Yale invited the authors to share stories about their longtime friendship and contributions to gay literature, in conversation with Bill Goldstein. The discussion can be viewed at YouTube <here>

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Fire Island Pines Historical Society (@fipines)