Current Issue

SCOTTY BOWERS' love affair with movie stars began when he was still a boy whose divorced mother had moved from a failed farm in the Depression Midwest to the city of Chicago, where Bowers not only learned to sneak into movies but earned money for his family the way any hero in a Horatio AlgerMore
More
IT'S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to think of actor Jane Lynch without picturing her in a tracksuit. Even if you've never seen the show, the role of Sue Sylvester on Glee made Lynch a household name and an overnight sensation as much for her scenery-chewing hilarity as for that iconic sportswear. ...
More
TRUST EDMUND WHITE not to shy away from sex. Now, in his latest novel Jack Holmes and his Friend, the master of the queer eye directs his attention also to female anatomy and heterosexual intercourse as experienced by a straight guy. ...
More
... Eminent Outlaws sets out to document the postwar history of American gay male literature in biographical and therefore also generational terms. Although the claim that Bram is the first to tell this story is exaggerated, it is true that nobody to date has written about gay men's writing from the U.S. exclusively, ...
More
... Julie Salamon's biography of Wasserstein reveals the playwright's unhappiness with the lack of resolution in her own life, coupled with her paradoxical refusal to make the compromises without which any such resolution would be impossible. ...
More
IF ANYONE, anywhere, doubted that John Waters was a great talker, this new anthology of interviews will put these doubts to rest. In John Waters: Interviews, editor James Egan has done an admirable job of collecting interviews that span the length of the filmmaker's delightfully otherworldly career.
More
BORN IN AN ERA when lesbianism was considered deviant and unmentionable, Jane Rule grew up to write books in which same-sex love was portrayed as sane, nurturing, and entirely normal.
More
IF YOU'RE READING this magazine, then you've probably danced to the music of Nile Rodgers at some point in your life, and probably more than once. A pioneer of the disco era and co-founder of the powerhouse R&B/dance group Chic, Rodgers created some of the most memorable club hits of the late 1970's ...
More
AUTHOR JOY LADIN “never much wanted to live.” Born into relative privilege, Ladin had a good childhood, but death always “seemed close.” Ladin remembers thinking that the idea of dying was exciting, while life was not, because he was forced to live in the wrong body, having been born as a boy.
More
THIS INVENTIVE NOVEL tells two interrelated stories. In the main one, an author named Ben Markovits is traveling around the U.S. and England in pursuit of information about his recently deceased former colleague, Peter Sullivan, whose writings form the secondary narrative. ...
More
Reviews of Beatitude by Larry Closs, History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason, and In the Company of Strangers: Family and Narrative in Dickens, Conan Doyle, Joyce, and Proust by Barry McCrea.
More
BTW
Takes of news of the day
More
Readers’ Thoughts
Reader's thoughts
More
... It's just a few minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve at the Black Cat, and the Rhythm Queens, a trio of black women singers hired for the night, are getting ready for their big number. Suddenly, the jukebox cuts off, and for a brief moment all that can be heard is the tinkleMore
More
AS THE 2013 CENTENARY of William Inge's birth approaches, his plays continue to be produced even as some critics consider his work creaky, dated, and beyond resuscitation. ...
More
PERHAPS no American icon has had more speculation raised (and dismissed) about his sexual orientation than Alexander Hamilton. This controversial Founding Father left behind an abundance of questions after dying a premature death following an ill-fated duel with political rival Aaron Burr. Hamilton’s story is one that cries out for re-examination and that may beMore
More
IF PIERRE S. DU PONT II (1870-1954) loved anyone in his long life, it was Lewes Andrew Mason, the young man who worked at Longwood Gardens as his driver and handyman. Doubtless Pierre felt affection for his wife, Alice Belin du Pont (1872-1944), but a working man from Delaware won his heart. ...
More
STROLLING AT NIGHT along Berlin's famous promenade, Unter den Linden, in the fall of 1921, the American expatriate writer Robert McAlmon couldn't be certain that the passers-by dressed as women were really women. ...
More
To Defeat DOMA, Use ‘Full Faith and Credit’
PRESIDENT OBAMA has come under fire from conservatives who are outraged over his decision to stop defending the constitutionally suspect Defense of Marriage Act in court. It was, however, the right decision. ...
More
[Lillian Faderman's] memoir, Naked in the Promised Land, was published in 2003. This interview was conducted by telephone in early March.
More
THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the AIDS epidemic was commemorated last year in two issues of this magazine, which covered the crisis from a range of perspectives-political activism, cultural expressions, scientific developments-but there was no mention of the various AIDS memorials that have emerged and evolved over the years. In fact, there are quite a fewMore
More
FEBRUARY HOUSE is a wonderful new musical, movingly acted and beautifully sung. Closely based on Sherrill Tippins' book of the same title, it was first presented at Vassar's Powerhouse Theater last summer ...
More
THE FILM PARIAH is all about Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a seventeen-year-old black girl who happens to be lesbian. Alike is smart yet naïve, confident, and hesitant about revealing her true self—not that she herself ever questions who she is. ...
More