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LESLIE LARSON’S debut novel, Slipstream, captures with extraordinary vividness the ubiquitous anxieties of life in post-9/11 America.

Book review

ONE HUNDRED YEARS after the death of Oscar Wilde in 1900, all of his known surviving letters-1,562 of them-were published, edited by his grandson, Merlin Holland (with the late Rupert Hart-Davis). Now Holland has edited a selection of those letters ...

IN 1955, Rose Bamberger, a Filipina lesbian, brought together four couples to form a “secret society of lesbians” in San Francisco. She wanted to be able to dance, drink, and socialize without the fear of harassment or arrest that homosexuals risked at the bars. At the first meeting someone suggested that the group be calledMore

THE 1970’s was the golden age of gay bar guides, those little publications with pictures, personal ads, and, week after week, articles by local activists and commentators. Those articles, now mostly lost, helped form GLBT communities in towns all over America. Jack Nichols wrote hundreds of such pieces.

... This case sets the stage for Cristian Berco’s fine study of homosexual sodomy in Spain from the 1500’s to the 1700’s. Working from 500 Inquisition trial proceedings involving homosexual sodomy in Aragon, Spain, Berco situates these court cases within the complexities of the period’s social landscape.

SARAH SCHULMAN’S latest novel, The Child, is a complex story about people who are caught in the clutches of our society’s systems. The novel follows the lives of two characters, Eva and Stew, whose lives intersect briefly. The plot is advanced in vignettes. Multiple viewpoints, from secondary as well as primary characters, create a senseMore

JOAN ACOCELLA writes beautifully on every topic she covers, and this collection of her biographical essays over the last two decades shimmers with droll observations, vivid images, and wise insights about important artists.

... Between Men opens with Andrew Holleran’s striking story “Hello, Young Lovers,” which relates the situations that evolve as a gay couple on their honeymoon in San Juan become fascinated by a younger, possibly gay, male couple staying at the same hotel. ...

THIS ACCOMPLISHED FIRST NOVEL by a bibliographer of Canadian lesbian fiction is classified by the publisher as a “lesbian mystery.” However, it could as well be described as a black comedy of manners, a road-trip novel, a study of grief in various forms, a realistic lesbian love story, or a novel of development.

... Laura Dillon wanted to be man when she grew up. Laura always felt that she was born in the wrong body, and in The First Man-Made Man, by Pagan Kennedy, we learn that Laura got what she wanted-and a whole lot more. ...

THE DEDICATION PAGE of Voices Rising bears a quotation from James Baldwin’s 1979 novel Just Above My Head. “Our history is each other. That is our only guide.” The book goes on to provide the raw material out of which such history is formed ...

WITHOUT APOLOGY, without frills-brought to you by Scapegoat Publishing, whose motto is “Blame Us”-Jack Malebranche hacks away at longstanding myths about the gay community in this new book. These myths as he sees them are embedded in the full title of his book, whose four elements I propose to analyze by way of review.

In this memoir, which is also a cookbook, [Marusya Bociurkiw] covers some well-traveled territory in lesbian literature-a mildly dysfunctional family that was “full of ghosts,” the struggle of coming out, lesbian love affairs gone wrong, progressive politics-yet her lovely prose style elevates the mundane.

FANS of Armistead Maupin’s magnificent “Tales of the City” series have a reading treat awaiting them. As the title of Maupin’s new novel reveals, Michael Tolliver-“Mouse”-is alive.

short reviews

The male nude has been an iconic subject for artists since Classical times, and it remains so today. Few people understand the power and beauty of the male figure better than Douglas Simonson, who has made male nudes the pillar of a successful, three-decades-long painting career. ...

Commentary on the news

Letters to the editor

Despite the high praise that he garnered and his place as a giant in the history of drag, Julian Eltinge is not well known anymore. At his height, he was one of the most famous and popular actors in America, performing to sellout crowds from Boston to Los Angeles.

Tennessee Williams' rarely pretty picture of himself in Notebooks

... How does one explicate the tangle of anomalies, abnormalities, and antinomies of double sex? Changing one’s sex has to be one of the all-time most mysterious and daunting of transformations, even exceeding the province of art. ...

THE SHORT FILM The Gendercator has been pulled from this year’s San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival by the festival producer Frameline at the behest of transgendered people and their supporters. Community organizers declare that the piece by lesbian filmmaker Catherine Crouch is “hateful” and that “there is no space for hatred and transphobiaMore

... While images of women in erotically suggestive situations are less widespread than comparable depictions of men in American advertising, women who seem to prefer the company of other women have been goosed and gandered by Madison Avenue from the turn of the 20th century to the mid-1960’s and beyond. Since becoming fascinated by whatMore

Due to the impact of the lectures that I gave at Mahachulalongkorn University, Koen Kaen and Roi Et campuses, I was very lucky to be invited to participate in the Fourth Annual International Buddhist Conference, held at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok on May 26-29. Mahachulalongkorn University and the United Nations were theMore

The following is adapted from a speech delivered by the author in acceptance of the annual leadership award given for outstanding service to the GLBT community by the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus ... The author is the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network ... As part of hisMore

On May 1, 1991, three same-sex couples in Hawaii asked the court to strike down that state’s marriage licensing law on the grounds that it discriminated against them in violation of the state constitution. They prevailed in the courts but it became an empty victory when the people amended the Constitution to define marriage asMore

... Mary Coble is a Washington, D.C.-based performance artist. This latest work, Aversion, was performed live, including a live webcast, at Conner Contemporary Art (a D.C. gallery) to a full house. Its purpose was to address the history-and, apparently, ongoing use-of electric shock therapy administered to gays and lesbians as a means of changing theirMore

“I WANT to kill myself sometimes when I think I’m the only person in the world and the part of me that feels that way is trapped inside this body that only bumps into other bodies without ever connecting with the only person in the world trapped inside of them,” Johnny agonizes in Terrence McNally’sMore