Discussion → LGBT recommendations
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What books/authors do people like? To get started:
David Leavitt
Kathy Acker
JT Leroy (I know...)
Djuna Barnes
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Is it nepotistic to list writers we know? :-)
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Never! In that case, I add Kirsty Logan for sexy lady short stories, always a delight.
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Also:
A Boy's Own Story, Edmund White
Today, I'm yours, Mary Gaitskill
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There's so much out there. The ones that mattered the most to me early on were Patricia Nell Warren's The Front Runner and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books. Paul Monette's books are gorgeous, if justifiably bleak, and I read pretty much all the nonfiction that was being published back in the late '90s and early '00s. I figured out Clive Barker was gay years before he publicly came out. He probably had at least as much to do with my work as anybody else. I never knew what to make of Dennis Cooper. He goes places where even I am reluctant to venture, and that is saying a lot. And Neal Drinnan has written several amazing novels that more people ought to read. He's a very sharp social critic, and he knows how to put words together.
Today? If you're looking for something good to read, check out Trebor Healey's two new ones (their publishers agreed to release them on the same day, which is unusual): Faun, and A Horse Named Sorrow. He just won Lambda Literary's Mid-Career Prize. Mitch Cullin is an author with a slightly lower profile but an interesting publishing history, and he's worth tracking down, especially his novels The Cosmology of Bing and Undersurface. There's a quiet intensity in his work that may kind of escape you at first, and then you suddenly realize how good he is.
Two others, and then I'll shut up: Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart. Taichi Yamada, In Search of a Distant Voice.
(Full disclosure: I am the publisher who reprinted the e-book versions of Neal and Trebor's earlier books.)
Group Description
There seems not to be a group for us rainbow-flag types, so why not set one up? IMHO, this ought to be as inclusive as possible: gay, lesbian, bi, trans, intersex, and all the variations thereon. I added the word 'interest' because you shouldn't have to be LGBTI yourself as a writer to create LGBTI characters, nor should writers who are LGBTI be expected or required to write about only one thing, ourselves. Variety good. Monotony bad. Welcome?
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Anyone can see it and join.