In one of Willa Cather's letters to her beloved brother Roscoe she writes, “As for me, I have cared too much, about people and places--cared too hard. It made me as a writer, but it will break me in the end.” Losing those near to her very nearly did break Cather, but it is our great fortune that she let herself care as much as she did. Read More
Blake Bailey has dissected complex, self-destructive literary lives in his biographies of Richard Yates and John Cheever, and Farther and Wilder will no doubt add to his reputation as the premiere chronicler of tormented American writers. Read More
This isn’t a memoir solely about the physical presence of Robert Duncan. It’s also about those who he inspired... Read More
“A lot can happen in a day sometimes,” says Wesley Bowman, one of two teenaged boys at the center of Richard Kramer’s witty and often moving first novel, These Things Happen (Unbridled Books). This opening line, of course, is prescient. A lot does happen in each of the few days that frame this story, in which the adults in Wesley’s life are forced to reevaluate their understanding of themselves. Read More
Early in his memoir, Beye tells us that he hopes the reader will finish the book “with a better understanding of the obstacles and shoals the gay male must navigate just to grow up and assume the responsibilities of adulthood.” In clean, elegant prose, Beye does just that. My Husband and My Wives is an engrossing, moving and often witty take one gay man’s life. Read More
