"I've really had to dig deep to bring to the fore situations that society may be afraid to confront like two young black men openly expressing their sexual selves on stage."
Shawn C. Nabors is a young emerging actor, playwright and poet from Brooklyn. His first play, deliciously titled Cake, will appear Off-Broadway this summer at the American Theatre of Actors. We've reached out to Shawn to learn more about the play and his artistic self. Read More
"I hope to start building up the careers of a lot of writers I deeply believe in, but because of their outsiderness in the literary world do not have careers at the levels they deserve."
Writer Michelle Tea recently signed an imprint with the legendary City Light Books, and Lambda had the enlightening opportunity of interviewing her about money, work, activism, sustenance, and her new imprint. Read More
"It’s interesting how appropriation—as a writing method—still has the stigma of being 'impersonal.' It’s actually the most personable thing you can do—in a social media sense: liking, reposting, remixing. It’s not just a form of flattery; it’s love or art’s equivalent."
A finalist for this year’s Lambda Literary Award category for gay male poetry, Paul Legault talks with Lambda about appropriation in writing, being influenced by the sonnet form, and his intended audience. Read More
"You rarely see gay characters who are living in rural areas in contemporary fiction. Not all queers want to live in cities. People stay in small towns for different reasons, but sometimes they stay because this is home, because they love the land, they feel this deep connection."
Author Carter Sickels took some time to talk with Lambda about his debut novel, The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), his writing process, tenderness between men, and coming out as trans. Read More
“…Stardom. It’s a greedy goal and it comes with lots of traps of arrogance, but the way I justify it...
"There’s no question that I’ve always identified with a wide range of sexual desires."
By now, John Irving trusts his audience to suspend its recognition of his set pieces—something like a regional stage director presenting a re-purposed backdrop. In his latest novel, In One Person, those mainstays —an absentee father, wrestling mats, “sexual outsiders”— are transformed through a shift in point of view and tone (less darkly comic, more serious). Moreover, this time out, someone in Irving’s world fesses up to harboring bisexual desires.
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“I had wanted to be a writer long before I read On the Road, but when I did, it had the...
"A more recent book that blew my mind was Larry Kramer's The Tragedy Of Today's Gays. The truth hurts, but Larry isn't afraid to tell it. I actually attended the speech at Cooper Union where he read this work in its entirety. I trembled and sobbed in the presence of this man—frail, yet so impassioned. He's one of my heroes and I look forward to The American People, which he's been penning for years. That one I'll definitely read and it's going to be a long, heavy one so I hope to be over my reading slump for that."
The Lambda Literary Awards are this upcoming Monday June 4th, in New York City and the incomparable drag-superstar Lady Bunny is DJing the afterparty. That being said, we thought this would be a good opportunity to have a little book chat with the drag star. Read More
"...you can no more separate Cool from Blackness than you can separate Hula from Hawaiians, or Yoga from Indians, or French cuisine from the French. "
Author Rebecca Walker talks with Lambda about her latest edited collection, Black Cool: A Thousand Streams of Blackness, the appropriation of Blackness, and the African cosmology of cool. Read More
"I’m queer, much of my world is queer. It would feel weird to create a fictional world without queer characters in it. Plus, the ways we inhabit our lives is fiercely interesting to me. Our place in the greater culture is changing and I want to chronicle that."
Carol Anshaw’s Carry the One is a complex story about three siblings, one of which is a lesbian. They are catapulted into different directions after one fatal accident, a moment they can pinpoint as the night that changed their lives. Carry the One is about addiction, love, loss, recovery, and time. It’s harrowing and wonderfully crafted.
Ms. Anshaw kindly agreed to answer a few of Lambda’s questions about her new novel. Read More
