Guy Mark Foster in his collection of short stories, The Rest of Us (Tincture), chronicles what it is to be African-American and gay, amid homophobia, religious dogma, and racism. Read More
I suppose there are certainly more problematic films that I could have chosen to fall unabashedly in love with. Of course, that’s little comfort. I’m essentially saying that sometimes I want to look the other way, to pretend cultural oppression and enforcement aren’t an integral part of mainstream film. Read More
"I should be writing, but there are distractions. Not just the usual ones, such as Netflix and Facebook. Today’s distractions are bigger than that, and so much harder to push away. Relationship Drama."
“The Banal and the Profane” is a monthly Lambda Literary column in which we lift the veil on both the writerly life and the publishing industry. In each installment, we ask a different LGBT writer, or LGBT person of interest in the book industry, to guide us through a week in their lives.
This month’s “Banal and Profane” column comes to us from writer Mia McKenzie. Read More
Last month, Oprah Winfrey selected Ayana Mathis’ debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, as her second pick for the newly launched Oprah Book Club 2.0. Since then, the book has taken off. Mathis has since been profiled twice in the New York Times, and has spent the last two weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Mathis sat down with Lambda Literary to talk about her writing process, how the legacy of Toni Morrison informed her writing, and the many unexpected forms that love can take. Read More
Editors Charles Stephens & Steven G. Fullwood converse about their forthcoming anthology Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call, the history of the black gay arts movement of the 1980s, and the power and impact of writer Joseph Beam's work. Read More
Do you have problems with your love life? Hate your job? Your social life lacking that certain zing? All questions...
"We could have filled the book with stories of doom and gloom but that would have been just as dishonest as doing a book filled only with happy success stories. For most of us, life isn't all sad and isn't all happy."
Editor, writer, MSNBC commentator, BET columnist, and former White House special assistant to Bill Clinton, Keith Boykin talks with Lambda about his latest anthology For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out. Read More
Despite the social and political progress made by gay men in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, some things—like bullying, bigotry, suicide (attempted and successful), and self-loathing—are constant reminders that there is a need for further change.
For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough addresses these and other thorny issues through essays and poetry by more than 40 contributors, who represent a diverse cross-section of gay men of color... Read More
The lingo heard in gay circles today (“the children,” for instance, as code for not-so-covertly gay members of the church) derived decades ago from the gospel underground, where drug and sexual abuse, promiscuity, and perhaps mental illness were prevalent. Lots of backstabbing and cut-throat showmanship went down, too, and Heilbut tells it all. Read More
"You have to decide how honest you want to be in your writing: if you want to leave it in your diary or put it in a book. Yes, the experiences are intense but you have to allow yourself to go there, to cross that line."
At the heart of Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a counter-intuitive nostalgia for unbelonging. In his long form poem-cum-memoir, Brainard shares glimpses of his childhood and early adulthood that evoke lusty contradictions—the pleasure, pain, and curiosity of growing up different in America. It is a tribute to the self that survived, and the selves lost along the way.
In the same way Shane Allison’s own version of I Remember, published in 2012 by Future Tense Books, also evokes a sense of wonder, frustration, joy and sadness. Read More
