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Boy With The Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York by Ron Goldberg

Steve Susoyev
Reviews
6 min read
Boy with the Bullhorn is a treasure for every generation, written with personal wit and charm, yet far-ranging enough to inspire anyone who must navigate a hostile political environment. Goldberg has personalized a richly detailed resource for activists today, scholars of medical history, and students of social movements. Rare is the memoir that includes a 91-page index and 32 pages of endnotes, but Goldberg has managed to incorporate these tools while engaging the reader with his deeply personal story. Read More

Aim Toward the Infinite: A Review of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia

Walter Holland
Reviews
5 min read
Manuel Ulacia (1953 – 2001) was the grandson of Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Mendez, two artists in Spain’s “Generation of ’27,” associated with the liberal leftist reform movement of Spain and persecuted by Franco at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Ulacia’s family first fled to Cuba and then settled in Mexico, where the poet was raised. Manuel received a master’s and Ph.D. in Hispanic literature at Yale in the 1970s, where he specialized in the poetry of the gay Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. Ulacia would then return to Mexico, teach at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, become a protégé of Octavio Paz, and eventually become president of PEN’s Mexico chapter, where he actively supported dissident writers. Furthermore, Ulacia was gay. He died in 2001 at age 48, swept out to sea while swimming off a Mexican beach.  Read More

Review by Timothy Jay Smith: The Lost Americans by Christopher Bollen

Timothy Jay Smith
Reviews
3 min read
Cracking the cover of a Christopher Bollen novel is a guaranteed door into a new world, even if it’s one you think you already know. His stories, always credible, suspenseful, and filled with engaging characters, have so many unexpected twists that you can’t guess the ending. You don’t want it to be finished when you turn the last page because getting there was so gripping. Read More

Award-winning Poet Sjohnna McCray Has Died

Edit Team
Remembrances
1 min read
Sjohnna McCray, the accomplished poet, has died  (March 7, 1972 – June 21, 2023). McCray won the 2015 Academy of American Poets First Book Award (previously known as the Walt Whitman Award) for his book Rapture. According to the Academy of American Poets, judge Tracy K. Smith said of his writing, Read More

And That’s How You Fall for the Scam: An Interview with Rafael Frumkin, Author of Confidence

Ruth Joffre
Interviews
7 min read
Every day, it seems, there is a new con, a new scanner worming their way into the limelight. We live in a country where a bankrupt businessman can lie his way to the presidency, mega-corporations steal billions of dollars from workers in unpaid wages, and PR firms launder the reputations of executives who lie about trying to cure cancer. Amid all this highly institutionalized scam artistry, Rafael Frumkin’s Confidence offers readers a chance to laugh at the absurdity of these structures. Read More

What We’re Reading: Pride Edition

Suzi Garcia
Features
11 min read
Happy June! There are so many exciting events around the corner, including the Lambda Literary Awards. But as you recoup from Pride or if you just want to celebrate from your couch, we have some great recommendations straight from the staff of Lambda Literary! Read More

June’s Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Books

Suzi Garcia
New In List
7 min read
And it's that time of year again! As the rainbow paraphernalia officially hits Target and everyone under the (at times sweltering) sun begins prepping their floats and their costumes, so do the shelves of your local bookstores' queer section creak under the weight of all the new titles released just in time for Pride. This June's list features an excellent selection of compelling and urgent queer writing across every genre! From Lambda Fellow Katie Jean Shrinkle's atmospheric and haunting new thriller cowritten with Jessica Alexander, to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Hull's wistful coming-of-age memoir; from Norman Erikson Pasaribu's whimsical short stories to Elliot Page's bold and buzzy memoir; June is sure to rouse you from your reading slump and lengthen your TBR. Read More

Silvera’s Prequel The First to Die Holds a Story for All Ages

Molly Catherine Turner
Reviews
3 min read
“Once upon a time, I wrote a fairy tale…It’s about a young man whose heart is dying.” Silvera first released They Both Die at the End in 2017, but thanks to the book trending on TikTok in 2020, the novel hit the bestseller list for the first time years after its publication. Five years after the first novel’s release, Silvera’s prequel, The First to Die at the End, hit shelves. The magic trick New York Times bestselling author Adam Silvera pulls off with his Death-Cast series is inherent in the novels’ titles. While both titles specifically give away the central plot and ending, Silvera still takes readers on a journey of love and life that will have them hoping for anything but the inevitable outcome.  Read More

Miah Jeffra takes on Corruption in American Gospel

Cassandra Whitaker
Reviews
6 min read
Miah Jeffra's American Gospel (Black Lawrence Press, $ 26.95) questions the idea of the American dream in a braided novel that weaves together how race, sexuality, gender, and class are affected when a developer begins displacing a neighborhood in a bid to make an amusement park. The novel is told in three voices, Peter Cryer, a queer mixed-race teenager navigating love and desire; Ruth Anne, his Irish Appalachian mother living in fear of domestic abuse by her estranged partner; and Thomas, a teacher and brother at the private Catholic school where Peter attends on scholarship. The three perspectives reveal an America struggling to find itself in the wake of commercialism, addiction, and toxicity. In each case, powerlessness leads to violence; this overarching theme of Gospel spans gender, sexuality, race, and class, as nearly every character or institution is affected by conditions created by white-collar corruption. Read More