Daphne Walters is finding life in Los Angeles tougher than she imagined. Her college roommate is giving her the cold shoulder, her boyfriend dumped her and she’s being hit on by skeevy L.A. douche-bags. One night she finds some peace and quiet in the swimming pool of the seemingly abandoned Rycroft Manor only to meet... Continue Reading →
If you need a pick-me-up at the moment you can do worse things than grab a copy of Yao Xiao’s collection of cartoons, Everything is Beautiful and I'm Not Afraid. Bringing together a selection of her serialised Baopu cartoons (a mix of old and new material), Everything is Beautiful and I'm Not Afraid charts Xiao’s... Continue Reading →
Dustin Lance Black’s memoir Mama’s Boy pulled up emotions I thought I’d long buried. The suffocating, terrifying fear that you live with, born from a mix of homophobia and religion, that infects introverted, creative gay boys. That unique blend of anxiety that comes from feeling that you are already broken and must hide behind a... Continue Reading →
New York writer Peter Kispert’s debut collection of short stories, I Know You Know Who I Am, is an interesting, frustrating and frankly disheartening look at gay life. Though unconnected, these stories and snippets paint a world of insecurity, dishonesty and dystopia covered in a gloss of language. Deception is the core theme running through... Continue Reading →
The one advantage of COVID-19 mandated lockdown is the time to start working my way through the ever-expanding “LGBTQ+ reading pile”, which brought me to a book I’ve been meaning to start for almost a year now - Iolanda Zanfardino’s beautiful Midnight Radio. Midnight Radio drops in on the lives of four people around the... Continue Reading →
Michael Cashman’s One of Them is not only a rich, often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking and surprisingly candid memoir, but also a fascinating and important document of social history and the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. It’s gripping from the very first page where Cashman describes the day of his civil partnership (legal recognition for same-sex couples... Continue Reading →
The Coming of the Night (1999) is a novel that shouldn’t work. Readers ought to be left frustrated, disappointed, and confused. How, they may wonder, was the book authored by the mastermind behind City of Night (1963), a landmark in gay storytelling? Often, when plot fails, characters can save a text. We fall for their... Continue Reading →
There is something utterly joyous and enlightening about Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel, Gender Queer: A Memoir. In part an autobiography, as well as a primer on non-binary gender issues, Kobabe unveils a personal story with such warmth and beauty it’s impossible not to love. It’s the paradox of art that specificity creates universality (the more... Continue Reading →
