Let’s get this out of the way:  Disorderly Men is an astonishingly good debut novel.  But even this sentence doesn’t do it justice.  Because the term “debut novel” implies something that is not quite...

It’s been forty-one years since Edmund White got the world’s attention when A Boy’s Own Story broke the New York Times bestseller list.  The simple fact that a literary queer...

It’s award season again.  Time to take a fresh look at David Santos Donaldson’s Greenland.  Were it simply a historical novel centered on the three years E.M. Forster spent in...

It’s hard to believe today, but when this website began fifteen years ago Queer Literature was defined almost exclusively as Gay and Lesbian.  Times have certainly changed.  And nowhere is...

In the nineteen-seventies, a generation of queers saw their reflection in the exuberant prose of Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance.  In his new novel, Kingdom of Sand, Mr. Holleran...

Let’s face it.  Short story collections often make for a choppy reading experience.  Even the best of them are a challenge to read from cover to cover.  Two magnificent exceptions...

Ethel Rosenberg did time here.  So did Angela Davis and Afeni Shakur.  Andrea Dworkin endured its notorious cavity search and, with the help of Grace Paley, publicized this barbaric practice. ...

As homosexuality has become more and accepted, Queer Lit has the potential of becoming more and more conventional.  Queer experiences in The United States–to use one example–are now mainstream.  This...

It is once again time to take a good hard look at The Publishing Triangle and Lambda Literary Finalists list.  First, let’s start by congratulating all of this years finalists. ...

Edmund White’s new novel might be his sexiest yet.  And that’s saying a lot.  In A Previous Life, Ruggero, a Sicilian aristocrat, and his young wife, Constance, decide that in...

By now Queer Readers know of the sad story of Anthony Veasna So:  how just months before the publication of his first book, Afterparties, he died suddenly of an accidental...

Alison Bechdel’s latest book is her most autobiographical and it’s also arguably her best.  Once again, Ms. Bechdel takes a simple true story and fortifies it with insights and literary...

As the literary award season approaches, it’s time to revisit the novel that may well have changed Queer Lit  forever.  With The Prophets, Robert Jones Jr. shattered three assumptions about...

As much as Queer Reader enjoyed Richard Ellman’s Oscar Wilde biography, one finished it with the impression that certain parts of the the story weren’t completely fleshed out.  Although all...

Queer Reader approached Sarah Schulman’s latest book with some trepidation. As a veteran of ACT UP, this reviewer had grown tired of the misrepresentations, innaccuracies, and false narratives.  As much...

John Maynard Keynes is a somewhat awkward queer icon. In his youth he had numerous gay affairs and was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, but he ultimately married a...

Funeral Diva is the self-portrait of a woman who our society does its very best to ignore:  black, queer, statuesque, outspoken.   But this particular woman, Pamela Sneed, will not be...

Though portrayed by the popular culture as a joyous, carefree time, childhoods are often far from that–particularly for those who are sensitive and different.  For these people, childhood isn’t the...

It was of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote that authors have “two or three great and moving experiences” in their lives: “…experiences so great and moving that it doesn’t...

It’s time to get real.  In the first year of this website’s publication, 2008, all of the books QueerReader recommended were written by white people.  Last year none of them...

Yesterday it was announced that Jericho Brown’s The Tradition won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Rarely has a collection displayed the depth and breadth of poet’s talent as well as...

Girl, Woman, Other is an important feminist novel.  It tells the stories of twelve women in an experimental style that is both readable and entirely fitting for these characters.  Reading...

n some respects the literary award season isn’t all that different from the film award season. The most recent releases have an advantage. And sometimes those released earlier are forgotten....

This year’s Publishing Triangle Award Finalists list has some surprises.  For a start, Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Patsy is not a finalist for any of these awards.  More on this later.  Also,...