This month, QueerReader.com quietly celebrated it’s seventh anniversary. It’s a good time to take stock.
When this website was launched, there were literally LGBT bookstores from coast to coast. A Different Light had branches in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Washington DC had a gay bookstore, as did several medium-size cities across the U.S. And New York’s historic Oscar Wilde Bookshop was still going strong. Or so it seemed. No one I knew then was predicting that within a few short years they would all be gone.
There is no doubt that the landscape of queer literature is changing drastically. For one 
thing, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define. Some of our best gay authors are no longer “writing gay.” And the two best queer novels were written by straight authors: John Irving’s In One Person and Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr. Loverman. Queer Literature today is fluid, unpredictable, but in many ways the quality is higher than it’s ever been.
Last year was an exceptionally good year for queer fiction. The jury is still out on this year. But for those who continue to proclaim the death of Queer Literature, consider this: Next year will see the publication of new works by Garth Greenwell, James Magruder, Patrick Ryan, Bob Smith and Edmund White.
So stay tuned.
7/31/2015