Monday, March 31, 2008

Rosebud by Jon Anderson


I first read this poem last fall and have returned to it many times since then. I love how deftly Jon Anderson, the poet, evokes a sense of place and how that places opens into him writing about his relationship. This is a poem of a profound internal landscape. I love how quiet it is, but for me it gains so much emotional intensity by the end that I feel it in every pore of my being. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Rosebud

There is a place in Montana where the grass stands up two feet,
Yellow grass, white grass, the wind
On it like locust wings & the same shine.
Facing what I think was south, I could see a broad valley
& river, miles into the valley, that looked black & then trees.
To the west was more prairie, darker
Than where we stood, because the clouds
Covered it; a long shadow, like the edge of rain, racing toward us.
We had been driving all day, & the day before through South Dakota
Along the Rosebud, where the Sioux
Are now farmers, & go to school, & look like everyone.
In the reservation town there was a Sioux museum
& “trading post,” some implements inside: a longbow
Of shined wood that lay in its glass case, reflecting light.
The walls were covered with framed photographs
The size of a book, of spaciousness.
I wanted to ask about a Sioux holy man, whose life
I had recently read, & whose vision had gone on hopelessly
Past its time: I believed then that only a great loss
Could make us feel small enough to begin again.
The woman behind the counter
Talked endlessly on; there was no difference I could see
Between us, so I never asked.

                                                The place in Montana
Was the Greasy Grass where Custer & the Seventh Cavalry fell,
A last important victory for the tribes. We had been driving
All day, hypnotized, & when we got out to enter
The small, flat American tourist center we began to argue,
And later, walking between the dry grass & reading plaques,
My wife made an ironic comment: I believe it hurt the land, not
Intentionally; it was only meant to hold us apart.
Later I read of Benteen & Ross & those who escaped,
But what I felt then was final: lying down, face
Against the warm side of a horse, & feeling the lulls endlessly,
The silences just before death. The place might stand for death,
Every loss rejoined in a wide place;
Or t is rest, as it was after the long drive,
Nothing for miles but grass, a long valley to the south
& living in history. Or it was just a way of living
Gone, like our own, every moment.
Because what I have to do daily & what is done to me
Are a number of small indignities, I have to trust that
Many things we all say to each other are not intentional,
That every indirect word will accumulate
Over the earth, & now, when we may be approaching
Something final, it seems important not to hurt the land.

by Jon Anderson
from his book, In Sepia



Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Long Poem as Technology


Our presentation yesterday for the Text and Techne conference has me thinking about the long poem. Our belief in putting together our panel is that the long poem, as a form, is a poetic technology. I am even more convinced about that after hearing the presentations yesterday and thinking more about it.

What is the technology of poetry?

First, I think I need to explain what I mean about the technology of poetry. Technology means the art and science of applying technical or scientific knowledge to practical problems in a field. In poetry, technology often refers to the means of distribution for poems. Technology is the paper that poems are on, how they are printed on that paper, how that paper is bound together with other pieces of paper, and then how it is distributed.

For a single poem, the technology of poetry is formative of the length of a poem. Poems published in journals of 6” x 9” are different than poems in journals that are 9 “ x 12” or journals that are 2” x 3”. This may not be a conscious different on the part of the selecting editors, or it may be. Moreover, poems today tend to conform to a length to fit on a single page or two pages for the conventions of the journal.

These to me seem the technological realities of poems that infuse the writing of poems.

What is the technology of the long poem?

The long poem is a new technology for poets because it require breaking these technological assumptions about poetry. To me breaking these assumptions is also connected with poetic ambition. My favorite comments on poetry and ambition are from Donald Hall in an essay of the same title. What I am thinking about is a different sort of ambition, however, with due respect for Hall’s thinking to which I return repeatedly. The long poem requires a poet to think about writing beyond the length of the majority of poems. It requires her to consider from a lyrical and narrative perspective how to break through the conventions of length. This is an ambitious undertaking for both the poet and the poem. In this way, the technology of the long poem may be what makes a poem think - in addition to making the poet think.

There are many assumptions about the long poem that I hear regularly discussed. First, people talk about the long poem as an epic. Certainly, historically, it was. I don’t think that the long poem in contemporary use or recent historical use is epic in nature however. That is, I think that we can write long poems and think about long poems without being bound by the epic tradition. A corollary of this is often that long poems are historical in content or rely on some part of history for their content. Again, this may be true, but I don’t think that it is a requirement.

Another truism accepted about long poems is that they are necessarily failures - the example often given is that of Hart Crane’s The Bridge, ably discussed by my colleague Gerald Maa yesterday. Again, I must disagree with this truism. I think that part of the validity given to this assertion comes from a narrow vision of what the long poem is and that is what I want to expand.

The Long Poem: A New Vision

I actually believe that the long poem is alive and well in contemporary poetry though we do not recognize it in this way. This is to say, I believe is a long poem is a poem which has ambitions beyond a two page poem and seeks through that ambition to reflect our emotions and our lifetimes in extensive ways. I’d argue that many books published today are actually long poems even though they may be comprised of a series of poems with individual titles. Certainly, Hacker’s book length sonnet sequence, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, is a long poem, even though it is made of up discreet sonnets. Other books that I think could be considered long poems are Gregory Orr’s Concerning the Book the is the Body of the Beloved, Marie Howe’s new book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, and Carl Phillips’ Rock Harbor. In writing this, I realize that first books by poets are rarely long poems and even rarely contain long poems (with the narrowest definition of extending beyond two pages.) To me that is part a function of how technology shapes our lives and our poems. As writers continue their work, however, the technology of the poetry available to them expands as does the ambition available to them.

For me, I’m reading Lysistrata in my free time. Fancying myself after H.D., I’m think that there is a long poem in there. Contradicting my own assertions above, I’m looking to the historical and the epic for subject matter. Writing rules and them using them as fodder for breaking them myself all within this one lifetime.


Saturday, March 29, 2008

Blog Entry on Text and Techne


We’re happily fed (thanks to Michelle’s excellent arrangements) and back in 1107 for the first of the two post-lunch sessions. So far, the conference presentations are making me wish we had more such forums; the opportunity to hear the work of our students has been really terrific and confirms my sense that there’s a lot of really generative intellectual energy in this department, located in the graduate student communities. There’s still a good crowd; this room is full!

Hannah Baker, the chair of this panel, convenes the session at 1:17. This panel focuses on the 20th century long poem, and the panelists are current MFA students.

Read the rest here.

New CIVILesbianIZATION


PREGNANT MEN—NOT THE REVOLUTION WE IMAGINED, BUT REVOLUTIONARY NONETHELESS

By Julie R. Enszer


Reproductive technologies are creating new opportunities and new challenges – not only for people who want to be parents, but for the broader communities in which we live as we strive to understand what parenthood means in the twenty-first century. A current flashpoint of these contemporary anxieties is captured in the story of Thomas Beatie and his first person account of being a pregnant man in a recent issue of The Advocate.

Read the rest here.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Text and Techne Conference

Text and Techne, the conference organized by the Graduate English Organization (GEO) at the University of Maryland is happening this weekend. I’m presenting on Saturday with two of my MFA colleagues.

You can see a copy of my presentation here:
http://members.aol.com/jrenszer/texttechnepaper.pdf

and a copy of the handout is available here:
http://members.aol.com/jrenszer/texttechnehandout.pdf

I'll be a speaker for the Pride Celebrations at the University of Maine Orono

Virginia Woolf


I think I post this every year from The Writer’s Almanac

It was on this day in 1941 that the novelist Virginia Woolf drowned herself in a river near her house (books by this author). She had long suffered from periods of depression, and modern scholars believe these depressions may have been symptoms of manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder.
In early March of 1941, she wrote in her diary that she had fallen into "a trough of despair." She wasn't satisfied with her most recent book, and she felt as though World War II was making writing insignificant. She wrote three letters in the weeks before she committed suicide, explaining her reasons for wanting to end her life. In the longest of the three, she wrote to her husband, "I feel certain that I am going mad again. ... I shant recover this time. ... I cant fight it any longer. ... What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. ... I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."
Woolf left the letters where her husband would find them, and then on this day in 1938, she walked a half mile to a nearby river and put a heavy rock in the pocket of her fur coat before jumping into the water.


Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Things I Want To Do


It seems counter-intuitive to think about things I want to do as I am getting ready to embark upon my PhD at the University of Maryland, but since that was a thing I wanted to do (earn a PhD) and I’m now on the path of that, it seems somehow right to think about additional things I want to do in this lifetime. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. Write and publish a number of books.
2. Visit all of the continents.
3. Spend a month in silent retreat with religious ascetics.
4. Learn Hebrew.
5. Learn Yiddish.
6. Log all of my books on LibraryThing.
7. Meet Virginia Woolf.
8. Travel to Italy, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, China, and Chile.
9. Return to Thailand and visit the beaches.
10. Write a book-length poem.
11. Visit Israel.
12. Celebrate my 90th Birthday.
13. Celebrate my 18th Anniversary with Kim.
14. Shave all of my pubic hair.
15. Have a graduation party.
16. Be called Dr.
17. Wear the PhD gown, tassel, and hood.
18. Live with integrity.

Two New Reviews


My review of Without a Map is live at Moondance. Without a Map by Meredith Hall is one of the most beautiful books that I’ve read in the past year. Meredith Hall became pregnant as a teenager and was “shunned” by her community. She writes a gripping story of her adolescence and adulthood in relation to her unplanned pregnancy. I highly recommend this book as an excellent and provocative memoir.

Rosemary Winslow’s book Green Bodies is a lovely first book of poetry published by our local Word Works Press. I’ve reviewed it at Her Circle ezine. The review begins:

Truth-telling is integral to poetry. Putting the truth into language is both a calling and a struggle for poets. In the forty-five poems of Rosemary Winslow’s first collection, Green Bodies, the struggle of language is evident in both form and content.

Check it out and be sure to buy Rosemary’s book.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Publishing Triangle’s 20th Annual Triangle Awards Finalists


The Publishing Triangle’s 20th Annual Triangle Awards Will Be Presented April 28
 
Katherine V. Forrest Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
 
Finalists Announced for Best Lesbian and Gay Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Debut Fiction Published in 2007
 
 
The 20th Annual Triangle Awards, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in 2007, will be presented on April 28 at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.
 
The Publishing Triangle, the association of lesbians and gay men in publishing, began honoring a gay or lesbian writer for his or her body of work a few months after the organization was founded in 1989, and has now partnered with the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards to present an impressive array of awards each spring.
 
Katherine V. Forrest is the 2008 recipient of the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in honor of a legendary editor of the 1970s and 1980s. Forrest has written fifteen works of fiction, including her eight-volume Kate Delafield mystery series—the latest, Hancock Park (2004) won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Mystery, as did two of the earlier volumes in the series. In 2005, she won the Lambda for Science Fiction/Fantasy for Daughters of an Emerald Dusk. Forrest has worked for more two decades as a publisher as well—she was senior editor at Naiad Press for ten years and is currently supervising editor at Spinsters Ink—working with Jane Rule, Isabel Miller, and other notable lesbian and gay authors. She has also edited or co-edited numerous anthologies, including the recent Love, Castro Street. The Bill Whitehead Award is given to a woman in even-numbered years and a man in odd years, and the winner receives $3000.
 
The Publishing Triangle began giving the Shilts-Grahn awards for nonfiction in 1997. Each recipient receives $1000. The Judy Grahn Award honors the American writer, cultural theorist and activist (b. 1940) best known for The Common Woman (1969) and Another Mother Tongue (rev. ed., 1984). It recognizes the best nonfiction book of the year affecting lesbian lives--the book may be by a lesbian, for example, or about a lesbian or lesbian culture, or both.
 
Finalists for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Amy Hoffman, An Army of Ex-Lovers (University of Massachusetts Press)
Janet Malcolm, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (Yale University Press)
Sharon Marcus, Between Women (Princeton University Press)
 
The Randy Shilts Award honors the journalist whose groundbreaking work on the AIDS epidemic for the San Francisco Chronicle made him a hero to many in the community. Shilts (1951–1994) was the author of The Mayor of Castro Street, And the Band Played On, and Conduct Unbecoming.
 
Finalists for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (Alfred A. Knopf)
Michael Rowe, Other Men’s Sons (Cormorant Books)
Michael S. Sherry, Gay Artists in Modern American Culture (University of North Carolina Press)
 
The Publishing Triangle established its poetry awards in 2001. Each recipient receives $500. The Audre Lorde Award honors the American poet, essayist, librarian, and teacher. Lorde (1934–1992) was nominated for the National Book Award for From a Land Where Other People Live and was the poet laureate of New York State in 1991. She received the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement shortly before her death. Among her other sixteen books are Zami (1982) and A Burst of Light (1989).
 
Finalists for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Joan Larkin, My Body (Hanging Loose Press)
Eileen Myles, Sorry, Tree (Wave Books)
Jennifer Perrine, The Body Is No Machine (New Issues)
 
The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry honors the British poet Thom Gunn (1929–2004), who lived in San Francisco for much of his life. Gunn was the author of The Man with Night Sweats (1992) and many other acclaimed volumes. In its first four years, this award was known as the Triangle Award for Gay Poetry, and Mr. Gunn himself won the very first such award, in 2001, for his Boss Cupid.
 
Finalists for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Henri Cole, Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar Straus Giroux)
Steve Fellner, Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press)
Daniel Hall, Under Sleep (The University of Chicago Press)
 
The Publishing Triangle’s newest award, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, was first presented in 2006. This prize is named in honor of the esteemed novelist and man of letters, Edmund White—who won the very first Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1989. The Edmund White Award celebrates the future of lesbian and gay literature by awarding a prize to an outstanding first novel or story collection. The winner receives $1000.
 
Finalists for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
James Cañón, Tales from the Town of Widows (Harper Perennial)
Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season (Manic D Press)
Bob Smith, Selfish and Perverse (Carroll & Graf)
 
***
 
The Ferro-Grumley Awards for lesbian and gay fiction were established in 1988 to recognize, promote excellence in, and give greater access to fiction writing from lesbian and gay points of view. These awards honor the memory of authors Robert Ferro (The Blue Star, Second Son, etc.) and Michael Grumley (Life Drawing, etc.), life partners who died that year of AIDS within weeks of each other. One or two awards are given each year, entailing a cash honorarium or a residency at a prestigious arts colony. A new committee of judges is formed each year. Judges are selected from throughout the U.S. and Canada, from the arts, media, publishing, bookselling, and related fields.
 
Finalists for The Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction
André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Felicia Luna Lemus, Like Son (Akashic Books)
Ali Liebegott, The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf)
Brian Malloy, Brendan Wolf (St. Martin’s Press)
Armistead Maupin, Michael Tolliver Lives (HarperCollins)
Sarah Schulman, The Child (Carroll & Graf)


Review in The American Cuban Issue of MiPoesias


My review of Achy Obejas’ This Is What Happened In our Other Life from A Midsummer Nights Press is now available.

The American Cuban Issue of MiPoesias is online. Please click on this link to download/read the pdf : http://www.mipoesias.com/

The American Cuban Issue
MiPOesias Magazine's newly released issue showcases the work of poets of Cuban descent who live in the U.S. The results are stories spun from highways and oceans, lyric meditations on love's rough edges and potent homages to deities and to the departed. No matter the subject, these poems blend the romance and sorrows of the past with a crisp view of daily life. Edited by Emma Trelles and featuring Richard Blanco, Rita Maria Martinez, Grisel Y. Acosta, Kemel Zaldivar, Rich Villar, Sandra Castillo, Achy Obejas, Hugo Rodriguez, Mia Leonin, Adrian Castro, Diego Quiros, Kristina Martinez, Caridad Mccormick, Virgil Suarez, Suzanne Frischkorn, Didi Menendez and Elisa Albo. Cover art by Diego Quiros.

To purchase a print copy, visit https://www.createspace.com/Customer/EStore.do?id=3339795.
 
The American Cuban Issue is also available on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1434899454?tag=mipo-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1434899454&adid=0VR4AT0HV5V87SBJV5ZK
 
MiPoesias having a reading at Books and Books in Coral Gables in April. Emma Trelles will post information about the reading at mipoesias.blogspot.com.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Finalists for the 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Announced


The complete list is below and more information is available at the Lambda Literary Foundation website.

Congratulations to all of the finalists!

LGBT ANTHOLOGIES
        •        Juicy Mother 2, Jennifer Camper (Manic D Press)
        •        Vital Signs, Richard Canning (Carroll & Graf)
        •        First Person Queer, Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel (Arsenal Pulp Press)
        •        Men of Mystery: Homoerotic Tales of Intrigue and Suspense, Sean Meriwether & Greg Wharton, (Haworth)
        •        Baby Remember My Name, Michelle Tea (Carroll & Graf)

LGBT ARTS & CULTURE
        •        Media Queered, Kevin Barnhurst (Peter Lang Publishing)
        •        Art That Dares, Kittredge Cherry (AndroGyne Press)
        •        The View From Here, Matthew Hays (Arsenal Pulp Press)
        •        Feeling Backward, Heather Love (Harvard University Press)
        •        Other Men's Sons, Michael Rowe (Cormorant Books)

LGBT CHILDRENS/YOUNG ADULT
        •        Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Peter Cameron (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
        •        Freak Show, James St. James (Dutton Children's/Penguin)
        •        Hero, Perry Moore (Hyperion)
        •        Saints of Augustine, P.E. Ryan (HarperTeen)
        •        Parrotfish, Ellen Wittlinger (Simon & Schuster)

LGBT DRAMA/THEATER
        •        Dose: Plays & Monologues, Dan Bernitt (Sawyer House)
        •        Niagara Falls, Victor Bumbalo (Broadway Play Publishing)
        •        Return of the Caffe Cino, edited by Steve Susoyev and George Birimisa (Moving Finger Press)

LGBT EROTICA
        •        The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica, Victoria Brownworth & Judith M. Redding (Magic Carpet Books)
        •        Red Light, J.D. Glass (Bold Strokes Books)
        •        Ardennian Boy, William Maltese & Wayne Gunn (MLR Press)
        •        The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica, Lawrence Schimel (Carrol & Graf)
        •        Homosex, Simon Sheppard (Running Press)
        •        Every Dark Desire, Fiona Zedde (Kensington)

LGBT NONFICTION
        •        Between Women, Sharon Marcus (Princeton University Press)
        •        Pink Harvest, Toni Morosevich (Mid-List Press)
        •        Other Men's Sons, Michael Rowe (Cormorant Books)
        •        Gay Artists in Modern American Culture, Michael S. Sherry (University of North Carolina Press)
        •        Imagining Transgender, David Valentine (Duke University Press)

LGBT POETRY
        •        Blackbird and Wolf, Henri Cole (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
        •        A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering, Dawn Lundy Martin (University of Georgia Press)
        •        Otherwise Obedient, Carol Potter (Red Hen Press)
        •        Fata Morgana, Reginald Shepherd (University of Pittsburgh)
        •        The Second Person, C. Dale Young (Four Way Books)
        •        Human Resources, Rachel Zolf (Coach House Books)

LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR
        •        Wicked Gentlemen, Ginn Hale (Blind Eye Books)
        •        A Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (Tor Books)
        •        Spaceman Blues: A Love Song, Brian Francis Slattery (Tor Books)
        •        The Dust of Wonderland, Lee Thomas (Alyson Books)
        •        Ha'penny, Jo Walton (Tor Books)

LGBT STUDIES
        •        Writing Desire, Bertram Cohler (University of Winsconsin Press)
        •        The First Man-Made Man, Pagan Kennedy (Bloomsbury)
        •        Between Women, Sharon Marcus (Princeton University Press)
        •        Caribbean Pleasure Industry, Mark Padilla (University of Chicago Press)
        •        Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, & the Black American Intellectual, Robert Reid-Pharr (NYU Press)

BISEXUAL
        •        Look Both Ways, Jennifer Baumgardner (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)
        •        Becoming Visible, Beth Firestein, Ed., (Columbia University Press)
        •        Split Screen, Brett Hartinger (Harper Collins Children's Books)
        •        The Tourists, Jeff Hobbs (Simon & Schuster)
        •        Stray, Sheri Joseph (MacAdam/Cage)

TRANSGENDER
        •        Transparent, Cris Beam (Harcourt
        •        Male Bodies, Women's Souls, LeeRay M. Costa, PhD, (Haworth)
        •        The Marrow's Telling, Eli Clare (Homofactus Press)
        •        What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz (University of Nebraska Press)
        •        Nobody Passes, Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Seal Press)

LESBIAN DEBUT FICTION
        •        Lockjaw, Holly Farris (Gival Press)
        •        Dahlia Season, Myriam Gurba (Manic D Press)
        •        Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, Aoibheann Sweeney (The Penguin Press)
        •        Breathing Underwater, Lu Vickers (Alyson Books)
        •        O Street, Corrina Wycoff (Other Voices)

GAY DEBUT FICTION
        •        Tales from the Town of Widows, James Canon (Harpercollins)
        •        A Push and a Shove, Christopher Kelly (Alyson Books)
        •        That Was Then, Michael Quadland (Red Hen Press)
        •        SoMa, Kemble Scott (Kensington)
        •        Freak Show, James St. James (Dutton Children's/Penguin)

WOMEN'S FICTION
        •        Biting the Apple, Lucy Jane Bledsoe (Carroll & Graf)
        •        The IHOP Papers, Ali Leibegott (Carroll & Graf)
        •        Greetings from Jamaica, Mari San Giovanni (Bywater Books)
        •        The Child, Sarah Schulman (Carroll & Graf)
        •        The Kind of Girl I Am, Julia Watts (Spinsters Ink)
        •        The Mandrake Broom, Jess Wells (Firebrand Books)

WOMEN'S ROMANCE
        •        Sheridan's Fate, Gun Brooke (Bold Strokes Books)
        •        The Road Home, Frankie J. Jones (Bella Books)
        •        Out of Love, K. G. MacGregor (Bella Books)
        •        For Now, for Always, Marianne K. Martin (Bywater Books)
        •        When Dreams Tremble, Radclyffe (Bold Strokes Books)

WOMEN'S MYSTERY
        •        Wall of Silence, 2nd Ed., Gabrielle Goldsby (Bold Strokes Books)
        •        Mortal Groove, Ellen Hart (St. Martin's Press)
        •        In the Name of the Father, Gerri Hill (Bella Books)
        •        Selective Memory, Jennifer L. Jordan (Spinsters Ink)
        •        Laura's War, Ursula Steck (Bella Books)

WOMEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY
        •        Comfort Food for Breakups, Marusya Bocurkiuw (Arsenal Pulp Press)
        •        And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, Nicola Griffith (Payseur & Schmidt)
        •        An Army of Ex-Lovers, Amy Hoffman (University of Massachusetts Press)
        •        Two Lives: Gertrude & Alice, Janet Malcolm (Yale University Press)
        •        Waiting for the Call, Jaqueline Taylor (University of Michigan Press)

MEN'S FICTION
        •        Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman (Farrar Straus Giroux)
        •        First Person Plural, Andrew W.M. Beierle (Kensington)
        •        Dark Reflections, Samuel R. Delany (Carroll & Graf)
        •        Fellow Travelers, Thomas Mallon (Pantheon)
        •        The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, Manuel Munoz (Algonquin)

MEN's ROMANCE
        •        Changing Tides, Michael Thomas Ford (Kensington)
        •        A Secret Edge, Robin Reardon (Kensington)
        •        Right Side of the Wrong Bed, Frederick Smith (Kensington)
        •        Broadway Nights, Seth Rudetsky (Alyson Books)
        •        A Few Hints and Clews, Robert Taylor (Haworth)

MEN's MYSTERY
        •        Double Abduction, Chris Beakey (J. Boylston/ ibooks, Inc.)
        •        Stain of the Berry, Anthony Bidulka (Insomniac Press)
        •        Pierce, Roberto Ferrari (Haworth)
        •        Murder in the Rue Chartres, Greg Herren (Alyson Books)
        •        Mahu Surfer, Neil Plakcy (Alyson Books)
        •        Drag Queen in the Court of Death, Caro Soles (Haworth)

MEN'S MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY
        •        Forgiving Troy, Thom Bierdz (Hudson House)
        •        Dog Years, Mark Doty (HarperCollins)
        •        The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein, Martin Duberman (Knopf)
        •        The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory, Kenny Fries (Perseus Books)
        •        What Becomes You, Aaron Raz Link & Hilda Raz (University of Nebraska Press)
        •        Mississippi Sissy, Kevin Sessums (St. Martin's Press)