The Summer of the Selfls - Fictn - Gay Authors

Contents:

• GAY AUTHORS BOOKS
• 25 MOST INFLUENTIAL GAY AUTHORS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
• PL BURSTON'S TOP 10 GAY FICTN BOOKS

GAY AUTHORS BOOKS

"There was an urgency, a novelty to the whole thg, " said the gay thor, who won the Man Booker Prize for The Le of Bety. " Maybe that's bee Baldw said the book isn't actually about beg gay.

"Gvanni's Room is not really about homosexualy, " said Baldw a 1980 terview about queer life. Go Tell It on the Mounta, for example, is not about a church, and Gvanni is not really about homosexualy. SJ Sdu, thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li, lled , "One of the first Anglophone works to challenge the trope of the sad/suicidal gays who die at the end, this book gave a blueprt of what queer fictn uld look like.

Forster (A Passage to India, A Room Wh a View, Howards End) wrote the benchmark gay novel Mrice cir 1913, was published posthumoly a lh tale of manners, posn, and sire, the tular character meets and falls for his classmate Clive while at Oxford. The pair embark on a two-year affair until Clive leav Mrice to marry a woman and live out his proscribed life as part of the land gentry, leavg Mrice shambl and seekg to cure his Forster's novel do not end gay tragedy. The thor of Night Drop, Marshall Thornton lled the novel "the origal gay romance.

25 MOST INFLUENTIAL GAY AUTHORS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

Alan Hollghurst famoly qutned the future of the gay novel this year, which is strikg sce he's often viewed as helpg make queer books accsible to a mastream dience. Hollghurst set his pen on the sexual hypocrisi of homophobic policians, many of whom had their own discretns behd closed doors. The book follows Nick Gut, a gay graduate stunt unofficially adopted by the fay of a schoolmate.

The queer g-of-age novel about Jim Willard and his search for love was the first novel om a rpected wrer (Gore Vidal) to speak directly and sympathetilly about the gay experience an era when homosexualy was still very much taboo. The book is remembered today for this legacy as well as for var them -- Hollywood's glass closet, beg gay the ary, the poisono effects of homophobia on society -- that still reverberate today.

The only novel by the great Osr Wil may not be overtly gay, but there's plenty of gay subtext there for the reful rear - about as much gay subtext as a popular thor uld get away wh 's iends Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton exprs tense admiratn for his bety, and passag that show Basil's feelgs for Dorian as more clearly homoerotic were excised by an edor, acrdg to Nicholas Frankel, who eded an edn prentg Wil's origal text the text as origally published has referenc to Dorian's rptn of not only young women but young men: "There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici. Cy of Night, a 1963 novel by John Rechy, is a semal piece of fictn that follows the life of a gay htler New York Cy, Los Angel, New Orleans, and San Francis.

PL BURSTON'S TOP 10 GAY FICTN BOOKS

"This epic chronicle of gay culture the Amerin sixti is as far-reachg as is important, givg a glimpse to inty and motive, " affirmed SJ Sdu, the thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li. Gay lerature was forever changed the day Mary Ann Sgleton first met her transgenr landlady, Anna Madrigal, when she moved to San Francis's 28 Barbary Lane. The 1982 book by Edmund Whe, which begs wh the first sexual enunter of a 15-year-old boy, is based on his own experienc g to terms wh his gay inty as a youth the Midwtern Uned Stat.

Whe would later wre two addnal novels, The Betiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), which follow his gay protagonist to young adulthood.

Together, they form a poignant trilogy that chronicl a gay life the latter half of the 20th century.

Integral to the lbian non (spe s beg nsired somewhat problematic) Brish wrer Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel foc on Stephen Gordon, an upper-class lbian who dons men's clothg and be a novelist who eventually be a part of a lerary salon Paris at a time when there were no overt laws exprsly barrg homosexualy. Hall's novel was groundbreakg her troductn of the views of "sexologists" Richard von Krafft-Ebg and Havelock Ellis, who posed that homosexualy was an born, unalterable tra that was nsired a ngenal sexual versn that simply meant a "difference" and not a fect.

Some might say Death Venice is not necsarily a gay novel, sce there is no overt same-sex uplg or . Wonrful book, " gay refugee activist and lumnist Danny Ramadan rav about the global-md book unpacks the emotnal life of a young girl displaced by the Nigerian civil war who begs a gut-wrenchg affair wh a fellow refugee.

"A great rellectn of everythg anyone would say Nigeria agast homosexualy g the fense of relign, " explas David Nnanna Ikpo, the Nigerian thor of Fimisile Forever. Dalloway, a novel to which Cunngham pays homage; mid-20th-century Los Angel, hoewife Lra Brown, disntented wh her life, nonts her attractn to women; and 1990s New York Cy, Clarissa Vghan, who is lbian, plans a party for her bt iend, wrer Richard Brown, a gay man dyg of AIDS.

In 2015, when the novel was published, reviewer and thor Garth Greenwell clared The Atlantic, "A Ltle Life: The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here.

" Gay men are often bldsid by A Ltle Life's peratg clary about what bds them or driv them apart.

But his 1978 novel, Faggots, was also a loud statement that portrayed the hedonism of gay New York Cy. The book featur a st of dozens of gay men, who varly engage bathhoe i, e a slew of party dgs, and vort clubs wh nam like The Toilet Bowl and Fire Island.