I sat down with Radclyffe to discuss the relationship between writing a memoir and living an authentic life, how he sees the relationship between Adult Human Male and Frighten the Horses, and his fascinating assertion that we’re thinking about gender “transition” completely wrong
Read MoreThis Sapphic Monster Novel Flips the Script on Queerness in Horror
Queer women have always been part of the horror genre. But in the capable, beckoning hands of Clements and Datta, we get to see the story from their perspective, with monsters made not from them, but for them. In “Feast While You Can,” queer desire is the cure, not the curse
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History Keeps Me Awake Some Night - David Wojnarowicz
Never Not a Poet
To those who argue that Wojnarowicz wasn’t a poet, I say this: his work is saturated with poetry, and poetry seeps upward through his life, like a water table importunate with spring.
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Read the original, with more images, here.
Themstory: Susan Sontag Loved Her, Yet Time Has Overlooked This Brilliant Queer Playwright
If a queer Cuban-American woman wrote forty plays, was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and won nine Off-Broadway Obie Awards, over a career that spanned some forty years, you’d know her name, wouldn’t you?
Probably not.
What if that woman was also Susan Sontag’s lover, the “most intuitive playwright” Edward Albee had ever met, and the subject of an upcoming documentary premiering at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight Festival today?
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Read the original article here. Photo by Jon Bodsworth, The Egypt Archive
themstory: Ancient Egypt Was Totally Queer
What is definitely known about Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep? They worked as chief manicurists to the Pharaoh in the fifth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. This might sound like the set-up for a terrible gay remake of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but at the time, grooming the Pharoah was revered labor. Though they weren’t themselves nobility, it is clear from their tomb that the two men were of high status. And, curiously enough, they were of equal status, being depicted in complimentary activities without either being shown as smaller, lesser, or subservient to the other.
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Read the original here.
Passion Can't Save Joseph Cassara's Short-Sighted AIDs-Era Novel
Unfortunately, that attention to detail seems lacking when it comes to other parts of his characters’ lives. Cassara was inspired by the subjects of Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning. But his knowledge of the ballroom scene begins and ends there; although he tried to contact some vogue insiders via email, he was ultimately unable to speak with anyone in the scene. And because he was writing the book while in graduate school at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he says he was unable to attend any ballroom functions.
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See the original article here. Photo of Desmond Is Amazing copyright M. Sharkey.
These Drag Kids Are Proving It's Never Too Soon To Be Fabulous
Thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race, there’s no question that drag is having a mainstream moment. Their recent VH1 finale had nearly a million viewers, making it their most watched episode ever. From your local library’s reading hour to DragCon to YouTube, there has been a subsequent boom in all-ages spaces where drag is welcome. But as the art form moves out of bars and into living rooms, what does that mean for kids playing dress-up? Or for parents of children entering into what is, at heart, a bar scene built around adult gay men and trans women? And finally, what does it mean for drag itself — which at its best is often subversive, raunchy, and cutting — to suddenly have to cater to families?
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Jackie Shane, Genderqueer Soul Survivor, Prepares For Her Comeback
At the age of 31, Shane walked away from performing and virtually disappeared; for years, internet forums dedicated to the roots of rock ’n’ roll have trafficked regularly in rumors of her death. Yet now, she’s prepping for the release of Any Other Way, a double album of her material from the 1960s: 12 studio tracks and 13 live ones. From the repressed longing of the title track to the rebellious energy on her version of “Shotgun,” Shane’s voice captures the soul of an entire decade. The record blends or anticipates a half-dozen musical traditions, including Motown, soul, rock, R&B, and funk. It even includes a Shaned-up cover of the folk standard “You Are My Sunshine.”
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