Delayed Climaxes

  

A week of postponements:

On Tuesday, Cleis Press was supposed to release Richard Labonte's annual Best Gay Erotica 2013, this time selected and introduced by Paul Russell(!). Didn't happen. I emailed the associate publisher. The upshot: You'll have to keep edging until "later." Or return to Best Gay Erotica 2012, selected by Larry Duplechan, or Best Gay Erotica 2011, chosen by Kevin Killian, with stories by Daniel Allen Cox, James Earl Hardy, and Jeff Mann.

12/12/12 was to see the crowning of the winner of the Green Carnation Prize honoring the year's best lgbt fiction, but the judges just can't agree. So they kicked it to next week. The five judges are Dom Agius, Katie Allen, Catherine Hall, Simon Savidge, and vexed chair Rodney Troubridge. The names of the six finalists are more familiar:

• Carol Anshaw, Carry the One [Kindle]
• Patrick Gale, A Perfectly Good Man
• Philip Hensher, Scenes from Early Life
• Kerry Hudson, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma 
• Andre Carl Van Der Merwe, Moffie [Kindle]
• Edmund White, Jack Holmes and His Friend [Kindle]

While it's fun to imagine epic battles waged on behalf of queer books -- Kerry's Hudson's novel is bloody brilliant! But it's NOT GAY, darling! BUT SHE IS, you simple-minded rotter! -- the problem may be a judge or two hasn't finished his/her homework. Not to stereotype but one judge is a DJ. Worse, several are writers. You know how they are about "deadlines."