Band of Thebes

Born July 11: Tab Hunter, Vito Russo

Rock Hudson, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Farley Granger, Tab Hunter: Was any heartthrob movie star straight in the straitlaced 1950s? Hunter and Perkins dated each other for several years while the press reported phony stories that Hunter was involved with Debbie Reynolds or Natalie Wood. Born Arthur Kelm, he eventually made more than 50 movies after being rechristened "Tab Hunter" by his agent Henry Willson, a gay man who also handled Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue, Robert Wagner, and loads of others; read Willson's disturbing biography. Hunter's triumphs were Damn Yankees, Lafayette Escadrille, and That Kind of Woman. He recorded a pop song, Young Love, which was the #1 hit in the U.S. for a month in 1957, and made many subsequent albums. He had a short-lived television show and a famous flop on Broadway, co-starring with Tallulah Bankhead in Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, which closed after five performances. Smaller movies followed. In the 1980s he had a comeback, starring twice with Divine, first in Polyester, then in Lust in the Dust, which he co-produced with Allan Glaser. Hunter did not come out until September 2003, when at 72, he sold a book proposal for a memoir that would discuss his life candidly. Tab Hunter Confidential [Kindle] appeared in 2005 and revealed he and his producer Allan Glaser have been romantic partners for twenty-nine years. They live in Montecito. Here's a recent photo of Hunter, Glaser, and John Waters.

Russo For ten years, from 1972 to 1982, Vito Russo toured the country giving what would later be a PowerPoint presentation about the portrayal of lesbians and gay men in the media. His devastating book on the subject, The Celluloid Closet, published in 1981 and revised in 1987, was years ahead of its time and remains essential reading today. The book was made into a documentary in 1996, six years after his death from aids. Russo’s sharp critique of the industry led him to co-found the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). It is hard to imagine the principled visionary connected to today’s GLAAD, which endorsed such overblown caricature-fests as Boat Trip and praised I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry despite
the movie’s parade of stereotypes. Finally, Russo has been given the biography he deserves in Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo [Kindle] and in the documentary Vito. 

White Crane released two new volumes of Vito's uncollected writings Out Spoken: A Vito Russo Reader - Reel One [Kindle], which covers his film essays, including reams of reviews and great, early interviews with Almodovar, Almendros, Anger, Bette, Debbie, Lily, Rhoda, Gandalf, and Tennessee among others, while Out Spoken: Reel Two [Kindle] covers politics and aids.

The Normal Heart Earns 16 Emmy Nominations

Nice day for Ryan Murphy (hatted) whose programs earned at least 34 Primetime Emmy nominations this morning. American Horror Story: Coven scored 17, Glee got 1, and his adaptation of The Normal Heart for HBO earned 16 noms for best tv movie, directing, writing, editing, casting, cinematography, costumes, hair, makeup, prosthetic makeup, lead actor, supporting actress, and a fourway among supporting actors (openly gay Matt Bomer, openly gay Jim Parsons, openly gay Joe Mantello, and Alfred Molina).

For its fifth season, Modern Family earned another 10 Emmy nominations. It won best comedy series in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Last year's big gay HBO movie Behind the Candelabra attracted a lot more viewers and one fewer Emmy nominations at 15.

Lord Browne's Glass Closet

Opportunistic hindsight from an unethical leader or honest insight from an unlikely gay activist?

Harper:

"Part memoir and part social criticism, The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out Is Good Business [and Kindle] addresses the issue of homophobia that still pervades corporations around the world and underscores the immense challenges faced by LGBT employees. 

"In The Glass Closet, Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP, seeks to unsettle business leaders by exposing the culture of homophobia that remains rampant in corporations around the world, and which prevents employees from showing their authentic selves. 

"Drawing on his own experiences, and those of prominent members of the LGBT community around the world, as well as insights from well-known business leaders and celebrities, Lord Browne illustrates why, despite the risks involved, self-disclosure is best for employees—and for the businesses that support them. Above all, The Glass Closet offers inspiration and support for those who too often worry that coming out will hinder their chances of professional success."

Sean Strub: "The themes of shame and fear are familiar, but written in an interesting way, from the perspective of a fast-rising corporate star. But the part of the book that most struck me was how reflective Browne became after he was outed in such a painful manner ("I wish I had been brave enough to come out earlier…") and then shares and explains his understanding how a corporate workplace that is safe and supportive of LGBT is good business, ultimately leading to greater profitability. The book is well-written, very readable..."

...And When Gay History Happens to Straight Players

I, too, can swallow a lot of egomania if it produces results like bringing marriage equality to 38.3 million residents. In their new book Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality spotlight hoggers Ted Olson and David Boies bray about their success with the Prop 8 case at the Supreme Court (while not dwelling on the $6 million fee they earned for their noble quest), but the real triumph was Roberta Kaplan's arguing US vs. Windsor, thus overturning DOMA. That was the gamechanger -- a much bigger deal and a story far better told by lesbian New Yorker staffer Ariel Levy in the magazine's fact piece, The Perfect Wife: How Edith Windsor fell in love, got married, and won a landmark case for gay marriage.

Hillary-Come-Lately Resents Terry Gross's Questions about Gay Marriage

Years after her husband evolved (July 2009), months after Obama finally did (May 2012), Hillary Clinton was virtually the last Democrat on earth to support marriage equality (March 2013). Now she only wants praise for her lgbt record. Yesterday, Fresh Air host Terry Gross asked about her changing views. Did not go well.

John D'Emilio's In a New Century

The terrific historian and co-honcho at Out History.org, John D'Emilio's In a New Century [and Kindle] collects his recent essays on queer history, gay politics, and community life. University of Wisconsin Press says:

"For gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the United States, the twenty-first century has brought dramatic changes: the end of sodomy laws, the elimination of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a move toward recognition of same-sex marriage, Gay-Straight Alliances in thousands of high schools, and an explosion of visibility in the media and popular culture. All of this would have been unimaginable to those living just a few decades ago. Yet, at the same time, the American political system has grown ever more conservative, and increasing economic inequality has been a defining feature of the new century.
            "A pioneering scholar of gay history, John D’Emilio reflects in this wide-ranging collection of essays upon the social, cultural, and political changes provoked by LGBT activism. He offers provocative questions and historical analyses: What can we learn from a life-long activist like Bayard Rustin, who questioned the wisdom of “identity politics”? Was Richard Nixon a “gay liberationist”? How can knowing local stories—like those of Chicago in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s—help build stronger communities and enrich traditions of activism? Might the focus on achieving actually be evidence of growing conservatism in LGBT communities?
            "In a New Century provides a dynamic, thoughtful, and important resource for identifying changes that have occurred in the United States since 1960, taking stock of the work that still needs to be done, and issuing an urgent call to action for getting there."

Born May 25: Ian McKellen

For anyone who still thinks being an out actor is a career-ender, study the numbers: Ian McKellen ranks #16 or #17 in all-time box office grosses, at $2.7 billion, far ahead of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, and homophobe Mel Gibson (#48), to name a few. Please note his two cash cows -- five X-Men movies so far, the sixth Tolkien movie this December -- came after he "shocked" viewers by purring down the red carpet, flaunting his four-decades-younger boyfriend Nick Cuthell, at the Oscars when he was nominated for the adaptation of Chris Bram's Gods and Monsters. Out since 1988, he co-founded Stonewall UK, the lgbt rights powerhouse, in response to the deplorable Section 28, and he's been an unabashed activist on queer issues ever since. He has won a Golden Globe, a Tony, a SAG award, two Critics' Choice awards, four Drama Desk awards, and six Olivier awards, and been nominated for two Oscars, four BAFTAs, and five Emmys. He was knighted in 1991. Playing off Sir Ian, Stephen Fry calls him Serena. He is also best chums with co-star Patrick Stewart. Their two-man show charmed everyone, which cannot be said of his BBC comedy with Derek Jacobi, Vicious. An avowed atheist, Ian got ordained online as a Unification Church minister and officiated Patrick's third wedding. Watch them together on Late Night. Or watch them fail at The Newlywed Game. Today he's 75.

2014 Marriage Equality States vs. 1860 Slave States

 This week's 17th and 18th consecutive court wins for marriage equality, in Oregon and Pennsylvania, were even better than most because the governors won't appeal and the rulings are final. That's especially noteworthy with Tom Corbett, who like Scalia and Santorum, is a Catholic Republican.

Also on Monday, a federal judge ruled Utah must recognize the 1000+ same-sex marriages performed in December 2013.

The key to the marriage equality map above, by Stephanie Grimes via, is

blue: legal, red: banned, yellow: ban overturned but stayed, orange: civil unions

Below, a map showing free, slave, compromise, and Dred Scot states in 1860. Some similiarities.

Gay History Week: New Mattachine, Normal Heart, Milk Stamp

Two big gay profiles in today's New York Times: 1) Larry Kramer on the decades-long journey to film The Normal Heart, airing on HBO this Sunday, and 2) the successful efforts of the newly revived Mattachine Society of Washington DC, headed by my husband Charles Francis, to find and bring forth hidden legal and political documents of the early and recent gay rights battles. The story, Uncovered Papers Show Past Government Efforts To Drive Gays from Jobs, is currently the third-most-emailed feature on the paper's Nation page. Obviously not every topic could make the article but I was particularly sorry they cut Charles' praise for Allan Berube, the MacArthur genius who wrote Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II, and the invisible gay blogger who turned Charles on to degayed history and introduced him to Berube's work his fellow Mattachine board members Rick Rosendall and Pate Felts, as well as the many pro bono attorneys at MWE including Lisa Linsky.

Tomorrow is Harvey's 84th birthday and the official release of the Milk stamp.

Recovering the Gay Past: The New Mattachine Society's Archive Activism

From tomorrow's Washington Blade:

"...the group’s mission to conduct archival research to uncover long forgotten government documents that show in chilling detail how federal policies were put into place to ban gays from the federal workforce.

“We believe the importance of these documents is the enormous evidentiary and educational value that they have,” Mattachine president Charles Francis told the Blade.

“The evidentiary and educational value of the original archival documents show the persecution of gay people without regard to any valid government purpose,” he said. “Only malicious persecution over and over, and we see that beginning in 1953.”

"Francis was referring to what Kameny and other veteran gay leaders called the infamous Executive Order 10450 issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 – possibly at the request of then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

"The order, among other things, barred from the federal workforce individuals found to be involved with “any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion.”

"Although the order didn’t specifically mention homosexuality or homosexuals, it was interpreted by the U.S. Civil Service Commission to mean homosexuals were barred and should be summarily dismissed from any federal government job.

"The order for the first time “equated gays and lesbians with disloyalty,” Francis said. “And that was a catastrophe for gay and lesbian Americans” that “much too little has been written about and much too little is actually known about it,” Francis said.

"One expert who does know about it, gay rights advocate and University of South Florida professor David K. Johnson, author of The Lavender Scare, is scheduled to be one of two featured speakers at a Mattachine Society of Washington forum scheduled for May 21.

"Joining Johnson as a speaker at the event, to be held at the offices of the D.C. law firm McDermott Will & Emery, will be David S. Ferriero, who serves as Archivist of the United States and director of the National Archives and Records Administration."

Read the full story here.

Brunei Adopts Sharia Law To Kill Gay Men by Stoning, Hotel Boycotts Ensue

Last Wednesday, the penalty for gay sex in Brunei was ten years in prison. On Thursday, Brunei became the eighth current nation to maintain the death penalty for homosexuality, adopting the Sharia Law method of death by stoning. Brunei owns a group of ten luxury hotels, including the Hotel Bel-Air and the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is seeing a growing list of cancellations. For the first time since its debut eleven years ago, the Night Before Oscar event will not take place at the BHH next March. More immediately, Wednesday's banquet honoring Amy Pascal, eight months in planning, has been yanked from the BHH and will now take place on the Sony lot. 

Over the weekend, Richard Branson announced Virgin's more than 50,000 employees will boycott all ten Dorchester group hotels in response to the antigay law. Ellen, Stephen Fry, Sharon Osborne, and several other celebrities declared personal boycotts and urged their fans to follow. In addition to the two Los Angeles landmarks, the eight other hotels to avoid are: the Dorchester and 45 Park Lane in London; Coworth Park in Ascot; the Plaza Athénée and Hotel Meurice in Paris; the Hotel Eden in Rome; the Hotel Principe di Savoia in Milan; and Le Richemond in Geneva.

The seven other nations with the death penalty for homosexuality are Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Click here for the full list of all 83 countries where homosexuality is illegal.

Born May 5: James Beard, Del Martin

James Beard knew he was gay when he was seven in Portland and, acting on those impulses as soon as he got to college, was expelled from Reed in his freshman year for "homosexual activity."  He traveled with a theater troupe, spent several years in Europe, came home, and moved to New York still hoping to be an actor. He took a temporary job as a caterer and three years later published his first cookbook, Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapés, in 1940. After three more books he got his own cooking show on television and, in 1955, he established The James Beard Cooking School, which lasted 30 years until his death in 1985. His huge appetites extended to money and fame, leading him to many, many endorsement deals that contradicted everything he preached in the kitchen. Despite a famous temper, he could be a nurturing mentor and loyal friend, and with Gael Greene he founded Citymeals-on-Wheels. He is openly gay in his memoir Delights And Prejudices and his collection of letters Love and Kisses and a Halo of Truffles. Two biographies are Epicurean Delight: The Life and Times of James Beard by longtime friend Evan Jones, husband of legendary editor Judith Jones, and The Solace of Food by Robert Clark.

Del Martin died in August 2008 at 87, widowing a wife with whom she spent 55 years championing the rights of the denigrated and disenfranchised. In 1955, when homosexuality was illegal, she, her life partner Phyllis Lyon, and six other lesbians founded the Daughters of Bilitis in her native San Francisco. By 1960 DOB chapters were active in nine cities nationwide and their magazine, The Ladder, was thriving despite most readers' need for secrecy. Even in friendly waters, they had to fight the tides against lesbians, both among straight women in NOW and gay men in the queer equality movement. Martin addressed the latter situation in her landmark article, "Goodbye, My Alienated Brothers," which appeared in the Advocate in 1970. Two years later, she and Lyon were instrumental in forming the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, and they published their seminal book Lesbian/Woman. In 1979 they were honored by a group of medical professionals who wanted to start a clinic for lesbians who lacked health care, and they chose the name Lyon-Martin Health Services. In 1995 they were named separately as delegates to the White House Conference on Aging. Ever the trailblazers, Martin [above right, left left] and Lyon were the very first gay couple to be married in San Francisco in February 2004. If there is anything good about her death, it's that she did not have to see Prop 8 pass three months later. Click here to watch them describes the early hurdles they faced in forming and growing DOB during a time when they could not advertise their existence.

Against Tolerance

"Finally," says Michael Cunningham, "a writer and critical thinker has treated queerness with true insight, and proper respect for its complexities and contradictions. Thank you, Suzanna Walters, for bringing so much rigor and balance; such ardent, subtle questioning; such respect for genuine human rights to the horrifically over-simplified term, 'tolerance.'"

Notably, Suzanna Walters announced her fourth book, The Tolerance Trap [and Kindle] with the stronger, shorter subtitle "What's Wrong with Gay Rights" but NYU publishes it today with this longer, blander yawn-bait: "How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality."

Don't let marketing by committee drive you away from a book we need. Leila Rupp says, "Walters has a wicked sense of humor, and in The Tolerance Trap she wields it to argue against tolerance. This is a beautifully written and provocative brief for the integration of queer difference in U.S. society. Combining personal stories with analysis of popular culture, public opinion, movement activism, and trends in gay life today, Walters evaluates where we are in this contemporary moment, showing that we have both come a long way and have a long way to go. And tolerance, she insists, is not the way to get there. After reading this book, you'll never want to be tolerated again."

Eve Ensler says the book "brilliantly and boldly goes where few have gone before. It rattles the cage of tolerance in pursuit of true gay liberation. For gays and straights alike, it challenges us to be more our quirky, original, sexual gorgeous selves and to settle for nothing less than radical love and freedom."

You may remember Walters' other queer book, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America.

Gender Failure

After six story collections including Missed Her, the novel Bow Grip, and the nonfiction Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, Ivan Coyote now collaborates with Rae Spoon for their new book Gender Failure. Inspired by their joint live show that toured the U.S. and Europe, the book gathers Coyote's and Spoon's struggles against a binary-ordered world, with multiple blurbers calling the result both heartbreaking and hilarious. Michelle Tea says it's "a dynamic, beautiful and important piece of literature."

Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water, says "This book profoundly changed my life; I will step into the word and lexicon of 'gender' differently, I will never be in my body in the same way, I am a different reader forever, and I am grateful. Gender Failure will take you apart and put you back together—I laughed my ass off, I cried my heart out, I yelled my head off, and I ended up in the only place that matters: love, compassion, with our whole bodies."

Out Today: Queer Paris, Marriage Miscarriage, Roberts Memoir

  

For her 17th novel and 28th book overall, Francine Prose reclaims forgotten historical queer lives in Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 [Kindle]. In an approving review for the NYTBR, Edmund White called it "a novel of great reach and power." 

NYT reporter Jo Becker's story of how we got marriage equality -- because of Chad Griffin?? -- has at last united the entire gay community... against it. The gay left consideres the book "bullshit," the gay middle says it's "truly horrendous," and the gay right memorably calls it "a fellatial account" by "an ignorant reporter" "who knows nothing of the movement's history." Confirming just how backward and out of touch the straights are when it comes to representing queer lives, Penguin has bizarrely given this high-profile gay success story a jacket fit for a funereal. Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality [Kindle].

Good Morning America star, cancer survivor, and recently out lesbian Robin Roberts releases her inspirational memoir Everybody's Got Something [Kindle].

Stamps of Approval: Harvey Milk, Tom of Finland, Tove Jansson

 

The Harvey Milk stamp is now available for preorder online here. The statement says, "The U.S. Postal Service® is proud to honor the life of Harvey Milk, a visionary leader who became an iconic figure in the struggle for gay civil rights. In 1977, Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, making him one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States." The stamp will be released on May 22, his 84th birthday.

Finland announced three stamps depicting the art of Touko Laaksonen, Tom of Finland, come September or October. Their statement reads, "His emphatically masculine homoerotic drawings have attained iconic status in their genre and had an influence on, for instance, pop culture and fashion. The drawings on the stamp sheet represent strong and confident male figures typical of their designer." Anyone who just can't wait to lick and stick those should get Tom of Finland XXL or The Complete Kake Comics.

Finland's first new commerative of 2014 showed two photos of favorite novelist Tove Jansson. Read The Summer Book [Kindle] or The True Deceiver [Kindle]. Earlier, her Moomins got a stamp of their own.

Born April 12: Slava Mogutin

Former enfant terrible Slava Mogutin, 40, still lives to provoke. Born in Siberia (and, according to Wikipedia, “the first openly gay personality in the Russian media”) now a New Yorker (after Amnesty International and American PEN helped get him political asylum), the writer and photographer is permanently at war with the establishment. A constant critic of Moscow’s leaders, Mogutin has written seven books in Russian, winning the Andrei Bely Prize in 2000. He aims for a similar shock value in his hatred of establishment gays, and he loves to antagonize his audience, once describing himself as a "cave-based, homo terrorist, pinko commie fag, and propagandist of brutal violence, psychic pathology and sexual perversions." Happily, he brings all that angry energy to his photography, which appears regularly in art, fashion, alt, and porn magazines. His best photo books are Lost Boys and NYC Go-Go. Last month he released his first book in English, Food Chain.

Born April 10: Frances Perkins, Michael Alenyikov

Next time we're listing lesbian accomplishments let's remember Social Security, unemployment benefits, minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and anti-child labor laws -- all of which came into being under the leadership of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. The first woman ever to hold a US Cabinet position, only she and Harold L. Ickes lasted in their posts for FDR's entire presidency. Born in Boston in 1880, Perkins double majored in physics and chemistry at Mount Holyoke and got her Masters in political science from Columbia in 1910. As Governor, FDR made her New York's first State Commissioner of Labor. She married Paul Wilson, a manic depressive who was frequently institutionalized, and she lived with her lover, heiress Mary Harriman Rumsey, in Georgetown. A power couple par excellence, they hosted dinner parties said to gather at one table Eleanor Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Margaret Bourke-White, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and unknown Appalachian folk singers. Rumsey died from a riding accident the week before Christmas 1934. Hiding the true nature of her grief, Perkins carried on with the congressional fight for Social Security, which was enacted in August 1935. Perkins lived to 85 in 1965. Her memoir The Roosevelt I Knew is degayed but biographer Kirstin Downey includes her lesbian relationships in The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins [Kindle]. Lucy Jane Bledsoe chose it as one of her top reads of 2011.

 

Michael Alenyikov's gay novel-in-stories about brother love and jealousy, Ivan and Misha [Kindle], won the Northern California Book Award, the Gina Berriault Award, and was a finalist for Publishing Triangle's debut fiction award. Born in Kiev, the fraternal twins are raised in New York, where their father who was a doctor is now a doorman, and a gambler, and bipolar. Their mother is dead. When Misha gets a boyfriend, Smith, Ivan feels betrayed. Then things get worse.

Alenyikov was raised in Brooklyn, graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, attended Queens College, and moved to San Francisco more than twenty years ago. 

Born April 7: Harry Hay, Zamora Linmark

He was born in England, came to America at seven, and, in his twenties, had an affair with Grandpa Walton when that actor was in his thirties: Even now there's so much we don't recall about Harry Hay who started The Mattachine Society in 1950 in Los Angeles. To grasp the bravery of founding a gay rights group at that time, remember it was illegal for homosexuals to gather in public. A woman accompanied them for cover, or they met in private. Depending on your view, Hay is the most interesting or the most difficult of the movement's founders because he was permanently opposed to gay assimilation. He was also a longtime member of the Communist Party, a founding member of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, and a cofounder of Radical Faeries. (Happy, carefree NSFW fairy photo after the jump.) He met his life partner at fifty-one and died at ninety in 2002. Read a collection of his own writings, Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder or his biography, The Trouble With Harry Hay [Kindle] by Stuart Timmons.

Today he would be 102. For his centenary, Los Angeles dedicated a Silver Lake staircase in his honor, The Mattachine Steps. We visited them in January and were very grateful to the person who added the much-needed homemade sign beneath the staid, gray official marker that says Mattachine but doesn't say gay.

A favorite on Thebes' queer lit survey, R Zamora Linmark's Leche [Kindle] is about a young gay Filipano-American returning to the country where he was born and coping with his dual identities. Or, as Kevin Killian says, the novel "takes that old exile-returns cliché and fucks with it till it cries out in ecstasy." Critic Nicholas Boggs said, the book "is a riotous ride through modern-day Manila featuring encounters with a larger-than-life cast of characters including a (perhaps) bisexual cabbie, an activist nun, an acclaimed movie director, and President Corazon Aquino’s actress daughter, also known as the Massacre Queen of the Philippine Cinema.” A two-time Fulbright recipient, Linmark has also written poetry and plays and has taught at the University of Miami and the University of Hawaii. 

Emma Donoghue By the Book

Hyping Tuesday's release of her eighth novel (and fifteenth book) Frog Music, today the NYTBR interviews dazzling Emma Donoghue who surprises by saying her favorite living novelist is Neal Stephenson, her all-time favorite is Dickens, and her favorite Irish writer is Roddy Doyle. The interviewer also asks this:

You’ve written several books about lesbian literary history. Are there particular lesbian-themed works you’d recommend to readers?

Oh yes. Here’s one each for the last six centuries, for starters: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia; Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrea; Denis Diderot’s The Nun; Henry James’s The Bostonians; Dorothy Strachey Bussy’s Olivia; and Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith.

Whom do you consider your literary heroes?

Those few who somehow find not only the time but the mental and emotional energy to work on changing the world directly, as well as through their writing. I’m thinking especially of those who manage to harness their fame and connections to bring people together around such issues as literacy and social exclusion. Dave Eggers, Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby would be models here, because they’ve all founded brilliant organizations without letting their own fiction become po-faced or propagandist.

Read the full interview here.