Finalist!

Yippee! The anthology that I've been hawking on this blog for the last year (you know the one, the pic is to the left and Rob and I edited it) has been named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Anthology.

For my straight or less literarily inclined, the Lambda Literary Foundation is, their words, "the country’s leading organization for LGBT literature. Our mission is to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians – the whole literary community."

Past winners of the Best Anthology award, which in the past has been divided between gay and lesbian collections, included books edited by Martin Duberman, Essex Hemphill, George Stambolian, John Preston, Joan Nestle, Michale Bronski, David Bergman, Karl Woelz, Noelle Howey, Bruce Shenitz, E. Lynn Harris, Edmund White, Greg Wharton, Ian Philips, and, of course, our book's editor, Don Weise. Being on a list that includes these folks would be, simply, incredible. (If you don't who these people are, or only know a few, Google them and buy some of their books. You won't be sorry. Well, um, unless you accidentally buy some of John Preston's porn. It's good stuff, but if you're, say, not gay, you might not really "get" it.)

So, yay.

Our competition is:

• Confessions of the Other Mother: Non-Biological Lesbian Moms Tell All, edited by Harlyn Aizley (Beacon)
• Love, Bourbon Street: A Celebration of Gay New Orleans, edited by Poppy Z. Brite, Greg Herren & Paul J. Willis (Alyson)
• Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling, edited by Toby Johnson & Steve Berman (Lethe Press)
• No Margins: Canadian Fiction in Lesbian, edited by Catherine Lake & Nairne Holtz (Insomniac)

If you haven't gotten a copy of our book, From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up, please click here.

Someone really, really read the book

RJ Keefe over at the Daily Blague has written an incredibly smart and detailed review of From Boys to Men. Click here and read the whole thing.

The second printing is done!

Books are now available, again, on Amazon and the stores should be restocked soon, if not already.

The reading in San Francisco was amazing

Rob has already blogged about how amazing the reading was in San Francisco last week. And it was. But I'll add my two, or three hundred and fifty-three, cents. (Click the picture to see the Flickr set.)

There had been some concern that doing it at A Different Light was going to be a problem. Apparently, they don't do much publicity, especially when compared to Books, Inc., which is around the corner and which prints up huge posters for their readings and has a well-read newsletter announcing said readings to their zillions of bookish readers. But Books, Inc. didn't want to do a reading because one of our readers, the great K.M. Soehnlein, was already reading there in November and they didn't want the same "headliner" twice in a month. Yeah, whatever. A Different Light was way more cool--they noticed a bunch of San Franciscans in the table of contents and said, "Yes." And then Tom Dolby was going to be in town. A second headliner. Ha. And--and this is a big deal--the manager at A Different Light was paying attention to our book. He saw that it was selling out, so he bought the last two boxes. So that he'd have something to sell. And sell he did. So there.

There were at least 50 people at the reading last Monday. The cashier guy said that he'd never run out of chairs before and never seen so many people in the store. Horehound said he hadn't been at a reading at A Different Light that was so well-attended since the slam poetry revival in the mid-90s. But that was mostly lesbians, who always come out for their sisters, especially when they're slamming poems and stuff. Apparently, they travel in packs.

By the way, it was awesome to see Michael McAllister and Karl Soehnlein and finally to meet Mike McGinty and Horehound Stillpoint and Tom Dolby. They're all amazing. And they all read so well. And they have fans. After the reading, Rob and I had drinks at the former Daddy's across the street with Karl and his partner Kevin and Horehound, who is, well, I guess they'd say he's a character. I wish we could have stayed up past 11 and joined in the fun, but Rob and I had a plane to catch the next morning.

It was thrilling for us. To have our first reading for our first book at the most important gay bookstore in the world, and to have a huge crowd who responded so well to our amazing writers, well, it was a huge thrill.

Bonus: Joe My God was on Sirius OutQ last week and talked about the book.

Take some time out to read the great piece on the book in Time Out New York

Beth Greenfield did a great job, and we're overjoyed. You can read the article on the TONY website. It starts like this:

Soap-opera obsessions. Elaborate fantasy lives. Suburban isolation. Being called “fag.” These are standard-issue elements of growing up queer for some gay men—especially for the 21 contributors of From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up, which charts the familiar terrain with fresh texture. “To the gay reader,” write editors Robert Williams and Ted Gideonse in their joint introduction, “these memoirs will reverberate like the clearest of bells. To the straight reader, we hope you will understand that whom we love is not our only difference: so are the ways that we see the world.”

That sentiment gives the collection a twist that separates it from its predecessors. Though the editors say they did look toward 1996’s Boys Like Us (Harper Paperbacks) as a guiding light, they made a conscious shift away from traditional coming-out stories. Instead, they asked writers to narrate a tale that illustrated their individual coming-of-age perspectives. “We wanted to know,” Williams explains, “How did they view the world?”

Thanks a millions, Beth.

Highly Recommended!

From Library Journal:

At first glance, the need for an anthology of gay men's writings on their youth seems superfluous. Aren't there many titles that fit that subject already? One could fill shelves with existing books of coming-out stories. But the focus here is slightly different-these are stories of what it felt like to grow up gay. Editors Williams and Gideonse commissioned writers not yet widely known to ruminate on personal experiences, which range from the longing of one preppy for another to the many stories of well-developed fantasy lives (e.g., how soap operas can help us survive). Men of many different ages write here, so some stories tell of recent times, while others comment on a generation or more ago; the writing styles vary. Some offer sad remembrances (e.g., a reminder that even gay twins suffer alienation in coming to terms with their sexuality); some are funny (e.g., the range of fantasies described). Amazingly, they are all touching and have an immediacy that makes youth seem like it was only yesterday.

Highly recommended.

--David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia

Some people have noticed that the book is out, and we're pleased

First, folks have been emailing us, saying all sorts of nice things:

• "I picked up the book and devoured it in two sittings. Congratulations... it was great. I would tell you what my favorite story was, but there were several." -- Washington, DC
  
• "I ordered From Boys to Men online and couldn't put it down. The writing was incredibly sharp, sweet and insightful. I found myself wanting to divvy it up so that I'd have more to read when the weekend was over, but I gave in to temptation and read each and every story -- stories about guys who made me feel like my growing-up wasn't abnormal in the least." -- Los Angeles, CA
• "This mail might come to you as asurprise and the temptation to ignore it as unserious could come into your mind; but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility..." -- Lagos, Nigeria

Heh.

We've also gotten an actual reviews! It's from a blog, not the Times, but it's a start.

"From Boys to Men is a collection of essays about growing up gay by some of my favorite authors like Alexander Chee and K.M. Soehnlein. I wasn't familiar with a few of the other authors like Viet Dinh and [Aaron] Hamburger (who is a UM grad -- Go Blue!), but I've already got a copy of Hamburger's Faith for Beginners on my nightstand waiting to be read. There are also some great essays by bloggers DogPoet, Joe.My.God, and Hot Toddy...Great book. Go out and buy it right now -- at your local independent book store, of course." -- Alan Kiste, of some amusing blog pun

And there are some mentions in the press. First, the awesome one:

"We've been enjoying reading the new anthology From Boys to Men – Gay Men Write About Growing Up, edited by Ted Gideonse and Robert Williams (Carroll & Graf, $15.95). Such diverse writers as Alex Chee (Edinburgh), Karl Soehnlein (The World of Normal Boys), Trebor Healy (Through It Came Bright Colors) and Tom Dolby (The Trouble Boy) write about their own adolescent gay epiphanies, and though these vary in period and setting, they share certain leit-motifs that seem like part of a gay coming-out Ur-text: hidden crushes on classmates, playing with the girls, first wet-dream, the sheer terror of getting a woody in the showers with the team after practice.

Whether it's Soehnlein and girlfriends play-acting Neil and the Dolls, or the title sentiment of Dolby's "Preppies Are My Weakness," Out There related to these tales all over the place. In fact, our boy's own story echoes them. When we were 10, our family pulled up stakes and moved from New York to suburban Maryland. We'll never forget our first day in the new school, when the question was put at recess: "Let's see how the new kid can play games!" Uh-oh.

In NY public school, gym period had been devoted to hanging out on the bleachers with chums and smoking "punks." In leafy MD, physical education was taken seriously, required and rigorous through senior year. We endured the queer hell of team sports, including one, lacrosse, we'd never even heard of! Hell if we knew how to catch a hard little ball in that awful netted pouch on a stick. We had a sadistic gym teacher who turned the lights out during dodgeball and encouraged the class to "aim for the head, gentlemen!" One sweltering softball day whilst we off in our own world out in right field, we fainted dead away, only to be rescued by sexy, half-Cherokee Mr. Bark, who fed us raisins and sympathy until we recovered. Our everlasting love and devotion were ignited. What a queer we were." -- Roberto Friedman, The Bay Area Reporter

Now here's one we could have done without:

"The editors of From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up promise that their collection of autobiographical vignettes will not be all coming-out stories. With hot writers like Aaron Hamburger, K. M. Soehnlein and Alexander Chee, the book will hopefuly reach beyond the trite." -- Katherine Volin, The Washington Blade.

Gee, thanks! She wrote something snarky about the book and didn't even bother to read it, let alone give us the benefit of the doubt. With friends like these...

But the book seems to doing well: It's sold out all over the place!