Official News Outlet for the Rainbow Round Table of the American Library Association
The 2021 longlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction has been announced. Two novels with LGBTQ themes, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and Memorial by Bryan Washington, are on the fiction list while My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland, described as an “exploration of one of America’s most […]
Vanity Fair and GQ have published conversations with Bryan Washington, author of the new novel Memorial. His story collection Lot was a Stonewall Honor Book this past year and “Good Morning America” just announced Memorial as its book club pick for November. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/10/bryan-washington-is-writing-the-next-generation-of-queer-love-story https://www.gq.com/story/bryan-washington-memorial-interview
A newly released Hungarian children’s book, A Fairy Tale for Everyone (Meseorszag mindenkie), has now also become a symbol of the fight for LGBTQ rights in the country. The book includes 17 updated fairy tales that include more diverse, inclusive and LGBTQ characters and the “aim was to make children’s literature more diverse in Hungary […]
ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom released a list of the most banned and challenged books of the past decade this week. NBC Out has published a story focusing on the LGBTQ themed books that make up half of the top twenty books: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-themes-found-half-past-decade-s-20-most-banned-n1241353 The complete list is here: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2019
Mark Gevisser’s new book The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers explores the lives of LGBTQ people in nine different countries and chronicles “a new human rights frontier that has come to define, divide and describe the world in a whole new way, a new human rights frontier that is being staked over […]
Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain has also made the Booker Prize shortlist (and last week was named to the longlist for the National Book Award) with his coming of age tale of a young gay Glasgow boy set during the 1980’s. Stuart spoke about his book earlier this summer: https://theface.com/culture/shuggie-bain-douglas-stuart-book-release-picador
Writer and illustrator Pete Jordi Wood has rediscovered an LGBTQ themed fairytale that has been in existence since at least the 19th century. Queer themes in folklore were long suppressed and “deleted” and now readers can explore The Dog and the Sailor in book form and in a virtual exhibit and narration. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/08/21/why-this-charming-gay-fairytale-has-been-lost-for-200-years-stith-thompson/#25b306ca6163 The virtual […]
Award winning writer and professor Randall Kenan has died at the age of 57. Kenan explored Black gay life in the South with story collections (Let the Dead Bury Their Dead) and a novel (A Visitation of Spirits) and also edited a collection of James Baldwin non-fiction (The Cross of Redemption). His most recent collection […]
