[perronne]

CONTROVERSIAL GAY AUTHOR "COMES OUT" WITH SECOND
EDITION OF HIS DEBUT NOVEL DURING NATIONAL COMING OUT MONTH
(Los Angeles, CA, 10/11/06)— Novelist, Michael Holloway Perronne, who last year made headlines for shipping a shovel and a copy of his gay themed debut novel, A Time Before Me, to conservative lawmaker Gerald Allen in response to proposed Alabama legislation that would ban (and as suggested by Allen perhaps bury) all gay books, is celebrating the release of the second edition of the very novel that first put him on the gay literature map.

It’s no coincidence that the second edition of this gay coming-of-age tale is being released during National Coming Out Month. “Despite the fact that the novel takes place in the early 1990s, gay youth today still experience a lot of the same obstacles during the coming out process,” Perronne said. “While gay youth, and gay rights in general, have made many strides in the past fifteen plus years, there is still a strong anti-gay stigma in many parts of the country. We see how homophobia has been used politically to drive people to polls. That’s why National Coming Out Month is so extremely important. The more people that come out, the more it educates the straight (and gay) community on our issues. When people can put a face or name of someone they care about to their fear the issue all of a sudden becomes more human and understandable.”

Perronne says he worries about the effect on gay youth, and others just coming out, of all the recent politicizing conservatives have done by using gay rights as a “scare tactic” in this country. “When you’re talking about writing discrimination into the constitution that sends a strong message to the gay citizens of this country that we are far from being accepted by our society as a whole. As hard as it can be for people at times, the only way to combat that sort of hate is through education and awareness.”

In A Time Before Me, a gay teen struggles to come to terms with his identity in the contrasting worlds of small town Mississippi and the Big Easy, New Orleans.

Currently, there are signings for A Time Before Me planned in West Hollywood, San Francisco, and New Orleans. www.michaelhperronne.com/events

Perronne is a writer living in Los Angeles. He has a BA from the University of Southern Mississippi and a MFA from the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. He is currently working on a sequel to the critically praised A Time Before Me, titled Falling Into Me.

A Time Before Me
ISBN: 1-58348-463-9
Publication Date: October 2, 2006
Retail Price: $13.95
Publisher: iUniverse Star

Wholesale- Available from Ingram Book Group- standard wholesale discounts and returns policy.
Retail- Available from on-line book retailers, on order at any bookstore, or visit http://www.michaelhperronne.com for more information.

Media Contacts- including to request review copies and interviews:
press@michaelhperronne.com
(310) 712-1914
_________________
Michael Holloway Perronne
www.michaelhperronne.com