American Literature
Publishers Stathis Orphanos and Ralph Sylvester, partners in life as well as business, are best known for their beautifully produced limited edition books; in addition, Orphanos is acclaimed for his photographs of celebrities and male nudes.
A prolific writer and respected teacher, Sheila Ortiz-Taylor has bracketed her career with groundbreaking achievements.
The frequently outrageous cultural commentary and caustic criticism of Camille Paglia have made her both famous and controversial.
Chuck Palahniuk is known for a series of popular and provocative novels; although he has acknowledged his homosexuality, he resists being labeled as a "gay author."
Both the elegiac and the romantic pastoral have been associated with homoerotic desire from their beginnings in classical literature to their echoes in contemporary literatures.
Robert Patrick is a founding father of gay drama in America and an influence in the development of gay drama in England.
Novelist, short story writer, and critic Dale Peck has been praised as "one of the most eloquent voices of his generation" and has been self-described as "the most hated man in literature."
Prolific author Felice Picano, a founding member of the Violet Quill, is also a pioneer in gay publishing, having founded two publishing houses.
The novels of David Plante examine a variety of homosexualities, their male characters ranging from openly gay to sexually ambiguous.
The gay tradition in literature from ancient times to the present is primarily a tradition not of prose but of verse.
Since the 1960s, the general trend in lesbian poetry has been collective and political rather than purely aesthetic.
The explosion of political blogs has served to multiply greatly the number of voices participating in glbtq activism and to expedite the transmission of political information to glbtq communities.
Bisexual artist Fairfield Porter is recognized as a major twentieth-century American Intimist painter.
Award-winning author Minnie Bruce Pratt has written moving and erotic poems and stories that explore sex and gender issues, as well as powerful essays that decry bigotry in its many forms.
One of the most prolific gay writers of recent decades, John Preston helped elevate pornographic fiction into a genre viewed as having literary merit.
Although they do not treat gay themes at length, the poems and novels of Reynolds Price often reflect homoerotic and homosocial male relationships.
James Purdy's novels often describe obsessive love between men for whom homosexuality is unthinkable and whose fate is inevitably bleak.
In his novels about hustling, preeminently City of Night and Numbers, John Rechy moves from the world of homosexual behavior into the world of gay identity.
J. M. Redmann, the Lambda Award-winning creator of the New Orleans mystery series featuring Micky Knight, writes richly textured novels focused on issues of power and family.
By writing the earliest novel to respond directly to AIDS and subsequently producing innovative journal and sex writing, American author Paul Reed made several significant contributions to glbtq literature.
Christopher Rice, the author of four popular, gay-themed suspense thrillers, has also been active in supporting glbtq causes, especially those affecting glbtq youth.
Adrienne Rich, who has aestheticized politics and politicized aesthetics, is America's most widely read lesbian poet.
Poet, translator, literary and art critic, and short story writer, Edouard Roditi was associated with most of the twentieth-century's avant-garde literary movements from Surrealism to post-modernism.
Essayist and memoirist Richard Rodriguez, perhaps the most widely read of Latino-American authors, positions himself as an outsider in America, not only because of his ethnicity, but also because of his sexuality.
Appealing to glbtq people who enjoy romantic fantasy, the queer romance novel has recently come into its own.