Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 81 - 100 of 734 items
By Rae Spoon. 2012
Transgender indie electronica singer-songwriter Rae Spoon has six albums to their credit, including 2012's I Can't Keep All of Our…
Secrets. This first book by Rae (who uses "they" as a pronoun) is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in rural Canada.The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel, the narrator finds solace and safety in the company of their siblings, in their nascent feelings for a girl at school, and in their growing awareness that they are not the person their parents think they are. With a heart as big as the prairie sky, this is a quietly devastating, heart-wrenching coming-of-age book about escaping dogma, surviving abuse, finding love, and risking everything for acceptance.Rae Spoon lives in Montreal, Quebec.By Neil Patrick Harris, Lori Duron, David Burtka. 2013
Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron’s frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress…
and happiness raising a gender-creative son. Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, her younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi." C.J. is gender variant or gender nonconforming, whichever you prefer. Whatever the term, Lori has a boy who likes girl stuff—really likes girl stuff. He floats on the gender-variation spectrum from super-macho-masculine on the left all the way to super-girly-feminine on the right. He's not all pink and not all blue. He's a muddled mess or a rainbow creation. Lori and her family choose to see the rainbow. Written in Lori's uniquely witty and warm voice and launched by her incredibly popular blog of the same name, Raising My Rainbow is the unforgettable story of her wonderful family as they navigate the often challenging but never dull privilege of raising a slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son.By Joe Allan. 2015
Sam Smith's debut album, In the Lonely Hour, sold four million copies and won four 2015 Grammy awards. In 2016,…
he won an Oscar for Best Original Song. The young, soulful singer has massive crossover appeal, with his touching honesty about loneliness, love, and his own sexuality coming through in both his music and interviews. While the media largely painted Smith as an "overnight success story," Sam Smith: The Biography shows the hard work that Smith put in for over a decade.Joe Allan is the author of 5 Seconds of Summer: The Unauthorized Biography and Chris Pratt: The Biography.By Bob Smith. 2016
In this bitingly funny and often surprising memoir, award-winning author and groundbreaking comedian Bob Smith offers a meditation on the…
vitality of the natural world--and an intimate portrait of his own darkly humorous and profoundly authentic response to a life-changing illness. In Treehab--named after a retreat cabin in rural Ontario--Smith muses how he has "always sought the path less traveled." He rebuffs his diagnosis of ALS as only an unflappable stand-up comic could ("Lou Gehrig's Disease? But I don't even like baseball!") and explores his complex, fulfilling experience of fatherhood, both before and after the onset of the disease. Stories of his writing and performing life--punctuated by hilariously cutting jokes that comedians tell only to each other--are interspersed with tales of Smith's enduring relationship with nature: boyhood sojourns in the woods of upstate New York and adult explorations of the remote Alaskan wilderness; snakes and turtles, rocks and minerals; open sky and forest canopy; God and friendship--all recurring touchstones that inspire him to fight for his survival and for the future of his two children. Aiming his potent, unflinching wit at global warming, equal rights, sex, dogs, Thoreau, and more, Smith demonstrates here the inimitable insight that has made him a beloved voice of a generation. He reminds us that life is perplexing, beautiful, strange, and entirely worth celebrating.By Kevin Keck. 2005
If David Sedaris were straight (or Margaret Cho were a man), they might be Kevin Keck. Keck mines the same…
rich vein of candid, confessional humor as these popular comics, but Oedipus Wrecked goes further in single-mindedly, hilariously recounting every grim detail of the author's almost absurdly varied sexual history. Keck pulls no punches in describing his endless, obsessive erotic experiments. In essays like "Ass Backwards," "Wet, Hot Presbyterian Summer," and "I Was a Teenage Homosexual," Keck skewers his eccentric mother (whose dildo he swipes), documents his plunge into the "chorus of coming" on a sex party line, and limns a particularly outré encounter with a girl who demands he participate in water sports but won't "have sex" because "that's a sin." For a driven horndog like Keck, sexual taboos exist to be broken. Still he always pays a price through numbing guilt or fear of discovery -- though neither prevents him from embarking on the next quest for love and orgasms. Keck's tableaux of sexual excess are rendered in vivid, unflinching language that marks the emergence of a new voice in contemporary humor that's both cuttingly comic and startlingly revelatory.By Kelly J Cogswell. 2014
When Kelly Cogswell plunged into New York's East Village in 1992, she had just come out. An ex-Southern Baptist born…
in Kentucky, she was camping in an Avenue B loft, scribbling poems, and playing in an underground band, trying to figure out her next move. A couple of months later she was consumed by the Lesbian Avengers, instigating direct action campaigns, battling cops on Fifth Avenue, mobilizing 20,000 dykes for a march on Washington, D.C., and eating fire--literally--in front of the White House.At once streetwise and wistful, Eating Fire is a witty and urgent coming-of-age memoir spanning two decades, from the Culture War of the early 1990s to the War on Terror. Cogswell's story is an engaging blend of picaresque adventure, how-to activist handbook, and rigorous inquiry into questions of identity, resistance, and citizenship. It is also a compelling, personal recollection of friendships and fallings-out and of finding true love--several times over. After the Lesbian Avengers imploded, Cogswell describes how she became a pioneering citizen journalist, cofounding the Gully online magazine with the groundbreaking goal of offering "queer views on everything."The first in-depth account of the influential Lesbian Avengers, Eating Fire reveals the group's relationship to the queer art and activist scene in early '90s New York and establishes the media-savvy Avengers as an important precursor to groups such as Occupy Wall Street and La Barbe, in France. A rare insider's look at the process and perils of street activism, Kelly Cogswell's memoir is an uncompromising and ultimately empowering story of creative resistance against hatred and injustice.By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. 2015
In 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ran away from America with two backpacks and ended up in Canada, where she…
discovered queer anarchopunk love and revolution, yet remained haunted by the reasons she left home in the first place. This passionate and riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South Asian dance nights; it reveals how a disabled queer woman of color and abuse survivor navigates the dirty river of the past and, as the subtitle suggests, "dreams her way home."Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's poetry book Love Cake won a Lambda Literary Award.By Barbara Hammer. 2010
"What an amazingly inspirational book, filled with powerful stories and beautiful images. I truly love and recommend it. Thank you,…
Barbara Hammer!"--Sadie Benning, artist"Barbara Hammer's genius is an erotic genius, one rich in intuitive intelligence. HAMMER! reveals a spirit that is at once youthful and worldly, full of conviction, and often optimistic, bold, ravenous, and celebratory."--Cecilia Dougherty, artist"HAMMER! is a brilliant and shimmering feast of art and activism. Barbara's fearless queer intelligence illuminates every page."--John Greyson, filmmaker"Now the gift of Hammer's sounds and images is matched by that of her words. Beautifully designed and illustrated, HAMMER! is a striking book, from its title to its impact."--Patricia White, author of Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability"A candid and colorful memoir, HAMMER! offers valuable primary source material and original feminist film theory by a pioneer of avant-garde American cinema."--Livia Bloom, film curator"Barbara Hammer is a true cinematic pioneer; her tremendous body of work continues to inspire audiences and artists alike."--Jenni Olson, LGBT film historianHAMMER! is the first book by influential filmmaker Barbara Hammer, whose life and work have inspired a generation of queer, feminist, and avant-garde artists and filmmakers. The wild days of non-monogamy in the 1970s, the development of a queer aesthetic in the 1980s, the fight for visibility during the culture wars of the 1990s, her search for meaning as she contemplates mortality in the past ten years--HAMMER! includes texts from these periods, new writings, and fully contextualized film stills to create a memoir as innovative and disarming as her work has always been.Barbara Hammer has made over eighty films and video works over the past forty years. Her experimental films of the 1970s often dealt with taboo subjects such as menstruation, female orgasm, and lesbian sexuality. In the 1980s she used optical printing to explore perception and the fragility of 16mm film life itself. Her documentaries tell the stories of marginalized peoples who have been hidden from history. Her most recent work, A Horse is Not a Metaphor, won the 2009 Teddy Award for Best Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. A retrospective screening of her work will be presented at the Museum of Modern Art in spring 2010 and will travel to the Reina Sophia in Madrid and the Tate Modern in London.By Williamson Murray. 2000
Janet, My Mother, and Me is a charming, captivating memoir about a boy growing up in a household of two…
extraordinary women. William Murray was devoted to his mother, Natalia Danesi Murray, and to his mother's longtime lover, writer Janet Flanner. Even as a teenager, he accepted their unconventional relationship. His portrait of the two most important people in his life is unforgettable. Janet Flanner was already celebrated as the author of a new style of personal journalism for her "Letter from Paris" in The New Yorker when she met the Italian-born Natalia Murray on Fire Island, New York, in 1940. Their encounter, writes William Murray, was a "coup de foudre, a thunderbolt that instantly sent them rushing into each other's arms and forever altered their lives, as well as mine." Murray was already growing up in two cultures on different continents, in New York and Rome, when his mother's life changed so dramatically. He quickly accepted Flanner and the unusual household in which he found himself. (Natalia's mother, Mammina Ester, also lived with them in New York.) His memories of the women and of his own boyhood and adolescence are touching and often hilarious. Janet, My Mother, and Me offers a look at the world in which gay professional women moved in the decades before such relationships became more open and accepted. Murray's mother was a publishing executive and a broadcaster, and Murray, who originally hoped to become an opera singer and trained for that profession, eventually moved into the professions of both his mother and Flanner, becoming a novelist and then for many years an editor and writer at The New Yorker. This is an exuberant, warm, and often poignant memoir with a memorable cast of characters. Beguiling and unusual, it will remain vivid in readers' minds for years to come.By Sandra Gail Lambert. 2018
After contracting polio as a child, Sandra Gail Lambert progressed from braces and crutches to a manual wheelchair to a…
power wheelchair—but loneliness has remained a constant, from the wild claustrophobia of a child in body casts to just yesterday, trapped at home, gasping from pain. A Certain Loneliness is a meditative and engaging memoir-in-essays that explores the intersection of disability, queerness, and female desire with frankness and humor. Lambert presents the adventures of flourishing within a world of uncertain tomorrows: kayaking alone through swamps with alligators; negotiating planes, trains, and ski lifts; scoring free drugs from dangerous men; getting trapped in a too-deep snow drift without crutches. A Certain Loneliness is literature of the body, palpable and present, in which Lambert’s lifelong struggle with isolation and independence—complete with tiresome frustrations, slapstick moments, and grand triumphs—are wound up in the long history of humanity’s relationship to the natural world.By Vivek Shraya. 2018
"Emotional and painful but also layered with humour, I'm Afraid of Men will widen your lens on gender and challenge…
you to do better. This challenge is a necessary one--one we must all take up. It is a gift to dive into Vivek's heart and mind."--Rupi Kaur, bestselling author of The Sun and Her Flowers and Milk and Honey A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl--and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak. Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.By Ned Rorem. 2013
Acclaimed composer Ned Rorem delights and provokes with a fearless collection of vivid memories, critiques, and musings on life, music,…
and his world Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Ned Rorem has been lauded for his art songs, symphonies, operas, and other orchestral works. With Critical Affairs, as with his other literary works, the great maestro once again demonstrates that he is a master of words as well as music. Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Critical Affairs opens a window into the brilliant mind of a multi-talented artist and acute observer of the world around him. Rorem is fearless--sometimes shameless--in critiques of his contemporaries and their work. He gives glowing praise to those who merit it and tears down those he feels do not with a sharp and cunning wit. His remembrances of past challenges and conquests, both artistic and sexual, alternately scandalize and mesmerize, and his thoughts on everything from Walt Whitman to rock music carry weight and substance. Through it all, the author retains his unique charm and grace, whether he's confidently confessing a shocking personal indiscretion or remembering with lyrical fondness a late musical giant who helped to shape his extraordinary career.By Michael Arceneaux. 2018
In the style of New York Times bestsellers You Can’t Touch My Hair, Bad Feminist, and I’m Judging You, a…
timely collection of alternately hysterical and soul‑searching essays about what it is like to grow up as a creative, sensitive black man in a world that constantly tries to deride and diminish your humanity. It hasn’t been easy being Michael Arceneaux. Equality for LGBT people has come a long way and all, but voices of persons of color within the community are still often silenced, and being black in America is…well, have you watched the news? With the characteristic wit and candor that have made him one of today’s boldest writers on social issues, I Can’t Date Jesus is Michael Arceneaux’s impassioned, forthright, and refreshing look at minority life in today’s America. Leaving no bigoted or ignorant stone unturned, he describes his journey in learning to embrace his identity when the world told him to do the opposite. He eloquently writes about coming out to his mother; growing up in Houston, Texas; that time his father asked if he was “funny” while shaking his hand; his obstacles in embracing intimacy; and the persistent challenges of young people who feel marginalized and denied the chance to pursue their dreams. Perfect for fans of David Sedaris and Phoebe Robinson, I Can’t Date Jesus tells us—without apologies—what it’s like to be outspoken and brave in a divisive world.By Frank Lowe. 2018
"I am honored to recommend this book to ALL parents. . . . [I]t relates to all families, tolerance, and…
love." — Greg Berlanti, writer, producer, director "Raw and unfiltered. . . Lowe breaks new ground, highlighting the dire need for further exploration. 5 Hearts." — Foreword Reviews "[A] powerful eye-opener." — Amanda Hopping-Winn, chief program officer, Family Equality Council "Raw, personal, and uncensored, this must-read book gives us insight as to what it’s like to be raised by same-gender parents and how that can impact one’s life." —Eric Rosswood, author of The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads and Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood In recent years, the world has been saturated by endless blogs, articles, and books devoted to the subject of LGBTQ+ parenting. On the flip side, finding stories written by the children of LGBTQ+ parents is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. Now that the world is more accepting than ever of non-traditional families, it's time to create a literary space for this not-so-unique, shared, but completely individual experience. In Raised by Unicorns: Stories from People with LGBTQ+ Parents, Frank Lowe has carefully edited an anthology that reflects on the upbringing of children in many different forms of LGBTQ+ families. From Baby Boomers to Generation Z, it features diverse stories that express the distinctiveness of this shared journey and of each particular family. It's visceral, raw, and not always pretty, but love is always the common thread. Lowe candidly reveals true accounts of this particular niche of humanity, while simultaneously creating a moving snapshot of the world in which we live. Raised by Unicorns guides the reader through an empathetic journey that is nothing short of compelling and poignant. We've all heard the phrase "raised by wolves." Now we have a window into the complex world of being Raised by Unicorns.By Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Britt Collins. 2017
For fans of A Street Cat Named Bob and Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, Strays is…
a compelling true story of a man who rescues a stray, injured cat and how they save each other.Homeless, alcoholic, and depressed, Michael King lives in a UPS loading bay on the wrong side of the tracks in Portland, Oregon. One rainy night, he stumbles upon a hurt, starving, scruffy cat and takes her in. Nursing her back to health, he names her Tabor and she becomes a bit of a celebrity in southeast Portland. When winter comes, they travel from Oregon to the beaches of California to the high plains of Montana, surviving blizzards and bears, angry steers and rainstorms. Along the way, people are drawn to the spirited, beautiful cat and moved to help Michael, who cuts a striking figure with Tabor riding high on his backpack or walking on a leash. Tabor comforts Michael when he’s down, giving Michael someone to love and care for, and inspiring him to get sober and to come to terms with his past family traumas and grief over the death of his life partner. As they make their way across the West Coast, the pair become inseparable, healing the scars of each other’s troubled pasts. But when Michael takes Tabor to a veterinarian in Montana, he discovers that Tabor has an identification chip and an owner in Portland who has never given up hope of finding his beloved cat, Michael makes the difficult choice to return to Portland and reunite Tabor with her owner. Now Michael must create a new purpose in his life after Tabor. The authentic tale of an adventurous and charismatic cat and her compassionate human admirers, Strays proves the healing power of love and the profound bond between humans and animals.By Juliana Delgado Lopera, Laura Cerón Melo, Eva Seifert, Virginia Benavidez, Shadia Savo, Santiago Acosta, Adela Vázquez, Alexandra Cruz, Manuel Rodríguez Cruz, Marlen Hernández, Carlos Sayán Wong, Mahogany Sánchez, Nelson D’Alerta. 2014
¡Cuéntamelo! Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants. ¡Cuéntamelo! began as a cover story for SF Weekly, and, eventually in 2014…
with local grant support, Juliana Delgado Lopera was able to publish a limited first edition of 300. Aunt Lute is pleased to bring this title back into circulation. In addition to beautiful black and white drawings of the contributors by artist Laura Cerón Melo, this edition features a number of candid earlier photographs of several of the contributors, as well as a new introduction from Juliana. ¡Cuéntamelo! is “[a] stunning collection of bilingual oral histories and illustrations by LGBT Latinx immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 80s and 90s. Stories of repression in underground Havana in the 60s; coming out trans in Catholic Puerto Rico in the 80s; Scarface, female impersonators, Miami and the 'boat people'; San Francisco’s underground Latinx scene during the 90s and more.”¡Cuéntamelo! is bilingual. All stories in this book have both an English and Spanish version.By Juliana Lopera, Laura Melo, Eva Seifert, Virginia Benavidez, Shadia Savo, Santiago Acosta, Adela V zquez, Alexandra Cruz, Manuel Cruz, Marlen Hern ndez, Carlos Wong, Mahogany S nchez, Nelson D Alerta. 2014
¡Cuéntamelo! Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants. ¡Cuéntamelo! began as a cover story for SF Weekly, and, eventually in 2014…
with local grant support, Juliana Delgado Lopera was able to publish a limited first edition of 300. Aunt Lute is pleased to bring this title back into circulation. In addition to beautiful black and white drawings of the contributors by artist Laura Cerón Melo, this edition features a number of candid earlier photographs of several of the contributors, as well as a new introduction from Juliana. ¡Cuéntamelo! is “[a] stunning collection of bilingual oral histories and illustrations by LGBT Latinx immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 80s and 90s. Stories of repression in underground Havana in the 60s; coming out trans in Catholic Puerto Rico in the 80s; Scarface, female impersonators, Miami and the 'boat people'; San Francisco’s underground Latinx scene during the 90s and more.”¡Cuéntamelo! is bilingual. All stories in this book have both an English and Spanish version.By Juliana Lopera, Laura Melo, Eva Seifert, Virginia Benavidez, Shadia Savo, Santiago Acosta, Adela V zquez, Alexandra Cruz, Manuel Cruz, Marlen Hern ndez, Carlos Wong, Mahogany S nchez, Nelson D Alerta. 2014
¡Cuéntamelo! Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants. ¡Cuéntamelo! began as a cover story for SF Weekly, and, eventually in 2014…
with local grant support, Juliana Delgado Lopera was able to publish a limited first edition of 300. Aunt Lute is pleased to bring this title back into circulation. In addition to beautiful black and white drawings of the contributors by artist Laura Cerón Melo, this edition features a number of candid earlier photographs of several of the contributors, as well as a new introduction from Juliana. ¡Cuéntamelo! is “[a] stunning collection of bilingual oral histories and illustrations by LGBT Latinx immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 80s and 90s. Stories of repression in underground Havana in the 60s; coming out trans in Catholic Puerto Rico in the 80s; Scarface, female impersonators, Miami and the 'boat people'; San Francisco’s underground Latinx scene during the 90s and more.”¡Cuéntamelo! is bilingual. All stories in this book have both an English and Spanish version.By Erik Sherman, Glenn Burke. 2015
Before Jason Collins, before Michael Sam, there was Glenn Burke. By becoming the first—and only—openly gay player in Major League…
Baseball, Glenn would become a pioneer in his own way, nearly thirty years after another black Dodger rookie, Jackie Robinson, broke the league’s color barrier. This is Glenn’s story, in his own words . . . Touted by scouts and coaches alike as “the next Willie Mays,” Burke, a charismatic outfielder, kept his sexuality off the radar for a good two seasons, which included a World Series appearance. He was even credited with inventing the high five with teammate Dusty Baker. But when the Dodgers’ front office got wind of Burke’s sexuality, the damage control started, including efforts by upper management to talk him into a sham marriage. When Burke refused, he was eventually traded to Oakland, where he received a less-than-warm welcome from incoming manager Billy Martin. The prejudice, coupled with an injured knee, forced Burke into retirement at only twenty-seven years old. Now, two decades after his death from AIDS-related complications, the man who started the conversation is finally being included in it. Major League Baseball recognized him as a gay pioneer at the 2014 All-Star game. And Burke has become a source of inspiration for athletes who refuse to be defined by who they love, while doing what they love. Includes a new afterword by coauthor Erik Sherman reflecting on the two decades that have passed since Burke’s death.By Erik Sherman, Glenn Burke. 2015
Before Jason Collins, before Michael Sam, there was Glenn Burke. By becoming the first--and only--openly gay player in Major League…
Baseball, Glenn would become a pioneer in his own way, nearly thirty years after another black Dodger rookie, Jackie Robinson, broke the league's color barrier. This is Glenn's story, in his own words . . .Touted by scouts and coaches alike as "the next Willie Mays," Burke, a charismatic outfielder, kept his sexuality off the radar for a good two seasons, which included a World Series appearance. He was even credited with inventing the high five with teammate Dusty Baker.But when the Dodgers' front office got wind of Burke's sexuality, the damage control started, including efforts by upper management to talk him into a sham marriage. When Burke refused, he was eventually traded to Oakland, where he received a less-than-warm welcome from incoming manager Billy Martin. The prejudice, coupled with an injured knee, forced Burke into retirement at only twenty-seven years old.Now, two decades after his death from AIDS-related complications, the man who started the conversation is finally being included in it. Major League Baseball recognized him as a gay pioneer at the 2014 All-Star game. And Burke has become a source of inspiration for athletes who refuse to be defined by who they love, while doing what they love.Includes a new afterword by coauthor Erik Sherman reflecting on the two decades that have passed since Burke's death.Foreword by Billy Bean