Out of the Underground explores homosexuality in the radical press. It covers the rise and fall of the Gay Liberation Front in several cities, including Milwaukee, Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, San Jose, as well as gay metropolises like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Prior to a regular and reliable gay press, the only positive images of homosexuals appeared in the underground rags. In the turbulent 1960s, young gay men couldn't relate to the stuffy newsletters of Mattachine-era groups. Young lesbians too were drawn to the direct action of the Radical Lesbians and Women's Liberation Front, rather than the gab and java get-togethers of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Those young radicals were more likely to read the Great Speckled Bird, the Ann Arbor Argus, the San Francisco Oracle, the feminist It Ain't Me Babe, and the anarchic Berkeley Tribe, than the Ladder, the DOB newsletter.Out of the Underground is also about the culture, music, politics, and art, that radicalized young queers. Clearly, not all LGBTs were left-wing revolutionaries. Some were conservative and worked within established gay groups. The majority were deeply closeted.This book isn't about them.

Out of the Underground: Homosexuality, The Radical Press, and the Rise and Fall of the Gay Liberation Front

History

de la Croix, St. Sukie

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Rattling Good Yarns Press

For centuries the voices of LGBTQ people have been silenced. Unable to share their lives openly. The result has been widespread isolation, misunderstanding, and shame. Often, with dire consequences still felt today. Tell Me About It explores these lives. It brings into the light the stories they have never fully shared.In Tell Me About It, author/historians Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen asked a variety of individuals ten specific questions. Their frank, audacious, hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking responses will resonate with readers from all walks of life. They offer a glimpse into the individual life experiences that have quietly brought LGBTQ people together into a community. Through the voices of others, Tell Me About It reveals who we are, what we share, and why we must never allow ourselves to be silenced again.

Tell Me About It: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions and Life Stories

Keehnen, Owen

Biographies & Memoirs

St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures is a book for adults who never lost that childlike sense of wonderment. The book sits firmly in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Alan Garner, Lord Dunsany, and other British authors who lived with the fairies, lemonade birds, and tequila bunnies. The book takes the reader on a journey through the imagination of St Sukie de la Croix, where nothing makes sense, and nothing ever will. If you wonder what happens when you throw a broken vacuum cleaner into a bottomless pit, or why American bald eagles wear such terrible wigs, then St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures is the book for you. It begins when a very young St Sukie gets hired by three polar bears to become the Janitor of Lunacy in the garden of his own imagination. Every morning, St Sukie enters the secret garden to solve the problems of the woodland creatures who live there. Problems so peculiar in nature, they defy logic or anything resembling common sense. If you watch Fox News, wear Hush Puppies and cardigans, then you most likely won't like this book. However, if you truly believe that hens can be beauticians, that meerkats fly spitfire planes, and penguins practice tai chi on beds of azaleas, then read on. You have nothing to lose but your mind.

St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

We all have stories -- sometimes poignant, sometimes entertaining, and usually quite interesting. As historians of LGBTQ life, St Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen, have been recording and collecting the memories, personal experiences, and anecdotes of queer folks for decades. The Tell Me About It series is an extension of their ongoing work.The Tell Me About It series sheds light on the lives, the circumstances, and the reality of LGBTQ people through the sharing of personal anecdotes in response to a series of questions. The results are a prime example of the power and the connection that comes from sharing our stories.Like its predecessor, Tell Me About It 2 is full of moving, horrendous, hilarious, and thought-provoking answers by LGBTQ people from across the country and around the globe, capturing a variety of experience, yet often revealing more profound similarities. Tell Me About It 2 offers glimpses of what makes us different, who we are, what we share, and where we fit in.

Tell Me About It 2: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions and Life Stories

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Paper Cuts: My Life in Chicago’s Volatile LGBTQ Press is the story of Rick Karlin’s life writing for Chicago’s newspapers, balancing that with his family life outside of it. Joining the staff at GayLife in 1978 gave Karlin a front-row seat at some of the momentous events in post-Stonewall LGBTQ history. From the privileged vantage point of a newspaper office, he watched the rise and fall of disco, the AIDS crisis, same-sex marriage, bars opening and closing, and LGBTQ newspapers coming and going. Like gossip columnists, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, Karlin knew the dirt going on behind the scenes. … Scratch the veneer of what Karlin calls his “so-called celebrity” and you will find a man of conviction, morals, and a keen sense of community. In short, Rick Karlin is a jewel in the crown of Chicago’s LGBTQ press. In 1978 he dived into a polluted pool and, holding his nose, swam in it for decades. And Chicago is all the better for it.

Paper Cuts: My Life in Chicago's Volatile LGBTQ Press

Karlin, Rick

Professionals & Academics

In this newest story collection from award-winning writer, Daniel M. Jaffe, red-blooded American men make mischief while vacationing abroad. They encounter a serial killer in a Munich bathhouse, a gay Holocaust ghost in Prague, a shape-shifting seductress in Mexico City, a desperate prostitute in Seville, a closeted Catholic school administrator in Dublin, and many others. These stories will transport, titillate, intrigue, and tug at your heartstrings.

Foreign Affairs: Male Tales of Lust & Love

Literature & Fiction

Jaffe, Daniel M.

United States

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. William GladstoneThe year is 1924; the place is Chicago's Towertown, home to the city's Bohemian set. The Clam Sisters, their staff and guests at Palourde Parlor at 35 E. Chestnut Street, are about to have life as they know it turned on its head. When one of the Clam Sisters purchases a rare blue spong from an exotic songbird dealer, the aristocratic sisters find themselves exposed to a flying oddity that leads them to shed their commonplace and staid way of life, for something altogether bold and daring. Chinese tongs, vaudeville shows, fraudulent spiritualists ... St Sukie de la Croix's novel is a humorous historical fantasy that showcases the follies of leading a mediocre existence.

The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity (The Spong Series)

Humor & Satire

Philip Gambone, a gay man, never told his father the reason why he was rejected from the draft during the Vietnam War. In turn, his father never talked about his participation in World War II. Father and son were enigmas to each other. Gambone, an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer, spent seven years uncovering who the man his quiet, taciturn father had been, by retracing his father's journey through WW II. As Far As I Can Tell not only reconstructs what Gambone's father endured, it also chronicles his own emotional odyssey as he followed his father's route from Liverpool to the Elbe River. A journey that challenged the author's thinking about war, about European history, and about "civilization."

As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II

Gambone, Philip

Military

Gay men communicate in many ways, sometimes a glance, sometimes a smile, and sometimes a whistle. In How to Whistle, Gregg Shapiro brings us men of all types sometimes seeking to be with each other and sometimes looking for themselves. They dance, they indulge, they camp, and they enjoy life. Shapiro employs his deft poetic voice to bring you men that will stay with you, men you'll find yourself thinking about for a long time. Praise for How to Whistle: Expanded Edition 
"The stories in Gregg Shapiro's How to Whistle are so perfectly pitched in tone and execution, so novelistic in their differing densities and delightful variety, that they form a sure portrait of a time and place in gay life that is both specific and universal.” — Felice Picano, author of Songs & Poems 
"You don't have to be queer, or from Chicagoland, to fall hard for Gregg Shapiro's marvelous second collection, How to Whistle. These stories – tart, tender, sexed-up, and terribly wise on the subjects of love and memory – are a lesson for everyone” — James Magruder, author of Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall 
"Gregg Shapiro’s stories hum with sex, longing, and electric detail. How to Whistle journeys from the bathhouse to smoky concert venues, and through the confused mind of a culture-hungry teenage brain. This collection goes so many places, yet stays anchored, always, in the heart.” — Brendan Walsh, author of Go and fort lauderdale 
"Shapiro’s How to Whistle brings to vibrant life young gay men's casual/intimate/kinky explorations of Boston, D.C., and Chicago in the 1980's. Deadpan humor alternates with delicious dish and quiet introspection in this witty collection of stories about sex, relationship, (in)fidelity, vengeance, and the meaning of friendship in a sometimes dangerous world. An entertaining, deeply insightful, and warmly nostalgic portrait of the way we were.” — Daniel M. Jaffe, author of Foreign Affairs: Male Tales of Lust & Love 
"Shapiro’s Shapiro’s stories capture the breadth and variety of human relationships – friends, lovers and family; casual and deep; social and sexual. Funny, sad, tragic, and full of surprises, they will keep you reading to the very end and wanting more.” — John D’Emilio, author of Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago's LGBTQ Archives 
"Gregg Shapiro’s How to Whistle documents the 1980s with sharp observation, humor, and keen insights. A decadent decade when urban tastes and desires “lit in a faint orange glow” knew no boundaries, friends and lovers being rushed to the hospital was a typical lunchtime conversation, and pop icons went from tragic to martyred saints of the bullied. This short story collection is also an homage to 1980s Boston and Chicago, as hip as Tama Janowitz’ Manhattan in Slaves of New York, and as raw and sexy as Bret Easton Ellis’ L.A. in Less Than Zero.” — R. Zamora Linmark, author of The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart 
"How to Whistle Gregg Shapiro’s stories bring together a whole kaleidoscope of gay life – from tricks to lovers, passionate romances to bitter breakups, gentle tenderness to raw lust – with voice of singular and simple honesty.” — Christine Sneed, author of Little Known Facts

How to Whistle: Expanded Edition

Shapiro, Gregg

Short Stories & Anthologies

Marya Zhukova is a woman of many passions. Her husband isn't one of them. It's mathematics and literature that captivate her, in part, but her lover, Vera, enthralls her most of all. These are, however, all dangerous obsessions in the socially turbulent St. Petersburg of 1875. Marya is the fiery center of a small solar system of characters, each of whom depends on her to light their own lives. There is her aunt Lidia, a spinster who, dying of consumption, exacts from her niece a promise to marry. There is Grigorii, Marya's one-time math teacher, who longs for his former pupil to achieve the scholarly glory he cannot. There is Vera, a young tutor surprised to find she's fallen in love with a woman. There is Sergei, an earnest librarian captivated by Marya and willing to do whatever it takes to be near her, even if that means a platonic marriage. But when Sergei is consumed with desire for Marya, his anguish over the promise he made sets in motion a deadly chain of events. St. Petersburg itself adds a richness to these characters as they walk and muse along the city's canals or bounce along the rutted streets behind a hardy droshky driver on their way to dine at Privato or Leiner's Deli or to watch ballet at the Marinsky Theater. Inspired by a real-life account, Infraction takes place at a time when women who yearn for more find that freedom comes at a cost.Praise for Infraction"Infraction re-creates 19th-century Russia and what it was like to be a woman who loved women in that time and place. Marya, Yvonne Zipter's brilliant and feisty young heroine, lives through the excitement of revolutionary new ideas about women's rights, the delirium of passionate same-sex love, and the anguish caused by a society's refusal to acknowledge and honor women's relationships. Through Zipter's vivid and compelling writing, we walk every step of the way with Marya." - Lillian Faderman, author of Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls and TwilightLovers, and Naked in the Promised Land"Infraction, the first novel by accomplished poet and nationally syndicated columnist Yvonne Zipter, is a poignant tale of suppressed yearning and potential. In 19th-century Russia, which is more of an infraction for Marya Zhukova, her love for mathematics or for a woman? Zipter's evocative book is based on a true story of a gifted gay geometer who was forbidden to follow both her head and her heart. Infraction will leave you reeling for how much has been squandered in the name of tradition and status quo." - Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive! and The Bowl Is Already Broken"Part adventure story, part cautionary tale, Infraction opens a door on the inner lives of women in 19th-century Russia whose desire to love and to live a life of the mind comes at a price. Daring, delightful, and dangerous, filled with vivid details and keen emotional insight, Zipter's novel is an important and intriguing exploration of the forbidden and transgressive at a time when what was not spoken too often hid a life-or-death truth." -Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men"With elegant prose and authentic period detail, Yvonne Zipter's Infraction brings to vibrant life an aspect of tzarist Russian society all-too frequently ignored: women's same-sex romances and struggles to secure the dignity of independence." - Daniel M. Jaffe, translator of the best-selling Russian novel, Here Comes the Messiah!

Infraction

Zipter, Yvonne

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