BOOKS


ublishing —and soon


LGBTQ+ Publis Category Spotlight


LGBTQ+ Publishing W


A preview of new titles published between April 2021–March 2022


While there is still a way to go in terms of representation for books by and about LGBTQ+ people, the crop of recent and upcoming publications is packed with quality and commercial appeal


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proposal for my first book, Straight Jacket, t about gay mental health, one publisher complained that it didn’t have enough heterosexual people in it. “That’s the point,” I replied. “It’s about gay people and for gay people.” I wanted to explain that it would be like complaining The Female Eunuch didn’t h have enough to interest men in it, but I didn’t. There are hundreds of writers out there and books that could have made money for publishers. The lesbian author V G Lee springs to mind; one of the funniest writers in the UK, who has b under-supported by the ind dozens more. An audience need to be marketed to. Th will be fascinating. Let’s s population identifies as L be reasonable for even ha books published to be ab makes commercial sens the heart of the publishi for if it cannot tell a div Over the past five ye made significant effort


made


hor V G Lee springs t and warmest been shockingly dustry. There are


e exists, but they he recent census say 2% of the UK LGBT. Would it not alf of one per cent of bout LGBT stories? It se but also strikes to ing industry: what is it verse range of stories? ears the industry has rts to change this


12 12


Despite Tales of the City’s iconic success, there has not been another popular gay- themed series since. Is this really because there are no such stories, or writers?


Matthew Todd Former editor, Attitude; author


hat struck me puting together this list of LGBTQ+-themed books, published in the next year and beyond, was the number of Young Adult and children’s picture books being published. When I was growing up, books with gay themes were almost impossible to find. I didn’t know of any. All the literary references to people like me were depressing, if they existed at all. It wasn’t until, in my twenties, I finally got my hands on Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the Cit series that I found something I could relate to. It’s staggering that it’s taken 40 years for the industry to realise there are stories to be told about regular LGBTQ+ people and our lives, including those of young people.


Also notable is that there are significant books from trans authors, leading with


Paris Lees’ memoir What it Feels Like for a Girl, which Particular Books hopes will find an audience with mainstream readers, focusing more as it does on Lees’ working-class beginnings in Notingham than her journey to transition. Mat Cain has also writen a title with mainstream commercial appeal in The Secret Life of Albert Entwhistle. It’s clear that there is an audience out there and that straight people are buying such books, too. We’re no longer in a place where boundaries are stuck to so rigidly. Aſter all, great writing is great writing. It would be meaningful if publishers invested in finding more of the voices writing about urgent subjects, as I describe in the Lead Story (pp06–07), but significant change is happening. That’s something we can all be proud of, even if there is still a long way to go.


must embra


For many readers growing up in the UK, the book publishing sector does not adequately serve them with books that speak to their experience of their sexuality or gender—and this must change


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Category highlight


ts Hanya Yanagihara


To Paradise Picador, January 2022, £20, 9781529077476


One of the most-antici- pa


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p ted titles of next year novel from gihara,


dise


Ian Eagleton, James Mayhew (illus) Nen and the


Lonely Fisherman Owlet Press, 6th June, £7.99, 9781913339098


A delightful picture b ok n Li


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book ini spispired by “The L ttleMermai am


a d”, about


n namedNen stheth oceanseans


Jack Guinness


The Queer Bible HQ, 20th June,£20, 9780008343989


Man about town Jack Guinness presents the first book inspired by his popular website, TheQu


presenting a c ll trated


e Queer Bible, g


ollection


of illlustra ed ess ysessays ittenb“quby “


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Paris Lees What It Feels


Like for a Girl Particular Books, 27th May, £20, 9780241450123


British Vogue columnist Lees presents her stun- ning first book, about growing up in Noughties Nottinghamshire. Funny, highly ing


disturbing andalways engrossing,


ian ros ig ing, ii t ll g t ells nagerge y


Matt Cain The Secret Life


of Albert Entwhistle Headline Review, 27th May, £16.99, 9781472275059


A delightful tale from the author of hit The Madonna of Bolton, this is about a retiring post- man who, having buried his sexuality all his life, deci es tcides to go looking for thm he loved lost de dacades aca es go


the man ltde


d and go. Swe t dexpe tedcted o Sweet,


Mary Paulson-Ellis Emily Noble’s


Disgrace Mantle, 19th August, £16.99, 9781529036176


Trauma cleaner Essie Pound makes a grim discovery at a flat she’s been sent to clean up, and meets a police officer who has her


an interest in the case. An exciting third nhirdnovel from leading ay gay riiter PaulsonEln-Ellis,


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Matthew Todd Former editor, Attitude; author


he absence of the past is a terror, wrote Derek Jarman, in his essential 1993 diary-based book At Your Own Risk, k in which he described the trauma of being leſt out of history, and of not seeing yourself depicted in TV in film, in stories. It’s some- thing those of us in this industry, I imagine, understand is a profound and fundamental human need.


If you are straight, imagine what it’s like to have not had books and films that showed what it’s like to be you: no “Romeo and Juliet”, no “Casablanca”, no “Gone with the Wind”, no Adrian Mole and Pandora, no Bridget Jones and Mr Darcy, no Hermione and Ron, no prety-much-every-book-ever-writen which centres straight relationships in the narrative. I don’t think you could imagine. It’s horrendous. It makes you feel, at a very deep level, that there’s something wrong with you and who you are should be hidden way. It’s so painful writing that list, it makes me want to cry. It’s why in 2017, when the first studio film about a gay teen finding love was released, “Love Simon”, I sat and watched an audience of younger and older gay and lesbian folk weeping. If you are transgender, up until the past five years, it’s most likely you’ll have never seen characters like you in the mainstream. This does mater. As Mohsin Zaidi—author of one of the only books ever published about being gay and Muslim, Dutiful B y


p11), represen on can be a m and d athdd ath.


ADutiful )


and de nd p entati


A Dutiful Boy—explains so sensitively (on can be ama


teena er Iger, wen ooking in


n be mater of life ger, I went loent look


ARMISTEAD MAUPIN’S TALES OF THE CITY STRUCK A CHORD WITH THE GAY COMMUNITY


the school library for any books about people like me. I was suicidal, desperate for the support I wasn’t geting in the real world, and I found none. Even if there had been relevant books, I wouldn’t have known because they weren’t talked about. Even E M Forster was so ashamed of his sexualit he made sure that Maurice wasn’t published until 1971, when he e was in the ground. Twent years later, study- ing Howards End for my A-Levels, a teacher


d


asked why we were reading “that book writen by a homosexual”. Even now, there are almost no books or films similar to those, with same- sex relationships at the centre. The ones I did start to read were depressing: everyone died of AIDS or suicide; no lesbian ever survived. In the mid-Nineties I found Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the Cit series (first published in 1978), about the lives of normal twentsomething people—gay, straight and trans—and I raced through them all. Despite their iconic success, there has still not been another popular gay-themed series since. Is this really because there are no such stories, or writers to tell them?


Clearly not. Of course, lots of LGBT self-censor. In 2012, w


writers tell other stories but this has oſten been because, as has happened to countless colleagues, we are so used to being told to “de-gay” projects that we oſten pre-empt and I 2012 when I was shopping the


de g In 2012,wh


Despite Tales of the City’s iconic success, there has not been another popular gay- themed series since. Is this really because there are no such stories, or writers?


proposal for my first book, Straight Jacket, t about gay mental health, one publisher complained that it didn’t have enough heterosexual people in it. “That’s the poin I replied. “It’s about gay people and for g people.” I wanted to explain that it would like complaining The Female Eunuch didh have enough to interest men in it, but I d There are hundreds of writers out the and books that could have made mone publishers. The lesbian author V G Lee to mind; one of the funniest and warm writers in the UK, who has been shock under-supported by the industry. The dozens more. An audience exists, but need to be marketed to. The recent c will be fascinating. Let’s say 2% of th population identifies as LGBT. Wou be reasonable for even half of one p books published to be about LGBT makes commercial sense but also s the heart of the publishing industr for if it cannot tell a diverse range Over the past five years the ind made significant efforts to chang


02.07.21 ISSN 0006-7539 At the heart of publishing since 1858. £5.95


WEEK


one of the reasons sonated is because gay ed to being spoken to bout their own lives in an hen The Bookseller askedr mit details of LGBT-interest , I noticed the majorit were s which “slipped in” gay or


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at in many ways. We should be , as in life, but oſten you can he lease desperate not to put off ream by pitching something as k”; oſten to the point where the n mention it. I get it. But publish be scared to commission book diences about specific issues th ctly to us. If the idea is strong en k it up with marketing and pro upport and big things can happen. y, we are moving into a time when g LGBT characters won’t automatically mainstream audiences. I was shocked number of both gay and straight people ad no idea how horrendous the AIDS was until “It’s a Sin” was screened.


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gentle and charming The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle, would not have been published 10 years ago. The industry is evolving. It’s impor- tant to celebrate. There’s a way to go, but we are moving forward. Let’s keep doing so. And don’t forget the lesbians. (The Well of Loneliness was a very long time ago).


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LBGTQ+ Publishing


To see the full preview of LGBTQ+ Publishing, see pages 12–20.


pg


Mohsin Zaidi A Dutiful Boy Vintage, 10th June, pb, £8.99, 9781529112207 The paperback edition of Zaidi’s powerfully moving memoir about growing up as a young gay Muslim and the struggle to wed f ith and


s


and th his sexuality, faith and culture. One of the only books published on this subject, this is a book that saves lives.


Mark Gevisser The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers Profile, 21st May, pb, £10.99, 9781788165150 Following nine LGBTQ people from different countries over seven years, from Uganda to Egypt to Russia, Gevisser ks at the surprising


looks at the su p ways some things are moving forwards and others moving backwards.


Will Young To Be a Gay Man Virgin Books, out now, pb, £14.38, 9780753554258 The paperback release of singer Will Young’s book about his experience of growing up gay, the shame he was exposed to as a child and the therapy he has had to overcome it. Expect significant media this title


Exp interest in this title.


07


campaign for my own gay-themed novel, The Madonna of Bolton, which had been rejected by over 30 editors. It atracted widespread press coverage and the book became Unbound’s fastest crowdfunded novel ever. I did all this because I wanted to give publishing a kick up the backside. It’s only fair, then, that I take this opportunit to celebrate how much the situation has improved. For the first time, gay-themed literary fiction is complemented by a decent raſt of commercial fiction, by the likes of Justin Myers, Graham Norton, Crystal Jeans, Kate Davies and Laura Kay. My own latest book, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle published by Headline on 27th May.


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Matt Cain was born in Bury and brought up in Bolton. He is an author, a leading commentator on LGBTQ+ issues, and a former journalist


Matt Cain’s novel The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle (Headline, 27th May, 9781472275059, £16.99) follows 64-year-old Albert Entwistle, who has been a postman in a quiet town in Northern England all his life. After finally realising its time to be honest about who he is, he must learn to ask for what he wants. And he must find the courage to look for George, the man that, many years ago, he lost—but has never forgotten.


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how much the situation has improved. For the first time, gay-themed literary fiction is complemented by a decent raſt of commercial fiction, by the likes of Justin Myers, Graham Norton, Crystal Jeans, Kate Davies and Laura Kay. My own latest book, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle, is e published by Headline on 27th May. Albert Entwistle... is an up-lit novel about a lonely and secretly gay postman, who sets off in search of his lost love, a man he hasn’t seen for 50 years—and in the process learns to love his true self, engages with his communit, and finally experiences happiness. One of my motivations for writing the book was to celebrate how much more accepting our societ is now—and to make readers from all kinds of backgrounds feel proud of the role they have played in bringing about this change. In tandem with this, I’d like to make everyone in


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bolstered by even more succe tries; “It’s a Sin” recently bec rated drama in years, contrib streaming service All 4, and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has b with resurrecting BBC Thre Even the census this year w British population if they id that sexualit and gender i stream conversation. Even so, I detect a sign risk-aversion still lingerin complain of low-paid sin under pressure, frighten succeed, they won’t be g continue to hear the bel between two male char but would scare off rea they are not intelligen them. Even though “I of gay sex in its openi biopic “Rocketman”— box office—featured also fun.


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Matt Cain was born in Bury and brought up in Bolton. He is an author, a leading commentator on LGBTQ+ issues, and a former journalist


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