The Year in Gay Books: Mouse Soars, J.K. scores and more!

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on December 12, 2007

For gay books, 2007 was the best of times and the worst of times. Setbacks in the gay publishing industry did not keep good gay books from being published or good gay writers from doing what they do best, but several gay publishers and one gay book club went, or are going, out of business.

Here are the literary highs and lows of the year along with our choices for the author of the year, the top five books of the year and other assorted honors passed out with bright, shiny holiday bows.

Author of the Year

Entertainment Weekly recently named J. K. Rowling its Entertainer of the Year, no surprise considering the huge success of Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Almost as famous within the gay book world is Armistead Maupin, the beloved author of the Tales of the City series. This year Maupin came back strong with his seventh Tales of the City volume, Michael Tolliver Lives (although Maupin really doesn’t consider it a Tales sequel).

It is the present-day story of Tales’ Michael Tolliver, now a 54-year old gardener and AIDS survivor. MTL allows us to catch up with other characters from the Tales series and introduces us to some new ones, including Michael’s much younger lover. For bringing the much beloved Michael and his friends back, we name Armistead Maupin our Gay Author of the Year.

The Top Five Books of the Year

As you’ll read below, many good gay books were published in 2007. Picking only five is difficult, not to mention arbitrary, but here are our five.

1. All: A James Broughton Reader (White Crane Press).

2. Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

3. The Child by Sarah Schulman (Carroll & Graf).

4. Gay Artists In Modern American Culture: An Imagined Conspiracy by Michael Sherry (University of North Carolina Press).

5. Man to Man: A History of Gay Photography by Pierre Borhan (Vendome Press).

Best Gay News of the Year: Dumbledore is Gay!

In the literary outing of the century, J.K. Rowling caused a post-publication stir last October when she told a Carnegie Hall audience that Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is gay. Rowling’s post-publication revelation surprised many, since Dumbledore’s sexual orientation was never mentioned in any of the Potter books (though there were those readers who suspected).

In a world where most books, plays, movies, television shows and music videos are 100% heterosexual, it is refreshing that Rowling allows the existence of homosexuality in her literary universe. And the impact of having the author of the bestselling book of 2007 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – put her stamp of approval on gay characters in children’s literature is hard to underestimate. Best of all, the news also validated many LGBT Potter fans and upset a fair few of the bigots. What’s not to love about that?