Elisa - My reviews and Ramblings

The Promising Series Launches
Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books You Must Read
On February 5th, 2010

(Los Angeles) The Promising Series is a reading series that celebrates Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender writers. The first Promising of the year will launch 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read, an anthology that "contains fifty succinct essays by critics, public figures, and authors. They illuminate works by fifty men and women that everybody should read."

In explaining the book, Editor Richard Canning wrote in his introduction, "Fifty diverse authors have each taken a single work of literature and written a brief account of how and why they read it (and, usually, repeatedly reread it), and why others (of any and all sexualities) should do so."

Some of the writers in the book include Maureen Duffy writing about Sappho´s poems, Christopher Bram writing about Thomas Mann´s Death in Venice, Jonathan Franzen on James Purdy´s Eustace Chisholm and the Works, and Tani Katan on Audre Lorde´s The Cancer Journals.

On February 5th, writers who will read their contributions to 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read will be Felice Picano, Fenton Johnson, Matias Viegener and Promising Series Curator Noel Alumit. The reading begins at 7:30pm.

Felice Picano is the author of 19 books, including the international bestsellers The Book of Lies and Like People in History. He also wrote the acclaimed literary memoirs Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me, and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay. He has been nominated for a PEN/Hemingway, several Lambda Literary Awards, and is a recipient of the Ferro-Grumley award for fiction.

Fenton Johnson is the author of two novels, Crossing the River and Scissors, Paper, Rock as well as Geography of the Heart: A Memoir. His most recent book is Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks. Johnson has served as a regular contributor to Harper's Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. His stories and essays have appeared in many literary quarterlies and have received numerous awards, among them a James Michener Fellowship from the Iowa Writers Workshop and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowships in both fiction and creative nonfiction.

Matias Viegener is a Los Angeles based writer, artist and critic who works alone and collaboratively in writing, video, installation and performance art. He has shown solo work or performed at The Whitney Museum, The Kitchen and The Drawing Center in New York, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), New Langton Arts in San Francisco, Beyond Baroque, Machine Project, the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), The Silver Lake Film Festival, and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

Noël Alumit wrote the novels Letters to Montgomery Clift and Talking to the Moon. His solo shows are The Rice Room: Scenes from a Bar and Master of the (Miss) Universe. www.thelastnoel.blogspot.com

The Promising Series will take place on Friday, February 5 at 7:30pm. Skylight Bookstore, 1818 North Vermont, Los Angeles, CA 90029, (323) 660-1175.