Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Jessie J, particularly one song from her debut album, titled “Who You Are”. We appear to be living in an age of anthemic songs about “loving who you are” from pop divas, gay icons at their finest: Katy Perry with “Firework”, my beloved Mama Monster Lady Gaga with “Born This Way”, and this smaller, more intimate offering from my new favourite, Jessie J, a queer English singer-songwriter. My fresh-faced, musical snob 18-year-old self would be appalled by the amount of commercial pop I’ve been listening to ever since I left [...]

We are happy to bring you Part Two of Gomorrahs of the Deep, a Musical Coming Some Day to Off-Broadway by Steve Berman, a gay musical short story from his upcoming anthology. Missed Part 1? Catch up here. The next day, during lunch, my best friend Casey lowered her vintage cats eye glasses further down her nose before poking me with a french fry. “You look like someone took away your pixie sticks and your parents blocked Bravo.” “I had a fight with Hugh.” She dipped the offending fry into a puddle of mayonnaise kept by a napkin on [...]

Jacob Woods writes at his blog Good as Gay about lgbt and related social science topics that interest him. He is a psychology student and the president of the Gay Straight Alliance at Itasca Community College in Northern Minnesota (I’ve got nothing to hide.)  Here are his thoughts, stemming from his experience with psychology.   I have held firmly that the lgbt community is highly promiscuous. More promiscuous than the heterosexual community. My first encounter with this was an anecdotal one. When I first started realizing I was gay, long before coming out of the closet, I would go [...]

Today, we are excited to bring you a musical gay love story, written by Steve Berman. It will be released in a February 2012 anthology, but you get to read it here FIRST ! Stay tuned, because we'll be releasing the story in three pieces over the coming weekend. Enjoy! (Note: Any formatting errors are ours.)   When I was seven, my babysitter sat me down on the plump couch in our basement and let me have an entire bowl of butter pecan ice cream if I would be quiet while she watched a DVD—I think she had [...]

I read Francesca Lia Block’s Dangerous Angels (the collected Weetzie Bat books) when I was about 17. My best friend Monica gave it to me, and that book changed my life. It’s the first place, after Ellen, that I encountered any openly gay people. I grew up in southern Idaho, which is just about the reddest part of one of the reddest states in the country, and to see major gay characters, characters portrayed in a positive light, as though their lives are the most natural thing, just another way of living, was so powerful. Couple that with [...]

I’ve been musing over the labels we give books, especially labels in sales lists: ‘Gay Books’, ‘Lesbian Books’, ‘GLBT Books’. I’ve been wondering if everyone has the same understanding of these labels, exactly, and whether they are an entirely good, helpful thing, or have the potential to be negative in some way. I’d like to know what people think. I’ve been scanning several ‘genre lists’ and in one alphabetical list ‘Gay and Lesbian’ found its place between ‘Dark Fantasy’ and ‘General Fiction’. So, I thought, when does a book become ‘Gay and Lesbian’ as opposed to ‘Dark Fantasy’? [...]

Our winners for Old Habits and Ink Exchange are below: Old Habits: Alison, comment #3 Ink Exchange: Twitter user @eas770 Please email us (maria@gayya.org) with your shipping information to receive your book!   Today's poll is up on our Facebook Page: http://on.fb.me/lp7tV1  Answer the question to pick what book we give away next week!

So. David Levithan. He’s pretty amazing, right? Honestly, his books pretty much send me spiraling into fangirl glee. Boy Meets Boy gets most of the accolades, and rightly so. It’s a lovely and wonderful book, joyful and hopeful. But for my money, Wide Awake is not only his best book but one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It’s hopeful in a different way, a love story to possibility and to connection. Wide Awake is set “in the near future,” on the eve of the election of the first gay Jewish president of the United States, and [...]