reviews_and_ramblings | Event: Out and Off the Margins, LGBT Authors Making History

Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Time: 18.00 - 20.00
Location: Koret Auditorium in the San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA

The panel of Cleis Press authors includes Ann Bannon (Beebo Brinker, Odd Girl Out); Jon Ginoli (Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division); Rob Rosen (Diva Las Vegas); Rachel Pepper (The Transgender Child; The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians); Carol Queen (PoMoSexuals; Real Live Nude Girl); Felice Newman (Cleis Press co-publisher and author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book). Moderated by Jim Provenzano, Assistant Arts Editor for the Bay Area Reporter, and hosted by the Hormel Center.

Ann Bannon has been called “The Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction” for her landmark “Beebo Brinker Chronicles,” a series of five original paperback novels published by Gold Medal Books in the 1950s and 60s. The books tell the stories of young lesbians in the gay Mecca of pre-Stonewall Greenwich Village. When she started writing in 1955, Bannon was a twenty-two year old housewife living in Philadelphia. Odd Girl Out was Bannon’s first published work, and the second bestselling original paperback of 1957. Bannon followed it up with four others: I Am A Woman, Women in the Shadows, Journey to a Woman, and Beebo Brinker, all published between 1957 and 1962.

Jon Ginoli is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and founding member of Pansy Division, whose albums include Undressed, Deflowered, and Wish I’d Taken Pictures. When not on tour with the band, he lives in San Francisco. His memoir, Deflowered: My Life With Pansy Division has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

San Francisco writer Rob Rosen is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love and Divas Las Vegas, which was the winner of the 2010 TLA Gaybies for Best Gay Fiction. He has had short stories published in over 100 anthologies and wrote erotica for MEN and Freshmen magazines for 5+ years. Please visit him at www.therobrosen.com

Rachel Pepper is the co-author of The Transgender Child, The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians, and The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life. An award-winning journalist and editor for many publications, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dr. Carol Queen is a writer and cultural sexologist with a doctorate of education in human sexuality. Her essay collection, Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture, was published in 1997. Her essays have also appeared in many publications, including Male Lust and The Erotic Impulse. Her erotic stories can be found in Best Women's Erotica, the Herotica anthologies, Libido, and Best American Erotica 1993, 1994, and 2000, and in many other anthologies; her erotic novel, The Leather Daddy and the Femme, was published in 1998 and won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award the following year. She is co-editor of the anthologies Best Bisexual Erotica, Sex Spoken Here, Switch Hitters, and PoMoSexuals; the latter won a Lambda Literary Award in 1998. Queen currently works as staff sexologist at Good Vibrations and runs the Center for Sex and Culture with Dr. Robert Lawrence. For more information see her website: www.carolqueen.com.

Felice Newman is a sex educator and Somatic Coach certified by the Strozzi Institute. She is the author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us, and is a founding co-publisher of Cleis Press. Felice has appeared on Dr. Drew's Love Line, Derek & Romaine Show, and other radio programs, and has spoken to audiences on sexuality in cities across the country. She is the resident sex coach on ClassicDykes.com and has offered online sex advice on About.com, and LesbiaNation.com. Her Whole Lesbian Sex column appears in newspapers across the U.S. She is a member of The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT).

Jim Provenzano is the author of three novels: PINS, Monkey Suits, and Cyclizen. For ten years he was a syndicated Sports Complex columnists, and he has also served as a guest curator at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. He is currently the Assistant Arts Editor for the Bay Area Reporter, and editor of the new magazine BARtab.