Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do, until enough was enough. Full of behind the scenes details and intimate interrogations on sex, love, trauma, and Hollywood, Pageboy is the story of a life pushed to the brink.

After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924, Harvard University scholar and activist F. O. Matthiessen and artist Russell Cheney fell in love and remained inseparable until Cheney's death in 1945. During the intervening years, the men traveled throughout Europe and the United States, achieving great professional success while contending with serious personal challenges, including addiction, chronic disease, and severe depression.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better” - someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore - sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find.

Today, the options and freedoms on offer to LGBTQ+ people living in the West are greater than ever before. But is same-sex marriage, improved media visibility and corporate endorsement all it’s cracked up to be? At what cost does this acceptance come? And who is getting left behind, particularly in parts of the world where LGBTQ+ rights aren’t so advanced? Combining intrepid journalism with her own personal experience, Amelia Abraham searches for the answers to these urgent challenges, as well as the broader question of what it means to be queer in 2019.

Born the youngest of 15 siblings in Lakewood, Ohio, Shelly McNamara began writing as a child to explore her inner self and make sense of the world around her. From the grief of losing close friends and family, the pain of estrangement and rejection, and a deep desire to make the world a more respectful, loving, and inclusive place, Shelly wrote poetry and stories of hope and strength. Writing helped her embrace her own identity while she waited for the world to recognize her lifelong commitment to the woman she loves and the family they built together.

The Book of Queer Prophets contains modern-day epistles from some of our most important thinkers, writers and activists: Jeanette Winterson tackles religious dogma, Amrou Al-Kadhi writes about trying to make it as a Muslim drag queen in London, John Bell writes about his decision to come out later in life, Tamsin Omond remembers getting married in the middle of a protest and Kate Bottley explains her journey to becoming an LGBT ally.

Más allá de la historiografía tradicional, nos encontramos con grandes poetas, intelectuales o cientí ficos homosexuales cuyos deseos han sido borrados. Es momento de sacarlos del armario. Desde Alejandro Magno o Leonardo da Vinci hasta Isaac Newton o Miguel de Cervantes, este libro desvela, de una manera desenfadada y a través de una profunda investigación, los grandes personajes homosexuales que han cambiado—pese a los prejuicios y las dificultades de su época—la historia de la humanidad.

The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas; a doomed lesbian biker gang; recovering alcoholics; and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life, yet all-too-human figures populating America’s fringes. Rife with never-ending fights and failures, theirs are the stories we too often try to forget. But in the process of excavating and documenting these queer lives, Michelle Tea also reveals herself in unexpected and heartbreaking ways.

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

On election day, Joan Gelfand casts her vote for George McGovern and boards a plane from New York to California. With one introduction to a woman musician, Joan’s journey to become a writer is born. Embraced by a thriving women’s community of artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and writers, Joan is encouraged to find her voice. Mentored by paradigm-changing writers, Joan finds the courage to face her darkest fears through poetry and art, mining the trauma she experienced after losing her father and questioning her Jewish identity.

Did I mention I thought I was straight back then? And that I had no clue he was gay? How was I ever that clueless. OMG! I nearly passed out.I mean, after we got naked and . . . Over the next few years, my whole world changed. I went from never-do-anything-wrong preacher’s kid to a wild child sowing his oats.

The Lessons of the Empty Chair is a collection of stories that honors the teachers and heroes that guided the author through the most challenging moments in his life. The audiobook stands as a testament to a faith journey where drag queens are ministers, and the altar is the dance floor of a gay club. Each chapter stands as an independent story focusing on how some souls discover the light by befriending the dark.

Living on the street, Dr. George ran a prostitution and drug dealing business to feed his addiction to sex and drugs. His life spiraled out of control, leading him to the confines of a prison cell. When released on probation he risked it all on a drug blow out. This was the catalyst that started an intentional climb towards a life of freedom. In this book, Dr. George guides the listener through his personal story and how he used the power of intention to change his life.

A groundbreaking book exploring the breadth of history of recorded music by and for the LGBT community and how those records influenced the evolution of the music we listen to today. From Sia to Elton John, from Billie Holiday to David Bowie, LGBT musicians have changed the course of modern music. But before their music - and the messages behind it - gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who would follow them?

Passionate, liberated, fiercely independent, Sybille Bedford was a writer and a journalist, the author of 10 books, including a biography of Aldous Huxley, and four novels, all of which fictionalized her extraordinary life. In this major biography of this universally acclaimed British writer, Selina Hastings brilliantly captures the fierce intelligence, wit, curiosity, and compassion of the woman and the writer in all the richness of her character and achievements.

In 1991, when he was 13 years old, Lenny Duncan stepped out of his house in West Philadelphia, walked to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket - the start of his great American adventure. Today Duncan, who inspired and challenged audiences with his breakout first book, Dear Church, brings us a deeply personal story about growing up Black and queer in the US. In his characteristically powerful voice, he recounts hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling for sobriety, and discovering a deep faith.

Others have turned to Janet W. Hardy's The Ethical Slut, The New Topping Book, and The New Bottoming Book for advice on the most challenging questions of sex, polyamory, kink, and self-identity. But Janet had to make it up as she went. Here, in Impervious: Confessions of a Semi-Retired Deviant, Janet takes you through the five twisty stages of her own kinky life - mirroring those of any good scene - negotiation, warmup, engagement, climax, and aftercare.

Inspiring and honest, this unique memoir of gender transition and coming of age proves it’s never too late to find your true identity.

Richard Coles narrates this witty account of life as a parish priest and Radio 4 broadcaster. After a life of sex and drugs and the Communards - brilliantly recounted in the highly acclaimed first volume of his memoirs Fathomless Riches - the Reverend Richard Coles went on to devote his life to God and Christianity. He is also a much-loved broadcaster, presenting Saturday Live on Radio 4 and giving us regular reason to Pause for Thought on Radio 2.

Before she became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention in 2016 at the age of twenty-six, Sarah McBride struggled with the decision to come out—not just to her family but to the students of American University, where she was serving as student body president. She’d known she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn’t until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country.