I gave a short reading from my new novel, TESTIMONY, at the 18th annual Saints + Sinners Literary Festival last week. Check it out! The historical novel takes place at a women’s college in rural Virginia in 1960, where protagonist Gen Rider, a history professor, becomes enveloped in a queer “scandal.” My 7-minute reading from the book comes in at about the 21-minute mark.
Posts Tagged ‘LGBTQ fiction’
“Testimony” Reading
Posted in gay and lesbian, tagged historical fiction, LGBTQ fiction, Saints + Sinners on March 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Now Available Everywhere
Posted in gay and lesbian, tagged gay and lesbian, historical fiction, LGBTQ fiction on January 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »
It’s wide release day for my new LGBTQ historical novel, TESTIMONY, and I couldn’t be happier. That means you can find it at bookstores everywhere as well as at my publisher’s website.
Author Carter Sickels (The Prettiest Star) says Testimony is “vividly imagined” and “shines a light on queer lives that have been forgotten by history.”
I hope you’ll check it out! Here’s a little teaser to intrigue you:
History professor Gen Rider secures tenure at Baines College, a school for white women. A woman in a man’s field, Gen teaches “Negro” history, which has made her suspect with a powerful male colleague. Even while she’s celebrating her triumph, she’s also reeling from the break-up of a long-distance relationship with another woman—a romance she has tightly guarded, even from her straight female mentor.
As the fall semester dawns, a male instructor at the college is arrested for having sex with a man in a park. Homosexual panic envelops the college town, launching a “Know Your Neighbor” reporting campaign. The police investigation directly threatens Gen’s friend Fenton, the gay theater director at Baines. But Gen finds herself vulnerable, too, when someone leaves mysterious “gifts” for her, including a suggestive pulp novel and a romantic card.
As Gen tentatively embarks on a new relationship, a neighbor reports she’s seen Gen kissing a woman, and hearings into her morality catch her in a McCarthy-like web. With her private life under the microscope, Gen faces an agonizing choice: Which does she value more, the career she’s scraped to build against the odds, or her right to a private life?
Why I Write Historical Fiction
Posted in gay and lesbian, lesbians, teachers, tagged historical fiction, LGBTQ fiction, LGBTQ history on January 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »
My dad read history books for fun and I learned from his example, but I’m aware that some people might find that a weird passion. I think it has something to do with the way we learn history in school, which can make it seem dry and dull. History textbooks turn people from the past into cardboard figures, instead of living, breathing people just like us.
That’s where historical fiction comes in, and it’s one big reason why I write it. Bringing people from the past to life excites me.
Another reason I write historical fiction is because so much LGBTQ history has been erased or forced underground, and many queer people remain in the dark about our past. My wife teaches LGBTQ literature in college and finds few of her students even know what “Stonewall Rebellion” refers to.
LGBTQ historical fiction helps make our history more vivid, alive, and relevant. My new novel, Testimony, is set in 1960, a time in which queer college teachers and students faced harassment in a Lavender Scare-like spree. From 1955 to 1965, for example, legislators in Florida systematically purged queer faculty, students, and staff from that state’s schools. Testimony was inspired by the true story of an esteemed Phys. Ed. professor at UCLA named Martha Deane who was fired because her neighbor told university administrators that he saw her kiss another woman (more on Professor Deane next time).
I wrote Testimony during a new wave of anti-LGBTQ sentiment. My aim was to show the chilling effects of antigay activism. Freedom depends so much on the political climate, and according to a new report from Lambda Legal Defense, “In just four years, President Trump has ushered in a judicial landscape that is significantly more hostile toward LGBTQ people.” Miraculously, though, one of the Right’s high-profile judicial assaults failed—in June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that anti-LGBTQ discrimination in employment violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I’m looking forward to an LGBTQ-friendly administration and political environment. Here’s hoping we can make up some of the ground we lost since 2017, especially for trans people. Holding onto freedom involves knowing and embracing your history. So, because I care about the LGBTQ future, I’ll continue to write fiction that highlights our past.
The Queerest Places 
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