Last night my friend Robert Howes ran a “celebration of gay and lesbian literature” at Hydra Books. We got a decent crowd, and some excellent material was read. It seems that the gay boys are all heavily into Cavafy, and having now heard some of his poetry I can see why.

Of course I chose a bunch of SF&F. I thought you might be interested to know what I read from (with links to the bookstore where appropriate):

• Poems from Songs for the Devil & Death, Hal Duncan (Papaveria)
• “Counterbalance” by Ruth Sorrell from Hellebore & Rue, edited by Catherine Lundoff & JoSelle Vanderhooft (Lethe)
• Editor Joseph R.G. DeMarco’s introduction to A Study In Lavender, which explains the evidence for Holmes being gay (Lethe)
• Ellen Kushner’s “The Children of Cadmus” from Heiresses of Russ 2011, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft & Steve Berman (Lethe)
• The opening chapter of Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Spectra)

I chose a bunch of Lethe books because the store actually had them in stock. Hopefully they sold one or two as a result. I’d not heard of Sorrell before, and was impressed. Ellen’s story was also new to me, and it was awesome, but you guessed that didn’t you? Heiresses of Russ 2011 is currently on sale at just £2.99 in the store, and is well worth it.

Tomorrow night I get to host a talk by the fabulous trans journalist, Juliet Jacques. That should be a great evening. Do come along if you are in Bristol.