Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues - Posts Tagged "lgbt"

After a quarter of a century, my 5,000-word story Mixing Tracks, written for an undergraduate fiction class at Harvard, is coming out as a chapbook! Mixing Tracks won the 2008 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award for LGBT writers and is now available on their website at http://elizabethsimson.com/gertrudepr....

Why did it take until 2007 for the story to get published, when guest edgy editor Peggy Munson (author of Origami Striptease) picked it up for Suspect Thoughts? Was it that it was written by a woman from the point of view of a man who is in love with another man? Was it that the adult male protagonist has the hots for a youth who may or may not be under-age? Was it that the seventeenth submission really is the charm?

Whether you want this 22-page book as one-handed reading, proof that persistence pays off, or so you can claim you have read it before you try to get it banned from your local library, don't wait. Fewer than a hundred copies are still available at http://elizabethsimson.com/gertrudepr... for the low, low price of $8.00. They'll make great stocking stuffers or party favors -- if you live in the Castro.

I awoke this morning to find that Elisa Rolle, an Italian reviewer of LGBT writing, was running a poll on Live Journal for the Rainbow Awards, and that my poetry chapbook THE UNDERWATER HOSPITAL was in the running in the Bisexual Poetry category. If you have a Live Journal account and you liked THE UNDERWATER HOSPITAL, please vote for it at http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/80....

If you don't have a Live Journal account, you can still leave a comment in support of the books you like. All categories are listed at http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/81....

Dear Friends,

I'm thankful for what health I have, for my family, husband and you, my friends. I'm grateful that so many things still get me excited. This morning it's the fact that my poem "Tom's Quality of Light" is one of six nominees for the Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest. The quality of the other poems nominated is very high. Please read them all and vote at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2....

In other news, my poetry chapbook THE UNDERWATER HOSPITAL won Phases One and Two (the "popularity contest" part) of the Rainbow Awards for LGBT books, thanks to your votes, my friends. I'm grateful for that, too! It is now being considered by a jury of LGBT writers for the final award. Results should be out by mid-December.

My poem "Water and Salt" will be coming out soon in The Crazy Child Scribbler, while four poems were just accepted by Full of Crow's poetry editor MK Chavez.

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving, and hoping you also have many things for which to feel thankful.

Warmly,
Jan

WOW! What a National Poetry Month it's been. Started out reading a friendly acquaintance's poem at his memorial -- a very moving and beautiful day. Had a three-reading weekend when I read at The Poetry Zone at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Santa Barbara, then got to hear host Suzanne Frost read in two more readings at the California Arts Forum and the Mission Poetry Series, both of which were excellent. Heard poet Michael C. Ford of Los Angeles at the Mission reading -- what a force he is!

Enjoyed reading with Jeanne Wagner at Expressions Gallery in Berkeley on Friday night-- the open mic was just as exciting as the features, with my publisher Bruce Isaacson putting in an appearance with his son Alan Isaacson -- both very fine poets and performers. Co-feature Jeanne Wagner's poetry made fireworks go off behind my eyelids.

Last night was the high point for me -- the Lambda Literary Finalists reading at the San Francisco Public Library. I got to meet Daphne Gottlieb, whom I've admired from afar for years. Her reading about her mother's dying was very moving. Also got to hear my friend Christina Hutchins read from her new book *The Stranger Dissolves* (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2011). I was scared to follow both of them, but I felt my poetry was well received. Such a wonderful, energizing event! Enjoyed meeting the other SF finalists as well as Ellery Washington(Lambda Literary Foundation Board Member), Tony Valenzuela (Executive Director of Lambda) and Karen Sundheim (Program Manager for the San Francisco Public Library). Everyone was so kind, and the event was so well executed.

Now I get to rest a bit before going to my friends Judy Wells and Dale Jensen's 10th Anniversary Reading at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts this Saturday evening in Alameda. If you live in the SF Bay Area, this is one reading not to miss.

I'll be one of several readers on May 12 at Works in Progress, a women's reading in the Piedmont neighborhood of Oakland. Irina Rivkin will be singing her wonderful Russian lesbian looping folk-rock. Write me for details if you're a woman in the SF Bay Area and you want to go. So much great queer energy! Reminds me why I moved back here.

After that, it's off to New York City the first week in June, where I'll visit the Ginsberg estate offices, read in Bi Lines at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village with the other Bi finalists for the Lammies on June 3, and attend the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony at the Graduate Center, CUNY, on June 4. Heavens. What does one wear to the Oscars of LGBT writing?

I'm reading Sunday, 11/24/13 2-4 PM at the Northern California Reunion of the Whitman-Stein Poetry Festival hosted by Ron Alexander at AWE GALLERY, 678 Portola Drive, San Francisco, CA next to the purple church. These eight poets will each read a poem from a well-known LGBT poet and a few poems of our own: Jan Steckel, Kit Kennedy, Tobey Kaplan, Glen Ingersoll, Marc Hofstadter, Giovanna Capone, Paul Fericano, and Nixson Borah. Hope to see some of you there!