Steven Reigns has been a leader in the world of queer poetry for some time, particularly in Southern California. Reigns served as the first Poet Laureate of West Hollywood and is a nineteen-time recipient of the Los Angeles County Department of Cultural Affairs’ Artist in Residence Grant. He has released a number of works and collections, including A Quilt for David, the result of over ten years of researching the life of David Acer. He curated My Life Is Poetry, spotlighting works from the first-ever autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBT seniors. He continues to inspire through his workshops throughout the nation, catering to LGBTQ youth and those living with HIV. 

His hot-off-the-press recent work, Outliving Michael, is perhaps his most naked piece, turning the lens inward and recounting his intimate friendship with Michael Church, bumps and all. Using the power of poetry, Reigns’ work is a roller coaster of emotions and does not shy away from the details. It is heartbreaking, it is raw, it is funny, it is inspirational, and ultimately is a tale of resilience and friendship, despite the odds. Outliving Michael also serves as a glimpse, from a first-hand perspective, of the AIDS epidemic and what it was like to be a queer youth during the 1990s. Church passed away from AIDS in 2000. Twenty-five years later, Reigns returns to this friendship as if it just happened yesterday. The past and present come together under Reigns’ pen, and the result is a powerful kick to the stomach, an important statement of how strong the queer community is and how the past isn’t really that far away. Regardless of whether you are a reader of poetry, this should be required reading for any queer person. 

Not only do we get to know Church in this piece, and what an important, essential, and vibrant part of Reigns’ life he was, we also get to know Steven, in a more intimate way than we have seen, as he strips down and reveals aspects of his youth, his journey, and his identity, not shying away from the difficult parts. It is a story of friendship that reads as universal. It is a story of a friendship that thrived regardless of a generation gap. We should all be so lucky to have a Church in our lives. Even though Outliving Michael deals with death, it is also a celebration of the queer joy we can find in our community, regardless of what we are going through politically and socially. We will join hands and will overcome. 

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We caught up with Reigns on the heels of his book release party at West Hollywood’s Book Soup and in anticipation of the LGBTQ+ Book Club at the West Hollywood Library discussion taking place at the West Hollywood Library Community Room on Tuesday, October 28th at 6 pm. Reigns talked to us about his relationship with Michael, the power of poetry, and how the book comes at a timely moment. 

What was it about Michael that you instantly gravitated towards when first meeting him?

I heard about Michael before I met him. His drag name was Blanche, and it seemed like most stories about gay life and definitely drag life in Naples invoked his name.  So there was a buzz about him, and he was mythic to me before we even met. 

What did Michael teach you most about life and yourself?

The first time we met up outside of a group was to have drinks at a bar. I had a fake ID, and we drank White Russians, his drink of choice. At some point in the conversation, he said to me, “You’re cute. Make sure you can always back it up,” and proceeded to talk about how young gay men ride on their looks, avoid cultivating interests, or avoid being interesting. I was self-assured enough to chuckle at his comment and reply, “I can.”  I had been around enough to know what he was referencing. Even with such a sharp comment, I saw it as insightful, bold, and quite caring, even though he didn’t know me that well.  It was a warning of what he had seen happen at the bars with younger guys for years.  Though he was known for his wit and sharpness, I felt safe with him. 

What do you want the younger queer generation to understand the most about the AIDS epidemic period? 

AIDS itself is a horrifying disease.  The fact that it greatly impacted communities thought of as lesser (homosexuals, IV drug users) meant a slow government and community response. There was so much silence and silencing. The pandemic of AIDS was around for six years before the President addressed it in a speech. There was the belief that the right people were dying and not deserving of help.  Gay men and those who loved them were experiencing great personal loss and no governmental acknowledgement, funding, or support. A friend of mine had 14 friends die during one summer. That’s how quickly things were happening. Imagine randomly deleting 14 friends in your address book. The queer communities’ response was impressive in fighting back and demanding care and consideration. That kind of mobilizing and organizing is important for us to think of as we move into a future where our community members are under attack. 

You were very young in dealing with Michael’s illness and that loss. Looking back, how would you have handled things differently? Any words of advice for queer youth having to deal with the illness of a loved one?

So many people have a story like mine.  Generally, they are older.  Because of my fake ID, I was socializing with men older than me, and so I was exposed to more AIDS losses than most men my age.  This book is not a hagiography of Michael, but it also doesn’t dwell on his faults or my own. I didn’t feel like those stories were necessary to tell this story of friendship, loss, growth, and survival. So, I didn’t tell the ways in which I was a terrible caregiver.  I was young and later learned so much more about how to care for the sick and dying.  Also, Michael didn’t want me to take care of him. What he really wanted was his independence and privacy. He had dementia in the end. It created this slower, gradual loss, and I wonder if it, in some odd way, made the final loss of Michael easier. He left in bits and pieces. 

You have been integral in working within circles with those affected by HIV/AIDS. What inspired you to get so involved, besides losing Michael? 

I am forever grateful for having Martha Roper as a sex education teacher in St Louis, Missouri. She taught sex without shame, euphemisms, or obscurifications.  She was direct, and that’s what was needed then.  I learned so much, not only about HIV transmission but about sexual communication and dynamics.  That education helped me navigate through the adult world of sex when I wasn’t fully an adult but sought out such experiences.  After Michael died, I worked in the HIV field, educating, testing, and counseling thousands of people about transmission.  Friends were concerned at how I threw myself into that job, but I likened it to a hurricane, in that the calmest part was being in the center of the storm.  

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This is not your typical memoir, being told through poetry. How is sharing Michael’s life most effective in this format? How does telling it in poetry add to the story?

Poetry is the language of our emotions, and so telling such an emotional story, it seemed poetry was the perfect medium to do that. I’m also writing about events that were 25 years ago, poetry can allow jumps in time, omissions of details, and yet still hold the emotional truth of an experience.  

This book is easily accessible to readers who are not used to reading poetry. How did you make it so accessible while still presenting complex and beautifully layered poetry? 

I’m flattered you think so.  I think with most things in the arts, the real skill is to have the labor of the final product be invisible. It’s hard to convey complexity simply. That’s what poetry can demand of the poet. My poetry style is straightforward. I’m not interested in poetry as a riddle or rhyme.  I want readers to feel something, learn something, and gain a different perceptive. 

What do you want readers to walk away with most after reading this book? 

This book moves beyond just my experience; it taps into our universal feelings of loss and grief. I want readers to learn about Michael, about what it was like being gay men in the 90s, but also for them to reflect on their own friendships, mentors, and the impact that friends have on our lives.  My life was enriched and changed by Michael, and I devoted years to writing about this.  I think most of us feel like our friends, those family members of choice, are worthy of such effort and dedication.  I’m pleased I did this for Michael and hope it inspires others to tell their stories about their loved ones. 

‘American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives’
By Robert W. Fieseler

“What’s with Florida?,” Bobby Fieseler, disgusted, asked after completing his initial research into the vicious investigation of suspected homosexual teachers by the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC) in the 1950s. How did the official animus toward all things queer happen in Florida, Fieseler pitched his publisher. We can be grateful Dutton gave him the green light for “American Scare, Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives.” 

Fieseler’s book is a masterpiece of archive activism that begins in a rental van escaping Florida with some 20 boxes of historical documents meant to be seen by no one. The cartons contained a secret second copy of materials that had been held back from the jaws of the Florida State Archives in Tallahassee. Soon, more folders would surface with unredacted materials. “There are friends of Dorothy in any system,” he explains his archival detective work with a wink.

What’s with Florida? In the 1950s, it was all about legislators exposing politically helpless homosexuals to justify the committee’s investigations and budgets. The FLIC documents reveal the names of the accused “perverts,” the cops who raided the restrooms, the terrified queer informants and the professional interview techniques that would extract confessions from the victims. On another level, this was about old-school Southern racists determined to stop integration at all costs with intention to weave lies about Communist infiltration of the NAACP. Finally, Fieseler encountered first-hand an official determination to erase and lock-up this history.  The statewide obsession with erasing history continues to this day. The Florida Department of Transportation this year painted over the community rainbow crosswalk memorial to the Pulse nightclub massacre victims in Orlando.  

 “American Scare” is such a fully documented investigation of what unfolded, it will be impossible to paint over the magnitude of this assault. The book bears witness in gory detail to the ruination of private people that exceeds in pure perniciousness the more famous “Lavender Scare.” Although the “Lavender Scare” purged many more individuals, it was about the U.S. Department of State firing public officials slimed as “pinstripe twerps.” The Florida investigations were a statewide purge using a dark politics of exposure of schoolteachers leading private lives. Fieseler quotes Remus Strickland, the head homo-hunter and executive director of the Southern Association of Intelligence Agents formed in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision (1954), “If the Committee’s first pursuit (race and Communism) was a mandate, its second pursuit (homosexuals) was an opportunity.”  Remus (that’s really this Southerner’s name) explained years later without remorse, “We first looked at the University of Florida for Communists….then we came back and did the homosexual purge.” Fieseler’s archival research reveals how far-right politicians and investigators like Strickland characterized Communists, African Americans (through the NAACP) and homosexuals as aligned “treasonously in a subversive societal infestation.”  

The whole show was the creation of a wily, populist politician — a Florida “Pork Chopper” — Charley Johns, president of the Florida Senate. “Pork Choppers,” the rural, white Northern Florida wing of the old Democratic Party, controlled the state legislature from the 1930s to the 1960s. They were strongly opposed to integration, Communists, homosexuals, reapportionment and government reform. Johns owned the Charley E. Johns Insurance Agency, which insured state agencies. Fieseler’s history brings these North Florida politicians into grotesque focus. Their “power had lynched history,” he writes about his passion to excavate how they sealed and redacted the records so they would never face responsibility for their actions. 

 “American Scare” reveals how these Pork Choppers were willing to crush homosexuals as an instrument to maintain power. Their victims were isolated gay and lesbian teachers who could only plead for mercy, vanish or inform on one another. They were entrapped by the system itself. Fieseler tells the story of how Remus Strickland pulled Miss Poston, a physical education teacher out of her classroom surprising her with a tape recorder and a request to give a misdirecting statement about the prevention of child molestation. Suddenly Remus changed the subject: “Miss Poston, in your acts with Miss Bradshaw whom you referred to on this record, would she play the part of the aggressor…..She was known as the butch is that true?….Was there any occasion of any oral copulation?” He closed in for the kill, “Could there have been more than one time”?  Miss Poston caved, “Possibly but if so only one more time.” The reel-to-reel tape is turning.

Concert pianist and music teacher William James Neal received the same taped grilling.  Remus begins the interview, “You’re an educated Nigra,” confronting Neal with testimony he was a homosexual “nigra.” Years later, Neal remembered, “He told me I would never teach within the continental limits of the United States. He said he had proof I was a homosexual.” An African-American concert pianist, Neal had extensively toured the U.S. playing with major orchestras and hosting his own radio program in Florida. Neal had the self-respect and courage to take his illegal termination to the Florida Supreme Court. In 1962, the court ruled in his favor (Neal v. Bryant) handing Remus Strickland a devastating defeat, writing “The statements accused teachers allegedly made were obviously extracted under a threat of publicity.”  Vindicated, William Neal nonetheless left Florida never to return.

There have been resolutions for an acknowledgment and apology. None have advanced through the Republican-controlled legislature occupied with a slew of “Don’t Say Gay” bills.  “American Scare’ is larger than a small-bore history of investigations. It is the story of a Great Florida Teacher’s Purge launched to stop integration. Fieseler is done with redactions. He names names. If there is anything redemptive in this Southern hot mess, it is this: Bobby Fieseler, a queer historian, rescued the boxes and delivers readers their contents with history’s gale force.

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‘Somebody is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys’
By Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell
c.2025, Hogarth
$30/336 pages

The knee bone’s connected to the shin bone.

You can go up from there, or down your body’s scaffolding. The backbone’s connected to the rib bone. The hip bone to the leg bone, the wrist bone to the finger bones, and in the new book “Somebody is Walking on Your Grave” by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell, there’ll come a day when you won’t need any of them.

She always had an appreciation for cemeteries.

Still, they weren’t an obsession until Mariana Enriquez fell head bone over heel bones in love with a street musician while on a vacation in Italy with her mother. He took Enriquez through a cemetery on their whirlwind romance, which sealed her love for graveyards.

She never seems to miss a chance to tour them, to marvel at the beauty of statuary atop marble resting places, to see tombstones listing sideways, or to note the names and tragedies of the dead. This includes the graves of non-humans, like a horse that helped its owner escape an Argentinian uprising in 1885; and a Scottish dog who guarded his owner’s grave for more than a decade.

Enriquez visited San Sebastián, Spain, and was almost jailed for it; and she was lectured about Aboriginal graves by a white man on Rottnest Island, off the Australian coast. There was a magical sense at Sara Braun Municipal Cemetery in Chile, and an absurd couple of mysteries in Argentina. She visited just some of the 42 cemeteries in New Orleans including, of course, crypts and the grave of Marie Laveau. She spent Dios de Muertos in Mexico, and was surprised that you can live near a funeral home in Savannah and not have ghosts. She visited the catacombs in France, and argued with guides and guards in several different places, noting that people are a lot nicer when they’re dead.

In a very big way, “Somebody is Walking on Your Grave” is a fun travelogue that’s also part memoir, and taphophiles will love it. But readers who specifically add a cemetery tour to their vacation itinerary, or who obsessively scour guidebooks for graveyards to visit will enjoy author Mariana Enriquez’s observations; they’re humorous and not stuffy, lightly acknowledging the bit of the macabre that’s here. She includes history behind the cities she visits, as well as for the cemeteries, and that can be a bit longish sometimes. You may not mind, though, because her descriptions enhance any trip you might make, serving as exactly what you’d want from a real live tour guide.

But toward the end of this otherwise-delightful book, Enriquez unabashedly admits to doing something atrociously unsettling, to which she says she feels no remorse – which may be a hard forgive for readers who wouldn’t ever dream of emulating it.

This book is a fun read, up to that point, so just beware. Most of “Somebody is Walking On Your Grave” is truly interesting, but that one chapter inside here may not fully allow you to wrap your head bone around it.

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‘The Elements’
By John Boyne
c.2025, Henry Holt
$29.99/496 pages

You weren’t proud of it.

Something you did in your past, yesterday, five years ago, a lifetime, you think of it sometimes and poke it like a bad tooth. You’re not proud of it but you paid for it anyhow, with time, money, apologies, or through a jury of your peers and you know this: as in the new novel, “The Elements” by John Boyne, the condemnation is harshest when the jury is you.

She changed her name again.

It was the first thing Willow Hale did when she rented the cottage on an island not far from Dublin. Isolation would help her sort things out: to figure out why her husband was in jail, why her daughter avoided her. Willow didn’t want anyone to recognize her as she came to terms with her role in what happened.

Though he was born with the skills of an athlete, Evan Keogh didn’t want to be a soccer star. He wanted to be an artist after he left the island, but he wasn’t talented enough. Coming to terms with that took a while, and he sold his body to older men to get by in the meantime. When he finally accepted his athleticism, it was not because he loved the game. It was because he loved revenge but satisfying that itch would ruin his life.

Medical students were annoyances that Freya Petrus had to endure.

Though she was a highly regarded burn surgeon, the truth was that she disliked humanity in general, perhaps because of childhood trauma she couldn’t forget. So, teeth gritted, no family, no friends, no close colleagues, she endured people, relying instead on a sordid hobby to soothe her memories.

Rebecca didn’t ask Aaron Umber to bring their son from Australia to Ireland, but there was a reason he did so, though Emmet balked at the trip. Emmet was at a tender age, not an adult but not a child anymore, either – 14, the same age as when something happened to Aaron that affected him forever.

Where to begin?

How about: “The Elements” is an incredible book.

How about from the very beginning of it, you’ll be captured by what feels like “The Twilight Zone” without the paranormal; like reading the news, and wincing.

Here, the lush Irish background that author John Boyne so lovingly portrays is secondary to his characters, each of them flawed, maybe irretrievably so, as they wrestle with culpability and self-indulgent recognition of the past. You’ll dangle from a string as four intertwined tales eke out in a delicious tease, detonating a little TNT on a page every now and then to keep you on the edge of your chair.

No spoilers here but the end of these four stories isn’t quite really an end, which will leave you flabbergasted, staring at the back cover for a few minutes after you close it.

Beware that there are adult themes inside this book, and they could be triggering. If that’s not a worry, let yourself be stunned by “The Elements.”

Love it? Guilty.

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Richard E. Cytowic, neurology professor at George Washington University, has written a memoir, “The Magician’s Accomplice: My Father and I in the Age of Anxiety,” about his complicated relationship with his father, Edmund R. Cytowic. “Big Ed,” also a doctor, was a larger-than-life figure who molded his family into a perfect image while hiding his drinking and drug use. In an interview edited for clarity, Dr. Cytowic spoke about magic as metaphor, memories, and gay life in D.C.

BLADE: What was your inspiration for writing this memoir? 

RICHARD CYTOWIC: It was something I felt I had to do. If I didn’t write it, I would go crazy. And it’s taken me about 10 years. It’s gone through many iterations. The first version started with my first day at Duke and had a dual narrative with myself as a young man, stumbling about making mistakes, and the older, wiser neurologist looking back on his younger self and commenting on it. That didn’t work out, but I realized the story was really about my father and me and our dynamic, how he shaped me to be just like him. At the time, I didn’t realize, because, when you’re too close to the material, you can’t see it for what it is. My sister’s observation in the memoir’s opening line, “Come hell or high water, you were going to be a doctor like him,” captures all my memories of him. And I am, I was.

BLADE: The interpretations you give some of your memories are striking. For instance, your family dancing onstage at a Liberace concert. From the outside it feels charming, yet there’s pain there.

CYTOWIC: It is an amusing anecdote. But it’s also sad because it shows we were all performers. We got up on stage effortlessly, we all knew our lines. We knew what to do, how to pose in front of 4,000 people, because we were Big Ed’s puppets for many years. And we just thought it was quite natural to perform because we had been doing this all our lives. 

BLADE: It’s striking how in that moment you saw yourself becoming a monster like your father, trying to be the center of attention. You told Liberace, “I have a piece ready to play if you want.”

CYTOWIC: And he said, “This is my show, Richard.” He saw that even at 10 years old, I was trying to take over the center stage. But that’s what we were taught. We were supposed to shine and perform and just be charming, in a way that made us totally false. My impetus for this memoir was to try to understand Big Ed. For stories like this where you have an alcoholic father out of control, it’s so easy for everybody to say, “Oh, my God, I hate him, I can’t stand him.” What I call “You son of a bitch, look what you did to me” stories, those are the easiest stories in the world to tell. But it doesn’t tell anything about the monster, so you have to ask: Was the monster hurt or lonely? Why did he act that way? What made him the way he was? Was there some original wound that he was acting out on himself? So, in the end, instead of a “You son of a bitch” story, it’s really a love story to Big Ed, trying to show some compassion to him and understanding what sort of creature he was.

BLADE: At one point you describe him as high camp. I wonder if you if you ever thought that he might have been gay or bisexual, if deeply closeted? 

CYTOWIC: I wonder that too. I don’t have any proof one way or the other, but he certainly was sexually very outspoken. He had all those nude orgy parties and took pictures all the time. I’m sure that goes on all the time now in D.C., but back then, it must have been very unusual. The fact that he could convince people to take part in all that, have them dress up in costumes and pose for pictures, you just have to laugh and think, wow, what a force of nature he was. And mentioning camp, he was camp in the sense of Susan Sontag’s definition, which is a singular incandescent figure who is one thing, an exaggeration, and that was him. He instilled in me a taste for the offbeat and the unusual. If something was normal, I wasn’t interested, but if it was a little off, that was attractive. 

BLADE: You mention being drawn to camp figures like Auntie Mame and Liberace. 

CYTOWIC: When I saw “Auntie Mame” at Radio City Music Hall, I was in the first grade, so I was five years old. I loved that movie so much because all that craziness was so familiar. Patrick making drinks in the morning, I did that. And my classmates and peers didn’t do anything like that, though it took a while to realize what an unusual life we were living, my mother, sister, and I with Big Ed. 

BLADE: The theme of magic and magic tricks runs through the book, which connects so much of life with your father and even your life outside. 

CYTOWIC: Magic is a real through line, because two things were prominent with Big Ed. One was the cameras. He had tons of cameras, and the other was the magic, which he did constantly. So would I. When we went to the lake in the summer, I would entertain neighbors and guests by putting on a big magic show. I even made up my own trick. As I say, magic is about telling people you’re going to fool them and then fooling them. Having them know what they’re seeing isn’t possible, and yet they believe it.

BLADE: It feels like such a perfect metaphor for your family. 

CYTOWIC: It’s the spectator’s ability to hold two different, contradictory perspectives at the same time. That’s what we did. On the outside, we were a lovely family, everybody would compliment us when we went out to dinner. Back then, with children in restaurants, everybody said, “Oh my god, they’re going to start screaming and running around,” and we were the opposite. My sister and I were dressed up, I had a little coat and clip-on tie. We cleaned our plates, which my father really liked. And then people would come over and compliment my parents on what lovely children they had. Even the proprietor would say, “Doc, your kids are welcome here anytime.” We went against expectations. Here’s this picture perfect little family, so sweet and lovable, and yet behind the scenes, it was absolute chaos. That was the magic, the illusion that we were this lovely family on the surface, while behind the scenes, all hell was breaking loose. 

My sister to this day still hates my father. Every time we talk about him, she says, “I hated him. I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough.” She’s frozen in her perspective, and I went instead and looked, to find out who he was, what made him kick? Why was he this way? How did he make me the way I am? And how did I emerge with my own personality? Also, in turning away from the “You son of a bitch” kind of approach and moving to one of trying to understand him, that’s the magic trick that that brings him back, like the dove that’s hidden, and then you produce some silk scarves and, abracadabra, the dove reappears again, all whole. 

BLADE: Your descriptions of gay life in D.C. during the ‘80s are fascinating. What’s been the biggest change in that world nowadays? 

CYTOWIC: When I came to D.C., you really couldn’t be out in a broad sort of way. So you cultivated a circle of friends, you learned to entertain and throw parties, you did fabulous things. There was a lot more cohesiveness in this world because we all protected one another. I was out but I didn’t make a big deal of it. And it was only when I interviewed for the position of chief resident of Neurology at GW, that it became well-known. I kept meeting people through the process, including David, a psychiatrist who was training to get his neurology certification. I went to his place and talked some more and felt so comfortable talking to him. He mentioned he and the woman he was seeing were going out that night and asked, “You want me to get a date for you?” I said, “Well, David, that’s very nice. Thank you, but I’m gay.” I didn’t realize that he would tell everybody so that when I finally accepted the job and showed up, everybody knew already that I was gay. It helped that there was a physician, an assistant Dean, in the department who was also gay. So we were naturally sympathetic to one another and he was very helpful. It really helped, too, that GW was, and still is, the gayest medical school in the country. If a student at another medical school had problems because he was gay, being bullied, he would transfer to GW. It became a magnet for medical students all over the country. Also, I remember thinking, I’m six blocks from the White House. It doesn’t get any better. At that time, D.C. was a very gay city, so it was easy to make friends and pick up tricks or whatever I wanted to do. 

The cell phone has ruined so much because you can’t get people to commit to anything. Instead of saying, “Let’s have dinner next Tuesday at 7:30,” they say, “Well, I don’t know what I might be doing. Something better might come along.” I don’t how people socialize anymore because it’s all so last minute. It drives me crazy. I used to throw sex parties in the ‘90s. I called them “office parties” because they were in my office. I took over from a group that socialized first, starting with drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and then they announced, “time to take off your clothes.” And I said, “No, you cannot mix a social setting with a sexual setting. It doesn’t work like that.” I took over, and set strict rules, one being, everybody arrives at the same time. You’ve got to be here between 8 and 8:15, or else the door is locked, and you’re not getting in. Because so many other parties had people showing up two hours after it started, when things got hot. If you make things hot from the get go, then everybody has a really good time. Now, I don’t know what people do. I’m out of the loop. My orgy days are over. 

BLADE: What do you hope readers will take away from “The Magician’s Accomplice?” 

CYTOWIC: How to be yourself. I learned how to be myself and not be at the mercy of other people’s expectations. I developed the attitude of, I don’t care what other people think, because their opinion doesn’t affect me one way or the other. So when I write something, I’m not trying to prove a point or convince people. I say, “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I’ve been through. Take a look if you find it useful.” Maybe my experiences will help you.  

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‘Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation’
By Bitter Kalli
c.2025, Amistad
$22/192 pages

One thousand, two hundred pounds and four legs.

Put that between your knees and you’ll find out what real horsepower is. You’re five feet off the ground, moving as fast as a car on a downtown street, hooves pounding as hard as your heart. Dangerous? Maybe. But as you’ll see in “Mounted” by Bitter Kalli, your ancestors did it and so can you.

When they were a young child, “around the age of six or seven,” someone gave Bitter Kalli a set of “pony books,” the kind that appeal to young girls, mostly white ones. Kalli wasn’t entirely comfortable identifying as a girl then but they adored the books, in part because the stories featured the kinds of friendships and acceptance Kalli wanted. After devouring those stories, they begged their parents for riding lessons from a nearby Brooklyn stable.

Fast forward to 2014, when Kalli was 17 years old, an experienced equestrian, a trans individual, and a protester at college. During that protest, they watched the horses that carried the police, and wondered what those animals saw in the crowd.

For that matter, what did horses see throughout Black history?

In times of slavery, it was not uncommon for fleeing slaves to steal a horse or two to get away faster. Kalli shares heart-pounding tales of escape, sharing examples of how human chattel was often compared to that of equines in newspaper ads, as slaveholders mourned the latter loss much deeper than the former.

Many Americans are unaware of the rich contributions that African Americans made to the settling of the West. Kalli examines a popular movie, deconstructing it and adding real history to the Hollywood tale.

“What we know as the Wild West would not exist without the 182,000 enslaved people living in Texas in 1860…” they say.

Horses are featured in many of the world’s religions. Horsey language lends itself to the erotic. Even, says Kalli, “Black and brown youth in Brooklyn” understood the appeal of a good-looking Polo pony…

Take a good study of the cover of “Mounted.” Appreciate the artwork, notice the design. Then add this book to your “Things I Never Really Thought About” list, because you’ll think about it now. And you’re going to want to read every delicious word.

Horses have been hiding in plain sight in Black history for centuries, but author Bitter Kalli pulls them to the forefront, turning each facet of the subject over for deeper examination and additional thought. Happily, you won’t feel forced to do that; their writing comes across like an invitation to a warm, intimate conversation, the kind you get while casually hanging out with a new group of friends on the patio. What you learn is highly intriguing, and you won’t ever see horses in the same way again.

Beware that this book has one explicit chapter inside, but it fits the narrative and you won’t mind. You’ll be too busy enjoying what you read and wanting more. For horse lovers and history lovers alike, “Mounted” is the perfect ride.

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‘Hotshot: A Life on Fire’
By River Selby
c.2025, Atlantic Monthly Press
$27/326 pages

How you doing?

Everything good? You need anything, something to drink, a plate of food, a hug, just say the word. If you’re here, you should at least be happy about it. As in the new book “Hotshot” by River Selby, there’s a problem if something’s wrong.

River Selby never set out to be a hotshot firefighter.

They never set out to do anything, in fact, but to stay alive while doing drugs, selling sex for food and money, working as a stripper and a waitress, and living for a time with a man under a bridge. It wasn’t the life they imagined when they became a runaway as a tweenager. Fighting fires was never on the radar until too many losses and an “unraveled” life, bulimia, and a series of fast-food jobs sent them into a deep depression. The suggestion from a friend, a lifeline thrown, made Selby realize that they “would have tried anything.”

“A week later,” they said, “I was hired. Two weeks after that I was on my way to New Mexico for my first fire assignment.”

Quickly and clearly, a big goal became apparent: Selby wanted to be a hotshot, to feel the “reverence” and camaraderie that elite firefighters enjoy, to know the excitement of chasing a raging fire – but they were told, “You can’t be a hotshot. You’re a girl.”

Two years later, the dream was realized after all when they were hired as “the first woman” of a hotshot crew, a fact of which the supervisor reminded Selby constantly. Sexual harassment and constant put-downs instantly became on-the-job concerns, none of which could be reported for fear of reprisals. That intensified Selby’s bulimia, sending them on an emotional tailspin, unsure of themselves and the root of the anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

They sought therapy – and things again became clear.

“If you really believe that about yourself,” a therapist told them, “then someone taught you to believe it.”

In the past few months, there have been a lot of new memoirs about fighting fires, each as timely as the last. In the midst of them comes “Hotshot,” which is absolutely not a made-for-TV book. It’s different.

Yes, you’ll find some danger inside here and some edge-of-your-seat pages but mostly, fires aren’t all that need fighting in author River Selby’s account. From the opening pages, they plainly let readers know that their back story isn’t what you might expect from someone in a gutsy profession; in fact, this memoir might instead change your definition of “gutsy” as the actual fires they battled take somewhat of a back seat. In the fiery wake of #MeToo, that can get squirmy but Selby’s stories from history, ecology, and geology make great ballast.

This is a worthy book for adventurers, and for readers who wonder what it’s like for a nonbinary person in a deeply swaggering world. “Hotshot” may rankle you, it may inspire you, it may open your eyes to your own soul, so find it and read. With this book, you’ll love doing it.

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‘Just Good Manners’
By William Hanson
c.2025, Gallery Books
$28.99/272 pages

So. Many. Forks.

You’re glad you’re not doing the dishes at the end of this dinner – but in the meantime, what’s protocol? If this event wasn’t a make-or-break, filled-with-repercussions kind of deal for you, you wouldn’t care; you’d use one fork, one spoon, and enjoy your meal, thank you. So please pass the salt and the new book “Just Good Manners” by William Hanson.

Dining at a restaurant not long ago, Hanson noticed a glaring difference between how his fellow Brits order a meal, and how Americans do it. We might share a language, he says, and we’re a lot alike but we’re also different in many ways. Manners are one of them.

It may seem that formal manners are archaic, even quaint, but Hanson says that they’re needed now more than ever. Manners help smooth social transactions. They leave room for grace in many situations, and they help put people at ease.

“Contemporary etiquette,” he says, “is rooted in six key principles.”

Humility is what ensures that everyone at your meeting or dinner is comfortable, not just you. Hospitality welcomes everyone to the table. Knowing one’s rank shows respect. Says Hanson, “politeness takes patience” and humor, as manners evolve. And although it sounds counter-intuitive, manners are somewhat based on passive-aggressiveness, which helps you be direct, but not too much.

Here, you’ll learn how to deal with introductions in different situations and what to do with a pronoun faux pas. You’ll see that merely greeting someone can be fraught with danger, so be sure you know who’s who before you enter a room. Learn to avoid five “taboo” topics when engaging in small talk. If you’re interrupted, know how to kindly gain control of a conversation again. Find out how the use of slang tells a listener who you really are. Know how to be a good guest, and the kind of host people appreciate.

And yes, you’ll learn about those many, many forks.

You do not live in a bubble. You don’t work in one, either, and smoothing ruffled feathers is needed more than ever in today’s world so maybe it’s time to learn how to do that from a very unruffled source. With “Just Good Manners,” it could even set you apart.

Indeed, author William Hanson makes a case for politeness-as-diplomacy here, in a book that’s very Brit-centric but that includes anecdotes about disastrous situations in other countries. Tales like those are fun to read, in a Schadenfreude way, but they also illustrate why it’s essential to understand other cultures in business settings as well as in many casual events. If that sounds daunting, rest assured that Hanson uses his own advice, putting readers at ease with humor and charm and by taking the scariness out of manners by making them an easy, maybe even enjoyable, challenge.

You won’t feel scolded when you read “Just Good Manners,” but you will learn enough to be someone people want around. It’ll give you confidence. Before your next big event, it’ll give you something to chew on.

‘Judy Garland: The Voice of MGM’
By Scott Brogan
c.2025, Lyons Press
$65/405 pages

The monkeys used to scare you a lot.

The Wicked Witch was one thing but those flying simians with their booming voices? Ugh, they gave you nightmares for weeks. And despite that you knew how things would end – you’d seen the movie annually, for heaven’s sake – let’s just say you spent a lot of time covering your eyes. So now be like a Lion. Get uncowardly and find “Judy Garland: The Voice of MGM” by Scott Brogan.

When most people think about Judy Garland, two images come to mind: the teenager in pigtails or “The one-dimensional image of an always suffering and always tragic Garland.” Neither one, says Brogan, is totally correct. In reality, Garland was “positive, joyful, and funny.”

Her parents, Ethel and Frank Gumm, were performers who moved their little family around Michigan and Wisconsin before landing in Grand Rapids, Minn., where their youngest child, Frances, was born in 1922. An adorable baby, little Frances loved an audience almost from the time she could walk; her parents happily added her to the family troupe.

In 1926, the Gumms performed their way across the country to Los Angeles, where Frances and her sisters appeared in many shows, but critics were not entirely impressed. Still, Ethel pushed and the girls toured with Paramount Circuit in the northwest, and then in Chicago in 1934 where Frances had “one of [her] biggest career milestones.”

By 1935, she was formally using the name “Judy Garland” onstage and she’d secured informal representation. That same year, she signed a contract with MGM, a studio that took a near-total control it “would exert over Garland’s personal life” and her schedule, denying her wish to be with her father at the end of his life and dictating what she ate or didn’t eat.

Still, says Brogan, their methods worked: by the time Garland was 20 years old, her “career seemed to know no limits.”

Page through “Judy Garland: The Voice of MGM” and you’ll instantly know that you’re in for a treat: this book is loaded with photos, stills, publicity shots, and newspaper recreations. There’s a lot to look at here, but what there is to read is better.

Author Scott Brogan makes Judy Garland his raison d’ȇtre in this book, but it’s not entirely all about her. Brogan shares an overview of the movie studio that made her famous, including what is arguably her most top-of-mind film, the gossip that surrounded it then, and the mythology that still lives on. There’s a comprehensive list of World War II-era appearances that Garland made, and what happened at each one. If you’re expecting dirt-dishing, you’ll read about her father’s secret, her marriages, and her addictions, but not in an over-the-top scandalous way. Brogan is factual, inclusive, and respectful, just as you’d want.

If you’re planning on having guests soon, put “Judy Garland: The Voice of MGM” away or your guests will want to read, rather than mingle. It’s the kind of coffee-table book that, for fans, will make you Get Happy.

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‘Passionate Outlier: Gay Writers and Allies on Their Work’
By Frank Pizzoli
c.2025, Rebel Satori Press
$18.95/246 pages

“Passionate Outlier” is a collection of 20 interviews and book reviews by freelance journalist Frank Pizzoli, covering gay authors, with one lesbian and one ally. Ranging from 2007 to 2019, Pizzoli talks with authors like Edmund White, John Rechy, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Salman Rushdie, and covers books about Gore Vidal and Christopher Isherwood. He captures great writers speaking about literature, politics, and gay life, while providing all necessary background on them.

Sadly, two of Pizzoli’s subjects, Edmund White and Felice Picano, have passed away since the book’s publication. Both writers were part of the “Violet Quill” a group of New York gay authors that met in the early ‘80s. Pizzoli interviews the then three surviving members, White, Picano, and Andrew Holleran. They speak at length about the history of the group and its myth. They only met eight times from 1980 to 1981, divvying up subject matter among them, and as they mention, writing is mainly a solitary activity. Yet the idea of the group endures as helping shape gay literature as a serious genre, not just “pornography” as it was previously considered. They also discuss White’s passionate argument with a critic over the very idea of gay literature; White believed in it, while the critic fiercely thought it was impossible. White also mentions that the harshest reviews of his work came from other gay men. Indeed, he responds to criticism from other authors included in this book, such as Daniel Mendelsohn and Christopher Bram. This back and forth throughout makes the book feel like an extended conversation between several writers.

Gore Vidal also serves as a connecting thread. Although he died before Pizzoli could interview him, his presence is greatly felt in many pieces. A review of Michael Mewshaw’s memoir of his friendship with Vidal, and an interview with Vidal’s official biographer Jay Parini show Vidal’s “thin skin,” drunken conversations, and litigiousness; he threatened to sue White over a play that imagined conversations between a Vidal-like figure and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Christopher Bram, author of “Eminent Outlaws,” a history of gay writers, discusses Vidal’s intense rivalry with Truman Capote. Vidal’s works were deeply researched, but Capote was the more natural writer. Others talk about how his longtime partner Howard Austen was the only one who could get him to “shut up” when he was misbehaving.

Pizzoli allows the authors to reveal themselves in conversation. John Rechy, famous for his debut novel about male hustlers, “City of Night,” was Mexican-American but light-skinned enough to pass; a teacher changed his name from Jose to John. “City of Night” came from letters he wrote friends, which he sent to a magazine as the beginning of a novel, which forced him to write. He felt like writing the novel was betraying the secrets of the hustlers, prostitutes, and customers he knew so well.

Scholar, playwright, and novelist Martin Duberman discusses the political history of the gay rights movement and its connections with similar struggles, arguing that the Black Movement’s embrace of their difference helped gay people accept that they were not “inferior” to straight people. He wonders if marriage equality will lead to gays accepting government wrongdoing, because protesting would show “ingratitude.”

A surprising interview is Salman Rushdie, whose novel “The Golden House” has a character struggling with gender identity. He carefully researched the subject and spoke with friends to get it right. With thoughtful questions and reflective responses, “Passionate Outlier” shows the talent, diversity, and interconnectedness among gay authors.

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