Esteemed Gertrude guest editor for our upcoming Gayest Issue Ever, author and performer Jillian Lauren (Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, 2010) has landed a #10 spot on the New York Times Bestseller list for nonfiction. Congratulations, Jillian! Since her book launched in April, Jillian has been interviewed on the View, Good Morning America, Howard Stern (of course) and just finished a fabulous book tour, which included her reading here at Powell's in Portland, Ore., home of Gertrude (pictured).

On June 11, Jillian will participate in the Literary Death Match as a part of Litquake in San Francisco, representing Gertrude. Go Jillian!!

Gerard Sarnat, whose poem "Bags of Hormones with Car Keys" appeared in Issue 13 of Gertrude has published his first book, Homeless Chronicles: from Abraham to Burning Man from California Institute of Arts and Letters, released spring 2010. Dr. Sarnatis the great-great grandson of Jacob Ben Isaac Gesundheit, the High Rabbi of Warsaw, and shtetl lowlifes, Nahum Z. and Yente Liebe Sarnatzky. He is a father of three, grandpa to two, and has been married over forty years.. His book has received praise from many including poet Phyllis Koestenbaum, author of Doris Day and Kitschy Melodies among other poetry collections: "Gerry Sarnat's tough, witty, language-obsessed poems are both a post- holocaust reconstruction of his family's history and a progression towards a declaration of his own intention. In his seventh decade, after a medical career that included doctoring the homeless, the poet declares: "I must give birth." I admire the skill of the poetry-often as precise as a diagnosis-as well as his labor-like decision. The poems may be unsentimental but they are also, importantly, emotional."

Congratulations, Gerry!

Henry Alley, 2006 Fiction Chapbook winner and author whose story "Tame" appears in Issue 14 of Gertrude has published a novel through Inkwater Press. Precincts of Light explores the Measure Nine crisis in Oregon (early 1990s), when gay and lesbian people were threatened with being made silent. 

In the book, a brother and sister, both newly out, try to recover the lost affections of their children.  Their combined quests are explored from five points of view in a novel of continuously rich and poetic language. 

The book dramatizes the voices of Joanne,  poet and mother, Harold, minister and father, Appleton, retired law professor and grandfather, Eleanor, collectibles broker and grandmother, and Samuel, politician, father and secret member of the homophobic Oregon Protection Alliance.  The novel thus explores diversity, the possibilities of a potentially peaceable kingdom--the precincts of light.  The characters move, each in his or her own faltering way, toward fighting not only intolerance toward gay and lesbian people but toward anyone who might be considered different.  It is the story of the American Family coming to new terms with itself after many shocks and surprises and affirming, ultimately, its own immense flexibility.

Congratulations, Henry!