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Supervillainz
One night in Boston, transgendered twenty-something friends Bit and Devon witness the death of a superhero, a man inside an exoskeleton, and escape with his helmet. As if life as trannies isn't difficult enough for them, they are pursued into hiding by the super's brothers, who believe Bit is responsible for the murder. Bit is kidnapped but released when the true murderer is found, in exchange for the helmet. In the process, she and her friends learn the true reason for the development of the exoskeletons, and their very ordinary creators. Infighting amongst the queers erupts when they realize they must deal with their evolving identities, old girlfriends, and scarce resources. The struggle between the queers and supers comes to a head at a rally in which each side attempts to discredit each other, and it all comes down to a face-off between Devon and the CEO/lead superhero, while the entire queer community watches. Read an excerpt here.
Origami Striptease
Origami Striptease is a magical realist, mostly-iambic love story between a writer and an enigmatic wanderer named Jack. The speaker of the novel is a feisty journalist of tell-all porn who seduces borderland boys--trannies, butches, and daddies--and doesn't know how quickly she will inhabit the margins she writes about. A sadistic injury inflicted by a semi-famous rock star named The Sludge pushes her into the hermetic world of illness, where she first encounters Jack, who suffers from a mysterious heart condition that piques her interest. They have a torrid, troubled affair that begins to unravel when Jack develops a bizarre obsession with ice cubes, ice sculptures, and Greenland. When Jack leaves, the despondent writer invites The Sludge back into her life, hoping to buy redemption. The two explore various mythologies of forgiveness and compassion that result in tragic consequences. Finally, love is stripped down to its component parts--the surreal explorations of the mind, expectations of boys and girls, the essential rhythms that underpin expression, and the pathogenesis of damage--and the characters mine meaning out of their broken bodies. Read an excerpt here.
The Adventures of Aimee and Maya
When teenagers Aimée and Trish--13 and 11--lose their mother to cancer, their eccentric Aunt Maya, who they have never met and barely heard of, drives them cross-country from their home in Bay City, Michigan to hers in Oakland, California. Along the way, the trio encounters characters who bring Aimée closer to her aunt and push Trish further away. After bearing the brunt of her mother's two-year illness, Aimée is happy to let someone else take control. Trish, who wasn't as prepared for her mother's death, rejects her aunt. In Oakland, Trish finds what she had in Bay City--church, friends, and adoring teachers--while Aimée, used to being friendless, spends her time considering what it means to be abandoned (quite literally by her father, more figuratively by her mother) and adopted (both by her aunt and a series of friends). Slowly, she thaws enough to love her uniqueness and to share love with others. Both outsiders--Maya as the black girl in a white family, and Aimée as a lesbian in a conservative Christian family--the pair begins a series of adventures that ends with them realizing the fluidity of sexual identity. Read an excerpt here.
Star of Persia, A Post Queer Love Story
Cherie is a 23-year-old baby butch living in Berkeley, nursing the wounds of a stale break-up. She's shaken from her rut when 17-year-old Japanese-American metrosexual Martin rides into her life on a cherry red Schwinn cruiser, bearing clove cigarettes and hash. Martin becomes Cherie's partner in crime as they eat fried food, watch trashy TV, and go on a quest to find the biggest dildo in California. Martin is secretly smitten by Cherie's androgynous wit, but daunted by barriers of age and gender. It takes a pilgrimage to the Liberace Museum in Vegas for Cherie to realize she reciprocates his feelings, but with Cherie's ex-girlfriend back in the picture and Martin's plans to move to New York for school, it might be too late. They are both forced to re-examine their preconceived notions of sexuality and gender in order to save their friendship and create a relationship that transcends labels. Read an excerpt here.
Sistine Faces
In its most preposterous denial of the obvious since Galileo's astronomy, the Catholic Church continues to ignore the blatant homoeroticism of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Yet the single most powerful Renaissance sacred painting not only writhes with beautiful naked men, it presents an Eve clutching the hand of a woman temptress. In the doctrines of medieval Catholicism, flesh is a dangerous thing. In the emergence of humanism, so also is the mind. Michelangelo struggles with both. Adrianna Borgia, survivor of the Borgia court, presents Michelangelo with the greatest temptations of his life while struggling herself with forbidden desires and heresies. Her growing passion for the painter Raphaela Bramante mirrors the sculptor's damnable interest in a castrato in the Sistine choir and in the ideas of secular humanism. In the corrupt world of Renaissance Rome at the brink of Protestantism, four troubled lives entangle, damage and elevate each other, and together finally give rise to Michelangelo's stunning frescos. Claimed as the epitome of Christian inspiration, the ceiling is revealed as a coup of erotic art upon religion, a testament in the very heart of the Church to thought, not dogma, and to a love which throughout history could bring torturous death. Read an excerpt here.
Nancy's Boy
Enoch Jones, "lost and found" attendant at Toronto's Union Station, has recently returned to the city from Birmingham, England. It's May 1999. After a month spent clearing his widowed mother's house--and avoiding her funeral--he discovers that his twenty-something Brazilian lover, Adão, has stripped their apartment to its bare bones; and disappeared. As Enoch prepares to do his weekly drag act at a local Latin nightclub, he recalls the events and memories that have dominated his four solitary weeks in the grimy Midlands city: his childhood arrest and incarceration for violent petty theft; his search for a birth-mother when he lived briefly in Franco's Spain; his painful struggle for a sexual identity and for a country to live in. As for Adao? You'll find out.
Read an excerpt here.
Read more about the contest at the Project: QueerLit website.
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