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Lambda Lit Lights Up P-Town

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      Sharpen your pencils, students and would-be queer novelists and scribblers. Buy new pens, and charge up your laptop batteries. The famed Lambda Literary Festival is lighting up Provincetown, the gay capital of the Northeast the second weekend of October.
      And, of course, all the literary high- and low-lights will be there, including Edmund White (Art of Biography), Andrew Holleran (who just got a second place award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists’ Association), Nancy Bereano (Fate of Gay & Lesbian Book Stores), Maureen Brady (Short Story to Novel), Samuel Delany and Cecelia Tan (GLBT Genre Fiction), Leslea Newman (Getting Your First Book Published), Minnie Bruce Pratt (Poetry), and Karla Jay (GLBT Memoirs), among many others.
      Most of these authors are signed up for more than one workshop, but there’s the flavor of the thing. Plus, scriptwriting for television, lots of master classes (including how to promote your writing), Southern gay writing, writing for change, readings, poetry slams, musical events, fashion shows, the bars, the beach, the fall colors ƒ what more could the literati want? The Lambda Literary Foundation sponsors the festival and, of course, the Lammies, its own awards for literary excellence from the lgbtq community. Its mission is, according to its web page, to “support and further the creation and dissemination of writings by, for, and about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.” It notes, “Literature has long nurtured hope and inspiration for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and has provided an avenue of understanding.”
      Ann Bannon, the pseudonymous (at this late date!) author of a handful of lesbian pulp novels in the 1950s and early 60s, writes on Lambda’s web page: “It is our writers —our poets, scholars, historians, humorists, and storytellers of all stripes —who give voice to our remarkable community. They create us in all our wonderful colors as they recount us both to ourselves and to the wide world.”
      So watch some writers bloom (or turn into blooming ƒ nevermind) if you’re inclined to head for Provincetown. More info: www.lambdalit.org

Peg Cole reads a lot in her cabin in the woods, but thinks writers usually are better on the page than in person.