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June Program Celebrates LGBT WritersNew York, NY (May 31, 2012) - Yaddo will celebrate LGBT Pride with a June 12th program at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City.  Allan Gurganus “Inspirations: A Yaddo Gay Pride Event Celebrating Our LGBT Writers” will be moderated by author Allan Gurganus, who has enjoyed many working residencies at Yaddo, dating back to 1975, and who also is a Member of The Corporation of Yaddo. Fellow former residents and writers Cris Beam and Jorge Cortiñas will join Gurganus for a lively discussion about Yaddo’s past, present, and future role in the LGBT literary community, and each of the panelists will offer a reading from their work. Gurganus’s first published story, “Minor Heroism,” appeared in The New Yorker when he was just 26 and was the magazine’s first fictional piece that offered a gay character. His first book, the 1989 novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters), spent eight months on The New York Times bestseller list, became the subject of a cartoon in The New Yorker, remains a clue on “Jeopardy,” and was adapted by CBS into an Emmy Award-winning television mini-series. His published works also include the novella Blessed Assurance, the collection of stories and novellas White People (Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Pen-Faulkner Finalist), the novella collection The Practical Heart: Four Novellas (Lambda Literary Award), and the novel Plays Well With Others. His short fiction appears in The New Yorker, Harper’s and other magazines. Gurganus’s novel-in-progress, The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church, will be the second installment in The Falls Trilogy that commenced with Widow. Beam is an author and professor in New York City. Her most recent book is a memoir, Mother, Stranger, published earlier this year. She also is the author of the young adult novel I Am J, as well as Transparent, a nonfiction book that covers seven years in the lives of four transgender teenagers, which won the Lambda Literary Award for best transgender book in 2008 and was a Stonewall Honor book. She is currently at work on a book about the foster-care system. Cortiñas has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Helen Merrill Award, and the Robert Chesley Award, among others. He is the author of the plays Maleta Mulata, Sleepwalkers, Tight Embrace, and Blind Mouth Singing. His plays have been published by Playscripts and TDR/The Drama Review. He is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, a member of New Dramatists, and cofounder of Fulcrum Theater. Cortiñas’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published in many journals and anthologies. Since opening its doors in 1926, Yaddo has welcomed more than 6,000 artists, many of whom, whether they knew it or not, were articulating the heart and soul of what would become the gay community. Today, Yaddo continues to support artists across a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Established in 1983, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center has grown to become the largest LGBT multi-service organization on the East Coast and second largest LGBT community center in the world. Every week, 6,000 people visit the Center, and more than 300 groups use the Center as a meeting place. The Center provides social service, public policy, educational and cultural/recreational programs and has served as an incubator for grassroots groups, organizations such as the AIDS activist group ACT UP and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the principal organization combating homophobia and stereotyping of gays in the media. |
