>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Mark Manivong: Good afternoon. I'm Mark Manivong, and I'm the curator for poetry collections and LGBT Materials and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. I'd like to welcome you to today's event which is the second annual LGBT pride celebration at the Library of Congress. This is sponsored by the Poetry and Literature Center and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division. It's also presented in partnership with Lambda Literary and Capital Pride. We have an exciting line up today beginning with the presentation by Stathis Orphanos, who is of Sylvester and Orphanos Publishers of Los Angeles. Mr. Orphanos will discuss his photography, writing and 30 year run of printing fine edition books with his partner, Ralph Sylvester. Following that, a panel on LGBT publishing will take place moderated by William Johnson of Lamda Literary, and featuring Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press San Francisco, Lisa C. Moore of RedBone Press right here in Washington, D.C. and Bryan Borland of Sibling Rivalry Press of Little Rock Arkansas. Please be sure to stop by in the back adjoining room to see a display featuring newly acquired LGBTmaterials in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. These include the Sylvester and Orphanos Archives and Collection and Stathis Orphanos' personal Christopher Isherwood Collection, both of which we acquired this year. After the panel, another display will take place in the Rosenwald Room, and that's in the Thomas Jefferson Building second floor LJ205, and that'll run to about 5 o'clock this afternoon. And now, without further adieu, please help me in welcoming Stathis Orphanos. [ Applause ] >> Stathis Orphanos: Thanks, Mark. Hello. I'm so happy to see you all here. My name is Stathis Orphanos, Greek-American descent, and I'd like to start with thanking you for inviting me to speak at the Library of Congress. I want to thank your Chief, Mark Dimunation, for this honor, Mark Manivong for his invaluable health in the library's acquisition of two of our life's endeavors, the Sylvester Orophanos Publication Archive and my personal Christopher Isherwood Collection. I want to thank Jennifer Bonsevic [assumed spelling] for aiding and making these acquisitions effortless and Cindy Hileman [assumed spelling] for having to deal with all those heavy packages. I also want to thank George Chiason [assumed spelling] in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and the Poetry and Literature Center and Jackie Colburn [assumed spelling] Rare Book Cataloger. Ralph Sylvester wished he could be here. He's at 81. He's fit, looks great, but due to a certain medication he takes, he suffers from a dizziness whenever he rises, and he didn't want to seem a little bit shaky coming here and for that reason, he did not come, and he apologies. But he's very proud to be included in this presentation. I have asked my friend, Jula Vishnay [assumed spelling] also known as [inaudible]-- he's right there behind Mark-- to accompany me. He's three times MVP in American soccer. His jersey number 22 has been officially retired, and he's been inducted into the [inaudible] hall of fame in San Diego's Hall of Champions, one of the museums at historical [inaudible] Park along with Ted Williams, Muhammad Ali, Greg Louganis, Bill Walton, boxers Archie Moore and Ken Norton and other people. [Inaudible] was the first soccer player ever to be inducted and during his off seasons, he accompanied me on several photo odysseys across the country assisting me on many of my photo sessions. So now I'll begin the presentation beginning with my family. I hope you don't mind. That's my father. I always remember him dressed in a tuxedo when I was a child because he ran a supper club in Winston Salem. I was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and my memories of always wearing a tuxedo. Here he is again. This is my mother, kind of a severe portrait of her. She was really a very [inaudible] woman, played three instruments. At 12 years old, she was a photographer and [inaudible], which is very unusual for a 12-year-old, especially a girl, and when the king and queen of Greece came for an official visit, they sat for her because they thought it was a unique thing to have a girl of 12 years old print her own negatives, develop her own negatives and print her own photographs. Another again. This is me as a baby, and I only show this because my mother's photography had an influence on me. Most of my photographs are done with available light as she did with this. And I think it must have worked by osmosis into my head because this was just done with a little ray of light coming in through a window, and she also used back drops a lot, and as I do as well. And this is a little [inaudible] costume that my grandmother had a designer from Athens create just for me, and I brought it to America, wore it for Halloween several times. Once won first prize because they thought I was in drag. Then this is when I went to Greece as a boy, got stuck in the Greek Civil War and had to stay there for two years. And this is me with the [inaudible] at the Acropolis when we arrived. And that kind of played a big influence in my life, and eventually the President of Greece asked me what he could do for me after we presented him with our publication of a Greek artist, this big book here. And I said I'd love to photograph your guards. So he arranged for me to spend five weeks with his guards in their private compound and throughout Athens, and I'm going to start with these and then lead into more personal material later. So these are some of the guards that I photographed, and this is in their compound. Going up to the Acropolis to raise the flag on Sundays. They go up. The left at dawn and then go in the evening to take the flag down. And they have a band playing. And this is the official guards going to the tomb of the unknown soldier. And they have to stand there like they have about half an hour and then new ones come in. All day long this continues. Same with the guards in front of the palace. And this is what they have to put up with, to us going out and [inaudible] pictures and jostling them, but they have to keep a straight face. This is at the palace where they line up when dignitaries come and sometimes these last three hours, and they have to stand just like this. When they come back to the compound, they're in pain. It's unbelievable what goes through when they have to be in this attention for the whole time. They parade through the streets of Athens, the main boulevards on Sundays. And again, they have these heavy shoes. They look like funny little red slippers with pom poms on the end, but they have cleats inside, and they have to pound them down as they walk. This is some training activities they allowed me to photograph in the compound, which is very restrictive. I was very lucky to be able to go in and detail all their trainings, their costume changes, uniform changes I should say. This one could give the Rockettes a run for their money right here. No comment on this one. Off hours, they lounge around. This one looks a little bit protective about the one that's behind him there. They're adjusting constantly to make sure that they look perfect. This is the one they gave me to take me around. He was not happy being an [inaudible], and so he was very rebellious, took me to places he wasn't supposed to take me to, and was a great guide. And they wanted me to come and make sure I photographed the dressing ritual, and it was very chaotic in the barracks. So they set up a special room for me, and they brought in two to photograph every aspect of dressing to dress each other. They have to make sure the hems are correct, everything-- it's very difficult to dress yourself. You need somebody else there to do it. This one said, "Watch it there, buddy." And he says, "You watch it, too." And he says, "You're going too far now." Actually, he's looking to make sure the hem is in the exact position. Actually, the uniform is really quite beautiful and wearing a skirt does not diminish them in any way from their masculinity. It seems to go very well with them. These are two other ones showing the full dress, and they picked them for their height and their beauty because they are guards. They are decorative there. They're not military to fight, but they take them out of the military and specifically for their beauty and for their height. And this one here-- the first day I went there, the President of Greece and the commander had him dressed up to be the ideal [inaudible]. And so I spent all day with him, and then I returned to Greece and spent five weeks-- months later to do the full job. I went to Cheshire Academy in Connecticut and spent five years there, made lifelong friends, and one of them was Mike Dunaway. He's the boy, and his mother was a press agent. And they're actually the reason I ever ended up in California. She handled all the jazz greats of that era, and Eartha Kitt was one of them. Eartha Kitt here is christening Mike's sister, the girl she's holding in her arms, and you haven't lived until you're a 15-year-old boy and Eartha Kitt runs her fingers through your curls and pearls up at you. You'll never forget that. And this is Virginia Wix [assumed spelling], his mother who was a press agent. She used to be a Goldwyn girl but gave all that up in the 30's and became a press agent, one of the leading press agents in the world at that time and handling great, great people from that period. She also was instrumental for a very progressive move regarding African American culture. She handled Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, but also all the jazz greats. I have the names here some place but I don't have time to go through them. But Ella was one of them, and when Ella was booked to appear, the first black entertainer to appear at a Hollywood supper club, the Mocambo on the strip, it caused such an uproar that the guy cancelled it, and my friend's mother told her client to start a telephone conversation when it happened, and on her own, Marilyn Monroe called up the club and said, "If you rebook her, I will come every night." And she did. And this is in the 50's. And you'd think a woman known for this would have the integrity in the 50's to break the color barrier for black entertainers in Hollywood. Previous to that, they had to be on Central Avenue, way down in Central L.A., never on Hollywood Boulevard. I joined a class in California. This is in Cal State L.A. where they had famous writers come, and I ended up going into the room, and there's Dorothy Parker as my teacher. And so this was my essay that I wrote for the final sitting in the hall writing it by hand quickly, and I handed it in, and at the bottom, she says, "A fine piece and seriously thought out. Thank you and take an A, DP." Well, it wasn't seriously thought out, but she liked me. And she encouraged me to write a novel, so I did. I wrote this in three weeks. I went to London to visit a friend, and his father said, "Why don't you take that manuscript with you." I had brought it with me. "Go and see these two agents. Do you know them?" I said no. He said, "Just barge in. You look like you're 15 years old. They'll be impressed." So I went in, and both of them said, "I'll read it overnight." Kind of bemused look at me, and sure enough I went back the next day to pick it up, and they agreed to take me on, gave me a letter of introduction to a New York agent, Harold Ober [assumed spelling]. And this is the Harold Ober Agency. Years later, they were fighting over me, and wanting-- this one wanted to keep me, but the [inaudible] Agency had some agents that were leaving, wanted to take me with them, and they were fighting to keep me. Unpublished for several years, many things sent out but still they thought there was something worthwhile there. So, I wrote another novel [inaudible] writer of the Outsider, very famous English writer, asked to read it, and he sent me this wonderful letter that kept me going. So, and then I wrote a script to honor my friend, Malena McCurry [assumed spelling], which had to do with the plundering by Lord Elgin, not only of the Elgin marbles from the parthenon that went to the British museum, but he went through the islands and took statues and all kinds of things, and I wrote a script about the first symbolic return to Greece of anything ever taken by Elgin. Nothing has ever done. So I wrote the script, and it was accepted by Kevin Kuvane [assumed spelling] from Creative Artist Agency, and so for five years I did nothing. I thought this is wonderful. They had one of the greatest agents. He handles Cruise, Streep, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Bullock, and Oprah, okay, and me. But me, okay. So I didn't know that this agency does not solicit anything. They don't have to. People come and say, "I want Tom Cruise for this. I want Meryl Streep for that. How much are you willing to give?" That's all. So they don't go out trying to get anybody for anything. An unknown screenwriter like me, where are they going to go for it? Nothing happened. I never called. I just think they're working on it all the time. Nothing. So it's still there. I have no idea what's going to happen to it. That's how Hollywood works. The best thing is to get a young agent just out of college who's hungry, and they'll go stomping around trying to sell your script. You go with the big ones, nothing happens. You have to be as big as they are to get something going. So I was in the play, 18, looked 15. It was a Spanish play. I sat on the stage with little shorts, and I was mending a net. That's all I did. And so there was an agent in the audience. Her name was Isabell Drasmer [assumed spelling], and her claim to fame is she discovered James Dean. He was in a little play in Santa Monica City College. She happened to be in the audience. She went up to him, gave him her card. He came in. She got him into a few commercials, not much. He went off to New York, went to the Actor's Studio. Became the superstar, James Dean, that we know. She was no longer his agent at that time. So she came up to me afterwards, and she gave me her card. She said, "I want you to come in and see me." I said, "I'm not an actor. I'm a prop." That's all I was. She says, "No, no, but you have a look. It's a new thing coming up, [inaudible]." That's about the only one who thinks that something's going to happen with that look. So I went into her office and behind her desk was this huge picture of James Dean, and she had a contract ready. She says, "Sign this, and I'll start taking you around." So, I thought, "Okay. That's fun. Why not?" So the following week, she took me to the studios. She was a squat little woman, clump, clump, clump. Doors would close in front of her. She put her foot through the door. She entered in. One guy says, "Oh, we need an Indian boy. Can he ride a horse?" She says, "He was born in Wyoming on a horse." That's how she operated. They needed a real Indian boy to go to India for a Sabu remake of some movie. That she shied away from. She said, "You might get stuck there. They'll sell you into slavery." So she didn't go for that one. Then there was-- they were going to do [inaudible] the human comedy. How stupid of a casting agent to think it's an Arminian family. It's really an Irish family. The original film was played by Mickey Rooney, Jr. And they wanted an Arminian looking boy to make this t.v. show. So I said to them, I said, "It's not an Arminian boy." "Oh no, we want an Arminian boy." So they ended up giving it to Mickey Rooney, Jr. So, and it lasted like three shows and disappeared. Then the other thing she took me to was for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, a film version of the William Inge play, and there was a Jewish cadet who kills himself, a minor role in it, and they thought I would be perfect for that. And they gave it to an Irish kid [inaudible] instead. Then the big break. [Inaudible] was looking for a Greek boy to play in America America, which is a very autobiographical film about his uncle coming to America from Turkey but Greek families under the Turkish domination at that time. And he had rejected everybody in Greece, everywhere, in New York, so I was the only one to be shown to him when he came to Hollywood. I got a migraine headache that morning. When I got to his office, I looked around, quickly found the waste paper basket and threw up. He was very sympathetic. All along, I was telling Isabelle, "I'm just a prop. I'm not an actor. Why are you pushing this?" She says, "Because you have the look, and I think we can do something with it." "I've never acted. You've never seen me act." She says, "That's okay. Just believe me." So I believed her. After this, I kept on thinking, "I showed great sensitivity by throwing up in his waste paper basket," and I thought, "he should have taken me." I mean, you know. That was a very important moment, and I gave up. I told her, "I can't do this anymore." So that was the end of my [inaudible] career. Meanwhile, she wanted photos. There I am at the bottom. This is the play book that they do for the show casting people who's in it. Well, there's Jack Nicholson here, and Ryan O'Neal and me. She said, "I want pictures with attitude," so I gave her attitude, right? Then she says, "I want something acting." She says, "What's this?" I said, "It's a picture from my prep school." I said, "It shows great acting. There's no acting. You can put anything you want on that picture." So that's what I was submitting to her. And that was the end. And this is the boy that actually got the role in America America. [Inaudible] had originally rejected in Greece, but the boy took a [inaudible] and made all the way to America and parked himself in his office, and he thought that was the initiative that he needed for that role, and he got it. This is some-- the first picture I ever took with any camera. And I learned from this picture that I should lighten my whole face, towards the other way, get some light on it. And I learned from this picture a lot. Selfie. And a couple more selfies to kind of acclimate myself as to how to take photographs. And this is-- this has a paper of negative image, and when I photographed [inaudible], I photographed him about five times during 1976 to 2006. The first pictures I sent him, I sent him one with this paper negative kind of look, and I said, "I like the fuzzy one the best." And he wrote back, and he says, "At any age, fuzziness is all." So that became sort of like a thing in my mind that could be true to life because if you think too much about things, you don't do them, and my partner, Ralph and I were kind of fuzzy brained. Otherwise, not too sharp because if we were sharp, we would not have done our publications. I probably wouldn't have jumped into photography without having take a lesson. So, I adapted that to our life, fuzziness at any age, fuzziness is all. This is Shirley Berden [assumed spelling]. He doesn't know why his [inaudible] family named him Shirley. But he is a direct descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He is a Vanderbilt. And he was a fine photographer and a great benefactor. He sponsored Dorothea Lange's famous photographs, photographi expeditions, which she did the migrant workers, the woman with the baby. You know that famous photograph she did. He also sponsored the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, and he gave me my first show. His son is Carter Berden [assumed spelling] who married Amanda and that his mother-in-law was Babe Paley [assumed spelling] the fashionista of all time, friend of Capote's and her father-in-law on the left there is William S. Paley from CBS. Her real father was the head of Standard Oil. So Carter was again, direct descendant, of Cornelius Vanderbilt and a friend, a book collector. He bought my books from us and eventually he died very young. He was being groomed, he and his wife. He's an avid liberal. He went into city politics in New York, and they were grooming him to be the next Jack and Jackie to run for president. Unfortunately, he died young, and he left his vast collection of modern literature to the Morgan Library. Christopher Ishuit [assumed spelling]. The first book I published was by him, and the first literary photograph I ever did was of Christopher Ishuit. Big influence in my life. Don Bacardi [assumed spelling] is his partner. Great artist. And this is the picture of them together. It was used to advertise the book Chris and Don, another book, a movie Chris and Don, a documentary film that came out five years ago. Again, them together. This is Don's portrait of me. Like Sophia Loren with a beard, I thought. This is the first book, Christopher Ishuit's book, that we published. And then one of the telephone pages. This is Julie, my companion for this trip. Julie was, as I said, a soccer player, great moves. This would give [inaudible] a run for his money for style I think here. He's able at this position to bring the ball, levitate the ball up by itself to his head, which he would give a header into the goal. Remarkable player. Here, he's playing with Pele and the New York Arrows. He's also an accomplished art-- I'm giving him a tribute because he accompanied me on this trip. Believe me, to be with me is a little bit of a trial. So, paying tribute to him. He's an accomplished artist and does images of soccer and also southwest images as well. And that's my portrait of him. John Updike [assumed spelling]. We took trips together across the country, and he's very influential in my photography because he accompanied me. He was a diversion while I was being very nervous setting up everything, and all of the macho authors really got into soccer with him and all kinds of things, so he was great to be with. Two of my photographs Updike. Then we went to [inaudible] the next day, and so I mentioned that I photographed Updike. And he says, "Oh, you know, we appeared on the Dick Cavett Show together. Meanwhile, Updike had a lot of kicks. He was very nervous. His [inaudible] smile, lots of ticks. There was some-- a lot of nervous gestures and things. He says, "We went on the Dick Cavett Show and while we were waiting to go on, his ticks were at full rattle, he told us. So, I leaned over," he said, "and I said you write so often about hard on's, you're beginning to look like a giant prick wearing a hairpiece." And they went on laughing, so if you ever see the Dick Van Dyke Show, and they're going on laughing, that's why. Julie took this of us together. And he [inaudible] with so many gin and tonics that I was zonked out of my mind and the next day we were supposed to go and photograph Phillip Roth [assumed spelling] and [inaudible]. I don't know how we ever made it, but we did. This is one of the books I published of John Cheever. Actually, this was his first story he ever wrote published in a magazine by Malcolm Cowley [assumed spelling], and we did the first book edition of that. Warren Chapel [assumed spelling], the great designer for [inaudible] designed this book, and we had Updike doing the afterward. This is after Cheever had died and Malcolm Colly [assumed spelling] who discovered him, and John Updike who eulogized him at his funeral. Phillip Roth on that next day. He hated this picture, sent the original picture with a big note on the back, which was wonderful to have. I hate this picture. I hate you for doing it. And this is Claire Bloom [assumed spelling] who hated every picture I did of her, and she says I will destroy her career with my photos. I don't see anything wrong with this. I think it's a very nice photograph of her. And this one. And Julie was especially good with this group because she was hysterical because his father had come to visit, and she did not like him at all. She came over and whispered to us and said, "Please save me from this man." And that's the kind of turmoil we fell into that day. And Julie's teaching them how to play soccer while I'm setting up my cameras. This is Erskin Caldwell [assumed spelling]. The only photography-- the only author I got to photograph from another generation, from the Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbech generation. And that's the face he had for six hours. Six hours. That face. In fact, he picked me up, picked us both up at the Hilton, wasn't it, Julie? Because he lived in the gated community in Scottsdale, Arizona. So, I saw the face, and I noticed one cloud and a blue sky. The cloud never moved, and I said to him, "Gee, I've been looking at that cloud for two hours, and it's never moved." "I don't think so." And that's what we got for six hours. This is Norman Malar [assumed spelling]. Tough guy of literature, introduced to me by Lawrence Teerney [assumed spelling], the tough guy of movies whose cult film, Dillinger, is very famous. He was also in Reservoir Dogs as the older man that-- part of a gang, a memorable Seinfeld episode where he played Elaine's father and had both of the guys scared to death of him. He was a real tough guy. I don't have his picture, but he arranged for me to photograph him because he appeared in Malar's production of Tough Guys Don't Dance, a movie that he made. He played Ryan O'Neal's father. So here I thought I'm going to be between the tough guy of films and the tough guy of literature. He was known to want you to box him. I don't know what the hell I was going to expect. And I found a very gentle man hard of hearing, very short, invited us to lunch at the Chateau Marmont, the gothic hotel where Belushi died and actually where Garbo would stay when she came to Hollywood after she moved to New York. Also Dietrich. It's a very famous hotel on the strip. So, I had no idea what I was going to expect, but they were very nice to me. This is John Irving in Long Island. He thought he looked too handsome to be ever on a book. This is William Styrin [assumed spelling] at the time of his great depression. And we went there. He was looking around the room to make sure no bottles-- liquor bottles were anywhere. Very nervous. And yet he used my picture from that session on his book about depression. This is John A. Williams, one of the great African American authors. I also photographed John Oliver Killings. And actually, he wrote a book called Sissy [phonetic spelling], which I've never been able to find anything about. Did he ever mention anything to us, Julia, about that when I was there? Nothing. Can anybody guess what he wrote? Take a guess. This is Robert Block [assumed spelling] who wrote Psycho. The most gentle man, greatest-- one of the greatest sessions I ever had, but he insisted that it be taken in Boris Carloff's [assumed spelling] former home owned by a friend of his. So-- and he had a-- his stature and everything about him was very much like Norman Bates [inaudible]. Who wrote The Basketball Diaries. [ Inaudible Audience Comments ] Yes. This is Nagiv Mafoose [assumed spelling], one of the Nobel prize winning authors from Egypt. Photographed in Cairo. That evening, assassins put a knife in his neck, and he was almost killed. He never really recovered from that because he was pro Israel. So that's why that happened. Graham Green [assumed spelling] and [inaudible]. Julie came with a duffel bag full of his books, and he signed them all. We spent three days with him, grizzy autumn day, going out to eat at his favorite restaurant on Cobble Street of [inaudible]. At the same time, he had written a book, [inaudible], about the mafia in that area, and there were death threats against his life, and every night we were going out I was looking this way, that way. He barged ahead. Tall man. Lonely it seemed to us. Little apartment in [inaudible]. Nothing fancy and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Julie Harris is one of the first celebrity actresses I photographed. She became a great buddy for all of us including Julie. This Julie. Photographed her several times including in her costume for [inaudible] for a one woman show, of which she won one of her five Tony awards. She also appeared as Sally Boles [assumed spelling] in I am a Camera, Broadway show that later became a film, and won another Tony award for that. And this year, she had a record for Tony awards, and I can't pronounce it nor remember the name of the girl, an African American singer who won the sixth Tony for her performance as Lady Sings the Blues. Yes. I'm sorry. She now has the record. And that's Julie in the back, helping as he did in a lot of my-- holding this very heavy piece of cloth behind her. Actually, I photographed her in San Fernando Valley. She was doing a t.v. movie, and I thought to myself she wanted a picture of her as Charlotte Bronte [assumed spelling], and I said, "How the hell am I going to photograph Charlotte in San Fernando Valley. So we went there, and she had this beautiful piece of cloth. She says, "Wouldn't this work as a background." I said certainly. Very heavy. Julie was holding it behind her, and it all worked. Came out beautifully. And she wrote a tribute for a UCLA catalog exhibition catalog. And this is Elizabeth Scott, if you're familiar with film [inaudible] films. She was a queen of film [inaudible]. Became a great buddy and hostess to a lot of my exhibitions. And she died this year. That's Ralph with Julie Harris. I mean, Elizabeth Scott. Mamie Vandoren [assumed spelling] is one of the three M's, Marilyn, Mamie and Mansfield. Three bombshells. And she became a great buddy and actually I had an exhibition in Newport Beach, and she lived nearby. She was walking her dog, and they had the actresses that I had photographed in the window. So she asked the proprietor if I would photograph her. She had not had a photo session in ten years, and she wanted to celebrate her birthday with a nude session. So, I jumped at the chance. I had never met her. Julie accompanied me. We arrived at her home, went up the stairs, and I didn't know what I was going to expect. There was this wonderful skylight coming down into an otherwise fairly empty living room, and I said, "That's got to work. I hope. I don't know what she's going to look at." High heels come running out. She came right into that light and meshed something to hold these huge breasts together and stockings and everything. It was just perfect. So we did the whole thing in that area. That's the mesh whatever bra. She became a buddy, appeared in a lot of my functions. This is Esai Morales, an actor from La Bamba. If you've seen it, he played the brother. He was offered the lead. He said, "No, I want the brother." And to me at that time he was like one of the greatest actors there were. But he was kind of difficult, told the directors off. They didn't want to work with him. He gave me some of the best poses of any actor I've ever worked with. He wrote a tribute for the UCLA catalog. This is Maxwell Caulfield. Seen Grease 2. Beautiful young man. Used to be a go-go dancer at 16 in gay bars in London. But he's totally straight, married Juliette Mills from the Mills family. Her sister is Hailey Mills. They've been happily married for 30 years. And he posed for me. Just stunning looking guy. This is-- now you have poet laureates from here. This is Richard Wilbur [assumed spelling]. I was very lucky to photograph him. And this is where he composes his poetry in this round building. And Steven Spender [assumed spelling], another poet laureate. How would you say that, Mark? Poet laureate of the Library of Congress or just poet laureate? [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Poet laureate. I also was very fortunate to photograph the forefathers of the modern gay movement. They formed one magazine. They went to lawsuits to have things sent through the mail. They are bonified forefathers of the modern gay movement. This is Dor Leg [assumed spelling], Jim Kepner [assumed spelling]. They formed one institute. And he also was the archivist for all the materials there. This is Harry Hay [assumed spelling] of the radical fairies. And this is Morris Kite [assumed spelling], the lawyer that got things going with the lawsuits and things. And this is Malcolm-- Malcolm-- no, not Malcolm Brennan [assumed spelling]. The priest. Malcolm Born [assumed spelling]. I'm sorry. I have all of these in notes, but I have not gone through them because I want to rush this, but everyone has a number here and tell me who they are, so I'm trying to rely on my memory and yours. He wrote the famous book, Are You Running with me, Jesus? And this is his lover and Malcolm died this year. This is James Merrill. Photographed of all places in the San Fernando Valley. He is the son of Merrill Lynch, James Merrill. Merrill of Merrill Lynch. Probably the only billionaire poet in the history of literature. And very supportive, but quite mean at times. Like he would write to me and say, "Did you see Melena [assumed spelling] when you went to Athens this year? Did you pull her hair and scratch her cheek? It's the only way to get her attention." And the reason was because he spent six months of the year in Greece and probably went to parties where Melena didn't care that he was a billionaire. She wasn't that kind. And maybe didn't know who he was and passed them by, and of course, you don't do that to James Merrill. This is James Purdy [assumed spelling]. Wonderful writer. May Sartan [assumed spelling]. I will read one thing from her because she wrote it in her book. And then we spent a delightful day with her. She was very sick, and the book that she wrote this in is called After the Stroke. And she says, "On Friday, I was really in great pain. It makes me so cross to find myself back in this syndrome. But it was a rather full day, and I managed it somehow. Stathis Orphanos, a publisher of Greek descent, Stathis Orphanos, who had written me a few weeks ago to ask if he could take some photographs came with a Hungarian friend. Stathis is an enthusiast and worked for an hour, his friend moving furniture around with great concentration. I do need a new publicity photograph. I was pleased with what somebody had showed her. I felt very at home with these two men. They had just come from photographing Richard Wilbur and William Kennedy, the novelist from Albany , nd I was glad to know how handsome Dick still was at 60 or so. But as I watched Stathis and his friend walk down to the grassy path to the sea, I realized that I felt at home with them and that special way because they are Europeans. What is the bond? A Hungarian, a Greek, a Belgian. What could be more different in landscape, culture and history, etc.? I don't really know. It is some recognition of a common soul perhaps, not definable in any way in rational terms." The funny thing is, she was a great poet, and Howard Moss who was a poetry editor of the New Yorker at the time, and I think Pullitzer prize winning poet himself and John Malcolm Brennan [assumed spelling] barred her from ever appearing on-- in the New Yorker, and she was very bitter about that . This is Edmond White. Now, this is James Bridges, Jack Larson. James Bridges is the director of The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy with John Travolta and Jack was known, if you ever watch the old Superman series, he was a teenage photographer, Jimmy Olsen, from that. He has also produced all the films for James Bridges and Max. Max normally kept me-- everybody at a distance. You had to be ten feet away from them. And for some reason, he came and snuggled up and let me take this rare photograph of all three together. Eric Bentley, great critic. This is Tom Gunn [assumed spelling], poet. This is an interesting story. I got to get the names right here. Anyway. He wrote a book in the 30's called Better Angel as Richard Meeker [assumed spelling]. And the book disappeared completely. Nobody knew. Forman Brown [assumed spelling]. Thank you so much. You got to help me sometimes here. I have the notes, but I'm skipping-- I have to go and look through all of them to get to the right place. And the book disappeared, but it was a greatly received book because it had a happy ending for a gay novel. And many years later, a publisher decided to publish it, got permission from the original publisher. Never knew who the real writer was. They thought he had disappeared or died or whatever. And Norman Brown happened to be going into a bookshop and saw this beautiful new production of his book. And he was elated. He wasn't going to sue anybody. He was happy somebody brought it out, called the publisher, and they discovered finally who Richard Meeker is. Now, it's a milestone classic gay novel. Jose Quintero [assumed spelling] who resurrected Eugene O'Neil on Broadway, and discovered sort of a lost play, one that O'Neil did not want to be published during his lifetime. Again, this escapes me. I'm sorry. The name of the play. I'll get it. Anyway, so he resurrected everything of O'Neil's, brought him back into public, and he also directed Tennessee Williams' The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone with luminous Vivian Lee and a horrible Warren Beatty as an Italian hustler. If you've seen it, it doesn't work for him. I'll see if I can find it here. That's terrible. I'm supposed to go through all of these at one time here. Katherine Hepburn as the drug-addicted mother. She made the film version of that. I'll get back to it. Edmond Tesky [assumed spelling] is one of the great photographers of our time, and died penniless at the same time the [inaudible] was giving him a big retrospective show and publishing a major book for him. And otherwise, the poor man died penniless. This is one of the greatest collaborations in modern art, and also in photographer. Neals Vitstrand [assumed spelling] was photographed at 14 in the nude by Edmond Tesky and photographed just before he died again. Long collaboration of photographs together. Long Days Journey Into Night is the play by Eugene O'Neil. Julie? The director. Do you recognize him? Who is he? [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Yeah, Childers. We know Childers. Okay. I'm getting there. Okay, I've got it here. John Sleshinger [assumed spelling]. Director of [inaudible]. You should come up here and stand next to me. How do you know all this? Where are you reading it from? [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Okay, yes. All right. Wonderful. [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Yes. I have a picture of him here. Yeah. But my favorite model from that session is the dog, which you'll see. John Sleshinger directed Darling, his first film which Julie Christie won her Oscar and Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier and the famous Midnight Cowboy. The first x-rated picture to win an Oscar. This is Michael Childers, his lover and that dog is my favorite [inaudible]. This is Palpaul Kadmis [assumed spelling], famous artist. He was asked by the [inaudible] to create a painting back in the 30's to exalt the Navy, and he did this painting of [inaudible] with horrors and queers, anything else that became such a scandal that it made him famous overnight. And now they hang it prominently at the [inaudible]. I'm having a hard time because the screen is a little bit dark here. Famous poet with his lover, shepherd guide that he met when he was a child and brought him to America. He took care of him. He lived in the Dakota building in the [inaudible] apartment. His sister was Ruth Ford. She had a whole floor of the Dakota. She was married to Zachary Scott and they bought an apartment there when they were very young and when Charles Ombry [assumed spelling] died, she took over the boy to take care of her, and she left everything to him, $10 million worth of apartments and art, and he couldn't live there because he had no income that they approved of, and he owned $10 million worth of apartments there. This is Horst [assumed spelling], the famous photographer. Horst again. Horst with his partner, Balantine Lawford [assumed spelling]. Balantine Lawford with paintings that he did for Vanity Fair, and he surprised Julie and me by sending us two of those paintings there for Christmas. Gore Vidal photographed several times during the time that I knew him, when he was young and robust and then later on continuing. This is used for the cover of his autobiography. This is the last picture in 2006. He died a couple of years later. And he wrote a preface for my book, My Cavafy. This is a special Broadway tribute to him for the revival of Best Man. He was already dead at this time. He had come to see the rehearsals but never made it through, and they used my picture. I don't know how this appeared large, probably terrible. But used my picture as the back drop for all of the tributes going on. Angela Lansbury is in the white dress. Susan Sarandan over here. And over here is Candace Bergen. Can't tell it though. [Inaudible] the great Greek poet. I'm going to give some quick tributes to some Greeks. Again, won the Nobel prize. This is me with [inaudible]. This is [inaudible]-- no, this is-- did you say something Julia? Mickey Fiderakis [assumed spelling], the composer, Kako Yanis [assumed spelling], the director of [inaudible] The Greek. Kosta Gavras [assumed spelling] directed Z. These are all great Greeks. They're like gods in Greece. [Inaudible], Melena's best friend and appeared in many films with her including Never on Sunday. [Inaudible] another composer. [Inaudible], and this is [inaudible] and other Greeks. Now, I'm going to go quickly through some Greek Americans since I'm Greek, and I don't know if anybody here is from Greek descent. This is Galanos [assumed spelling] who made Nancy Reagan look like an empress. He dressed her and Jackie and half of Hollywood. This is Hermes Penn [assumed spelling], the genius behind the genius of Fred Astaire. Every step Fred Astaire took he choreographed it, including going around the ceiling, that famous one. Another Greek woman director, [inaudible]. This is Helene Alexopolous [assumed spelling], Balantine's last great discovery with her twins. This is a Marine show they put on for me. I bring it up because here's a gay person going into the Marine Corp to photograph these guys, and they were wonderful with me. Quickly, I'm going to go through these. This is sad in a way because this is graduation. Every one of them is deployed the next day for Afghanistan or Iraq. How to save a buddy in sea. They had to do this for hours. I love the drill sergeants. Loved them. They were winking at me as they're screaming at them. I was the victim that came in to shoot me. That's what they're shooting at, either a terrorist or family holding a baby. They have to make a quick judgment. This is sad because they give them their letters to read at nighttime before bedtime actually. And they get together and share their letters. A few iconic pictures. They all look like this. They look like they just came out of high school. They're not GI Joe types. The drill sergeants are those. But they all look like kids to me. They put on their uniform and suddenly they look like Marines, but most of the time they look like this. That's with the uniform. That's when you begin to look like a Marine. This is my favorite picture. He flashed me a V sign. They took him out of line and made him do an hour worth of callesthenics because of that. This is [inaudible], the artist that we did a big book on. This is George Kuker [assumed spelling], the director of some films. And George Kuker got me interested in doing the [inaudible] book because he had a [inaudible] painting, and they showed me that painting, and that started the whole thing. This is his heir. George Kuker's heir, George Towers. So he left everything to this boy. I thought it'd be interesting for you to see this. I don't know if it is. This is Melena Macory [assumed spelling], my buddy, and she got everything going for us in Greece on this book. All the addresses and telephone numbers. I said, "What about [inaudible] who won his oscar for her film Never on Sunday for the song?" "Who?" Because he said in the press the day before there was an election where she was to be the minister of culture. Anybody who would vote for Melena Macory as minister of culture should be put in an insane asylum. So when I asked for his address, she wasn't going to give it to me. They were best of friends until then. David Hockney [assumed spelling]. He's on the book. Jules Vasan [assumed spelling], her husband. And this is the table of contents that was only supposed to be three or four people and ended up being this many. [Inaudible] designed costumes for Maria Kalas [assumed spelling] productions. That's Franko Zeferelli [assumed spelling] on the side . That's the dress he designed for her, hanging in the bathroom over a broken pipe. I put it by the posters. That's Charuki [assumed spelling], Charuki, Charuki. This is his studio. And that photograph of that boy and the wing on the left is a painting [inaudible] had commissioned for him to paint. There was a symposium at the [inaudible] Museum, and that's a photograph of Ralph Sylvester, my partner, and that's the panel there with [inaudible] and me and the director of the museum there. That's us together. This is Dimitri Sartures [assumed spelling] who helped us get a lot of things done, so I'm paying a quick tribute to him. He's there with the binder, and this is the niece of Charuki who took over the foundation when he died. She made them do all the color work over three times because that yellow didn't match the original is what she's holding up. There it is below as you can see. He was a great influence on me with the way he painted sailor uniforms, and these are some of my images quickly of the way light hits the sailor uniform. And this is a little tribute quickly for Ralph, my partner of 55 years and so when we met, we were a little fuzzy brained. We decided just to jump into this. Otherwise, if we were smart, we would not have done it, our publications. This is a photograph he did of a carousel and one I did with a mirror, and my portrait of him. Now, when we got into publishing, the publisher said, "Oh no, you can't do that kind of binding. No, no, I can't fix those [inaudible] corners [inaudible]." Exactly the way they are here. So Ralph said, "What do I have to do?" You come down and you won't be able to do it. So he went down and in an hour learned how to put this on himself for 400 books, to make every top and bottom fit. On this one, that was Nadine Gortimer's [assumed spelling] book, Town and Country Lovers, dealt with black and white relationships in South Africa. She won the Nobel prize. And this is [inaudible] book. Again, they could not line up things. Rob did it, finished it within two hours all the covers. And the binder who had been working at it for 30 years could not do it himself. This is Gore Vidal when I gave it to him red, white and blue. How patriotic. This is a Tennessee Williams book we did. It's a little bit [inaudible]. It should be the other way around. That's fine. [Inaudible] Diary by V.S. Nipal [assumed spelling]. How Father Quixote Became A Monsignor by Graham Green. Shadrach by William Stiren [assumed spelling]. We thought every binder to get these bindings. They didn't want to do this. We got it done. Margaret Dravel [assumed spelling] The Emerald by Donald Barthemy [assumed spelling]. James Purdy's book. Paul Bowles' book. And a little miniature book by Graham Green with all of this wonderful binding and gold. And Days of Love. Is Lisa here? That's why you know so much. This is a friend now. Lisa Rolay [assumed spelling]. Am I saying it correct? Okay. She came from Italy for this, and this is her book. She did a special book of couples throughout history. So here we are the cover if you'll see on the left side is Ralph and myself, and up above, [inaudible] is [inaudible]. Couldn't be in better company. And in the book, she has Alexander and his lover. She has Hadrian [assumed spelling] and his lover. She has the great lovers out of history, and including JFK and his friend, Lem [assumed spelling]. You have to read into that to see what was going on there. This is it. I'm going to tell you three things because I want to tell you these quickly. Three things told to me so it'll liven this up a bit. One was told to us by Reynolds Price about Truman Capote. Truman Capote came to the south and friends of his thought how wonderful to take him to a red neck bar, wet T-shirt contest day. So they're sitting there, and a girl across the room recognized them. So she comes over, and she hands him her lipstick. She lifts up her T-shirt. She says, "Will you sign them? Truman on one, Capote on the other." Now, her boyfriend across the room was watching, drunk, got up, swaggered over. He unzips, pulls it out. He says, "How about signing this?" About all I could do to that is initial it. That's one. I'm going to get them all out of the way now. The other one is Gore Vidal. He was on a panel show, and there's a guy, like O'Reilly type trying to get him, a lot of got you questions. He sailed through them brilliantly. Thought he had the final one to get him. "Mr. Vidal, you recently wrote an essay where you describe your lovers by initials. You don't say what they are, but are they male or are they female? Mr. Vidal, were they male or female?" "At the time I was having sex with them, I thought it too rude to ask them what sex they were." So that's the other one. And that's it. That's my presentation. A little bit quicker than I would like to. [ Applause ] Did I bring it in time? >> Mark Manivong: Thank you so much, Stathis, for being here and giving us that delightful presentation. I'd like to call our panelists up to the table here along with William Johnson from Lambda Literary for our panel on LGBT publishing. So our panel has assembled. We have William Johnson from Lambda Literary. Lisa Seymour from Redbone Press here in Washington, D.C. Bryan Borland from Sibling Rivalry Press Little Rock. And Jennifer Joseph from Manic D Press of San Francisco. Thank you. >> William Johnson: All right. I guess I'll get things started. My name is William Johnson. I work for the Lambda Literary Foundation. Now, people familiar with the Lambda Literary Foundation? Yes, no, maybe? Well, the Lambda Literary Foundation is an organization that is dedicated to promoting GLBT literature. We believe that GLBT literature is fundamental to the preservation of our culture and the LGBT lives are affirmed when our stories are written, published and read. We have several programs. We have The Writers Retreat program, which is kind of like a master class where writers from all over the country come out to the University of California to do a master class with some of the best GLBT writers that our community has to offer. We also have a writers in school program where different writers actually do in-class discussions either through Skype or in person with both high school and middle school students. And we also have the Lambda Literary Review, which is what I actually manage. So, one of the things that makes my job easier is having publishers who kind of do the work that we want to promote. So I'm really honored today to have Lisa, Bryan and-- we actually haven't met from Manic D Press, but Jennifer who really produced some great work. And it really makes my job easier. So I want to say thank you. So today, we're actually going to talk about LGBT publishing. And pride month is a great month to talk about it. I want to say happy pride to everyone actually. I can actually say I think I've been celebrating prior to this point longer than I've actually been alive. That is true. So, my first question really is about origins. How did you become LGBT publishers? How did your love of publishing inspire you to do this work? So I guess it's a question about how you came to do this work and just a little bit of biography? Like what was it that kind of brought you to do this kind of incredible work? >> Jennifer Joseph: Should I start? >> William Johnson: Yeah. We'll start. >> Jennifer Joseph: Manic D Press started in 1984 when I was 23 years old. The first book was my own. It was called The Future Isn't What it Used To Be, and that's kind of how things have turned out. I didn't become an LGBT publisher. The LGBT publishing came to me. In 1989, I started a poetry reading series at a night club in San Francisco called The Paradise Lounge. It was every Sunday night, and I moved to San Francisco in 1978, a month after the white night riots and the Jonestown massacre, which is a heck of a time to show up in San Francisco. I was 17 years old. And moved there permanently in '82 when the AIDS crisis just started dessimating the population. By the time the poetry reading started, there were so many young people who were showing up who identified as gay, lesbian, all kinds of stuff, and they were reading work about their lives, being bullied, being rejected by their families, why they came to San Francisco from everywhere else in the country and what their experience was. I firmly believed when I started Manic D that every generation has to take responsibility for creating art that reflects their own experiences and interests, and that you can't wait for Random House or an agent or somebody else to do it for you. And so that was what motivated me to start Manic D, to take that responsibility for getting this art out there. When we got international distribution in 1994 through Publishers Group West, this book, Beyond Definition, new writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco, was one of the first books that we got into distribution. It was edited by Marcie Blackmon [assumed spelling] and Trevor Healey [assumed spelling] who are both award winning authors on their own subsequently. And we sat in my living room. We put in an ad in the Bay Area Reporter, the gay newspaper in San Francisco soliciting submissions and sat in the living room over pizza and beer going through the submissions and deciding what to put in the anthology. It was an amazing process. A lot of people who had never been in print before including Michelle Tee [assumed spelling], Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Simon Shepherd, people who have subsequently been published quite a lot, were published the first time in this book. It wa s a real game changer. I remember the discussions on whether we should call it New Writing from Queer San Francisco or Gay and Lesbian San Francisco. We decided against using the word queer because the older generation San Francisco had problems with the word queer. And we wanted to be inclusive, not do anything that would prevent somebody from reading this book. I was friends with Suzy Wright [assumed spelling]. She agreed to write the introduction, and this was our entry into queer publishing. A couple years later, I did one of the first books written by a transgendered person, The Unsinkable Bamby Lake. The word transgender wasn't in use at that point. She referred to herself as a transsexual. That was the common language. And she wrote about being in the Cockettes and the Angels of Light, and the other remaining members of the Cockettes were so upset about her description of them that they decided they would document themselves the way they saw it so that movie about The Cockettes came out subsequently, but this is the book that sparked them to documenet their own history in a way that they saw fit as opposed to Bambi's version. And Manic D did the first transgender anthology of female to male transgender people written from a first person point of view called From the Inside Out. This came out in 2004, and ended up being taught at Harvard and at schools across the country as well, and we also did the first book written from an intersex person's-- first person point of view called Intersex For Lack of a Better Word, and this one won the Lambda award, and was taught in universities from Princeton to Cal State to everywhere. This is just a small amount of the LGBTQQI publishing that I've done. I find it to be an area of interest. The writing is so good. The stories are so moving and authentic. I really feel that on a personal level this is the-- has been the primary civil rights, social justice issue of my generation. We've come so far and I think that the publishing has been a very gentle way to get these ideas out into the mainstream. Since Manic D had international distribution, we were able to actually get the ideas out of San Francisco and I truly believe that we've through this work have saved lives. Just the other day, I ran into somebody who is from-- gosh, somewhere in the midwest, might have been Kansas or something, and he found a copy of our books in the 90's, and he's like, "I thought I was the only one." Of course, he moved to San Francisco to be with his people, but what I'm saying is that all of the kids who have-- I've heard from who start out in Oklahoma, in Kansas and places where they were on the verge of suicide because they thought they were alone found our books and found community through the books and glad it helped. So, that's the Manic D story. >> Bryan Borland: Well, I became an LGBT publisher when Manic D rejected my first manuscript. Really. It totally worked out so this is full circle today. I was telling her this before we started that things happen when they're supposed to. It would have been-- I wasn't ready at the time, and so it just played out like it should have. I fell into this by accident. I started sending my work out in 2008 or so, poetry, and one of the first places that I was published was a journal called [inaudible] run by a man named John Staley [assumed spelling] in New York. [Inaudible] literary arts of New York or something like that. Literary culture from New York. Gay Men's Culture from New York was the subtitle. So here I am, and I'm from rural Arkansas, and I get a poem published in [inaudible] from New York, which was a big deal for me. It was New York, and I'm in Arkansas, and John was very smart, and John made a living publishing people, helping them design books, and he came to me and to this day I don't know if he came to me because he liked what I wrote or because he saw easy money. And he convinced me or he tried to convince me to self-publish because my manuscript was being rejected, and he said, "Give me $1,000 ,and I'll publish-- I'll help you publish your book, and we'll make it look like it was published from a legitimate press." And the ego at the time, I guess, and-- well no. I don't want to do that. I want to be published by a major publishing house. I want to make the big bucks that poets make. And turned him down, but he kept coming back to me and coming back to me and so finally I was impatient, and I said, "Well, okay. Let's do it." Hired him, worked with him on the book. We created a beautiful book together. Went to New York to the Rainbow Book Fair where I met William for the first time. Do you remember when I met you the first time? >> William Johnson: I do remember that. >> Bryan Borland: You're one of the first people I met, and-- >> William Johnson: You were like 12 years old. >> Bryan Borland: I was about 12 years old. Didn't have any of this facial hair yet. We were pretty young, and the book sold out at the book fair. And I met a lot of wonderful people and here I was just in the middle of this LGBT book fair, and I felt like I was home. And it changed everything for me. John had a big plan to help me market the book. And he was continuing to publish [inaudible] which was very successful at the time. And then John died. And he didn't have a connection with his family. In fact, he died and his body wasn't found for nearly a month in his apartment. When his family found out, they came and cleaned his apartment out, put all his stuff out on the street in front of his apartment, and luckily some people that knew him came by, collected some materials and distributed them to his friends. But the big question was what was going to happen to [inaudible]. He did it all himself, the entire operation. And here's where that accidental publisher comes in, because I was the last one that worked with him. People started coming to me. They knew that John prepared issues months and months and months in advance, and they had been accepted. And they had been accepted from places like Arkansas and Oklahoma and Illinois, and so like for me, it was a big deal for them to be publishing [inaudible], but without John, they weren't going to be published. So, I received phone calls and emails, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? And John taught me in the short time that I knew him when an opportunity presents itself, go for it. And I could think of no greater way to honor him and what he taught me then to pick up that mantle and run with it. And so without any permission from his family and without any contact with his family, I knew his family didn't support what he did as a gay man. I contacted all of the authors that had ever been in [inaudible] and asked them to send tribute pieces to John, which they did. I also-- because John did prepare that work months in advance and sent out proofs to the authors months in advance, I was able to gather the proofs that he had created so we put it all together, and I tried my best to emulate [inaudible] as much as possible knowing zero about publishing, knowing zero about design and put together the publication called [inaudible] Unfinished, which was a tribute to [inaudible]. And we sold copies, and myself and other authors that had been published in [inaudible] used the money that was generated from the copies to put on a memorial service for him in New York. At that memorial service, I met several poets including Ocean Vong [assumed spelling], Matthew Hittinger [assumed spelling], several people that pitched me ideas for books for chat books, for full length collections. And really tried to convince me to continue on [inaudible]. I didn't feel comfortable continuing [inaudible] with that name. But I did a little research, and the fake imprint that John convinced me to create which I had named Sibling Rivalry Press after a brother that I lost when I was young. I started writing after he died. So we had Sibling Rivalry Press, the fake imprint. And I didn't want to continue [inaudible], but my research showed me that in Greek methology, [inaudible] had a brother, [inaudible], his earth bound brother. While was swept up by Zeus' eagle to serve at Zeus' feet. Well, there was Hystericus [assumed spelling]. I thought, "What a perfect name for a journal of gay poetry." But I flipped it around a little bit. I put an emphasis on the first syllable and changed the name to Aseracus [assumed spelling] because I really wanted librarians across the country to have to say Aseracus, emphasis on ass, right? So you got to make a little splash. So, I launched Aseracus, not knowing anything about anything, signed Ocean Vong to a contract for a chat book and had my own book for this fake press and Ocean took off. Ocean was just in The New Yorker with a poem. And he signed a contract with Copper Canyon Press. Also signed Sy Jones [assumed spelling] to a contract who is very involved in Buzz Feed, and he's been everywhere. Things took off, and all of a sudden I was a publisher pretending that I knew what I was doing. Talk about fuzzy brained. I'm still fuzzy brained, and we just went from there and because we're located in Arkansas, we get attention, and it works. And what you said about saving people's lives, that's been my experience as well. People reach out and all over the country particularly in the middle of the country saying they found our books, saying they found our journal forging friendships when they appear in the journal with other poets, which is just beautiful to watch. We've expanded form that, and I couldn't be more proud to do what I do. >> Lisa C. Moore: Do these move? They do. I'm short. Your question is how did I get started? >> William Johnson: What [inaudible] like? What's the-- >> Lisa C. Moore: The story of RedBone Press? >> William Johnson: What's the story of RedBone Press? Yes. The background. >> Lisa C. Moore: The background. My mother was a teacher and a librarian. Education was highly prized in both my families, my mom and my dad's side. I came out in 1980. I was 16 years old and senior in high school. And went looking for books and found books like The Original Coming Out stories by Julia Penelope, edited by Julia Penelope. Books like Ruby Fruit Jungle, later Curious Wine by Katherine Forrest, and Home Girls edited by Barbara Smith. And later even still In the Life by Joseph Beam, which I have reprinted. But what had happened was-- I was living in Atlanta in the 90's, the early 90's. My sister and my young nephew had come to live with me, and she had to start all over because she had been in school, got pregnant and subsequently had a child and needed some help. So she came to live with me, was going to community college and I used to pick her up sometimes after school and bring her home. This one particular day, it was pouring down rain, and one of her classmates said, "Can I get a ride with you? Where I live is on the way to your house." And I thought, "I don't know who this woman is but okay." So she hitched a ride. She did not live near us. But I found out later she had seen me pick up my sister and seen the pink triangle bumper sticker on my car. And said, "I have to get to know her." So we went to my house since her house was nowhere nearby and waited out the rain. And at the time, I worked for the Atlanta Journal Constitution with the-- in the features department so I got lots of books and I was a book-aholic, confessed, reformed, but yes confessed. I am very grateful for libraries. But she started perusing the shelves and asking finally after about 30 minutes, "Do you have any coming out stories for black lesbians?" And I was like, "Oh, wow. She's coming out to me in various ways." And so I went looking through my shelves and realized that no, there was none. So pulling out books and finding individual stories in places like Common Lives, Lesbian Lives and Sojourner, but also in the original coming out stories and in Home Girls. And so I thought I could put one together. And I did. In the process of putting one together doing a call for submissions, I interviewed feminist presses. I interviewed Barbara Smith with Kitchen Table Women of Color Press at the time. And talked to-- one of my sisters worked for a bookstore. I worked for the features department and with the books editor so I got to see a lot of press kits and saw what book press kits looked like. Now they're called media kits, but yes back then. And put out Does Your Mama Know? And 1997-- took me about two years, 2.5 years. This was my first book, and it-- I printed 3,000 copies just knowing that I could sell them. I was living in Atlanta. There were black lesbians everywhere I looked. So, I thought surely I can sell these. First time doing that. Now I know you don't print 3,000 books at a time. Mid-- what do they call those mid list book? Might sell 5,000 copies in it's lifetime, and this is not a Steven King. This is just a nice solid author. Anyway, I digress. That book sold the 3,000 copies in six months. Yeah. I just-- I put myself out on a book tour, and then people started sending me manuscripts and saying, "Hey, are you a book publisher?" And I thought, "No, I'm just self published." And they said, "No, no. You should think about it." And in the process, fell in love with every aspect of publishing, distribution, marketing. I mean, I was working part-time as a copy editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and in the off days, I was on the road or I was packing up books. I was distributing. I was doing mail order. I was doing-- faxing press releases, all that stuff that is now electronic, but I did a lot of that. And just put my face out there, and hung out my shingle. And so I started accepting manuscripts because I fell in love with the business so that's pretty much how I got started. Yeah. >> William Johnson: Now, Bryan, you talked a little bit about this about touchstones for you to help kind of create your press. But for Lisa and Jennifer, did you have any kind of models that you were working off of to kind of parade what you've created? >> Jennifer Joseph: I'm completely self taught. But when I moved to San Francisco, my goal in life was to live within walking distance of City Lights Bookstore. And so my college roommate had a radical lesbian aunt who changed her name from Carol to Collie [assumed spelling] in the 60's, and she needed to go to Boulder to build life size puppets for a year. So right after we graduated in 1982, we got to sublet her apartment in North Beach for $75 a month, and so yeah, things just worked out. And so I was within walking distance of City Lights Books, and I was marginally employed at the café [inaudible] where I met Jack Hershman [assumed spelling] who I subsequently published and a bunch of other folks, Gregory Corso [assumed spelling] and such, and then I spent all of my time in City Lights. And so in-- they had chairs and stuff. It was like a library except you could buy a book there. But I actually started looking at new directions books. I loved them, and I felt like they published what I wanted to do, the best writing of their generation, and City Lights did it for their generation. So unlike most people who wanted to work at City Lights, I wanted to be City Lights, and so I was-- I looked at the type faces and the margins and the letting between the lines and kind of how the books were constructed and how they did their covers. New directions books also had those wonderful photographs and yo could immediately recognize it as a wonderful new directions book. And City Lights had their own look about their books as well. They're pocket poet series, and it's like you could recognize it immediately as a City Lights book, and I was like, "Hah, how can I do that?" So, it was-- I got a book that Bill Henderson from the Push Cart Press published called The Publish It Yourself Handbook. And it was like, "Oh, okay." An ISBN is like a social security number for a book. And so I wrote off to the [inaudible] people-- it wasn't even [inaudible] at that point. The ISBN agency in the early 80's you could get 100 ISBN's for free. Now they cost like $800 or something. And books didn't need bar codes at that time because nobody had a personal computer. So with our first book, we sat at the kitchen table. A friend of ours who was doing typesetting, oh careers that no longer exist, Chris Carlson, he was doing a zine called Processed World, and he had a typesetting business. So he typeset the first Manic D book and printed those out and we cut them up and put them on with hot wax rollers on these big boards, and we sent them off to a book manufacturer in the midwest called Brown Brumfield. They no longer exist anyway either. And then six weeks or eight weeks later, we got back some books, and it was just like this awesome empowering process. And the first book, like I said, was my own. It cost $3.50. And I dropped some off at City Lights on consignment, and I was originally from New York so I went into St. Mark's Books on St. Mark's Place and dropped some off there on consignment. People are like ,"What was your distribution?" I was like, "When we started, it was what I called the hoof and woof method." You walk in. You're like, "Hi, I'm a poet. Can you sell my book?" And they're like, "Yeah, sure lady. Here. Fill out this form and come back in six months for your $2.50." And so, that was kind of how I learned about publishing. And at that point, it was just wanting to be part of that tradition. >> William Johnson: Was there any publicity or was it just-- I mean, did you do publicity? >> Jennifer Joseph: The thing is also when I first moved to San Francisco was the first time I had discovered that there was like-- you could be a live poet. Growing up in the suburbs of New York, I thought they were all dead, like that was [inaudible] or they were so far out of reach like I knew Allen Ginsberg was still alive doing something somewhere, but he certainly wasn't in New Rochelle, and so by the time I got to San Francisco and started going to readings at the old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach, it was an open mic, and Bob Coffman got up and he was just-- I mean, physically a total mess. Unbelievably a mess. But what was coming out of his mouth was mind blowing. Completely mind blowing. I was just like holy moly. I'm home. It's like these are my people. This is my tribe. And so, that-- yeah. That was all she wrote. >> Lisa C. Moore: My touchstones were-- because I interviewed presses-- it almost sounds like I was methodical about it, but it really-- I just love research. I'm a closet librarian I think. But I do love research and so in the process of it, I modeled some of what I did after Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, and that I published black-- in the beginning, it was black lesbian books and now it's black and lesbian books. And also fire brand books because I really liked what Nancy Bariano [assumed spelling] was putting out at the time. I just really, really loved it. All her books were smart, and they were funny. You could tell what a fire brand book was. So, yeah. Those were my two touchstones. I interviewed a lot of other presses like Nyad [phonetic spelling] and Allison and Aunt Luke Books and presses that were around at the time. Yeah. That's the short answer. >> William Johnson: I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about aesthetics just a little bit, about-- especially in particular since everyone on the panel comes from very different places across the U.S., and I want to know how those places have shaped the work that you produce? California, Arkansas, D.C. >> Lisa C. Moore: I'm not from D.C., though. I'm from New Orleans originally. >> William Johnson: Oh, okay. >> Lisa C. Moore: Yeah, so-- >> William Johnson: Well, how was New Orleans? Maybe not. Maybe those locations haven't shaped. >> Lisa C. Moore: I wouldn't say that New Orleans has shaped the way-- I mean, the way my books are aesthetically. I think that New Orleans has definitely shaped me as a person, and because I come from two families where education is so highly prized, one solid upper middle class family and the other one was very poor and Catholic, but everybody went to college. Libraries were revered, and so I think that I-- because my mom was a Black Panther and then she became part of the Nation of Islam, it was like blackness and smartness very highly prized. And so that's kind of what shaped my aesthetic, if you want to call it that for RedBone Press. It's like I like smart writing. I really like smart writing. And I, for some reason, I don't know why, possibly because I come from a musical family-- my father's a musician and has been for over 50 years and all of his brothers and sisters play instruments. My grandmother, my great-grandfather was a banjo player. So, it's been pointed out to me that all of my books are performative in some way. Either the poets are performing and written poets or like for instance Earnest Hardy's two books of film and music criticism have to do with performance and theater. Sharon Bridgeforth is performance/theater artists. A lot of my poets are [inaudible] poets, and they also perform. Yeah, so that definitely has shaped the aesthetic. I think New Orleans as a city has shaped me and that has shaped what RedBone Press does. Yeah. >> Bryan Borland: You have to understand that I walk into speak with high school students, and many of them have never met a person who's out in Arkansas. You have to understand that we have politicians in Arkansas who when we have a pride parade in one of our towns, and it happens to be on a Sunday, they say it's an assault in christianity intentionally. State politicians. They have microphones. They're telling these children that. So, when I get to walk in front of an audience and I get to tell my story, I remember being 16 years old and faking my way through life. And I realized that responsibility that I have to Arkansas. We've talked about moving. We've talked about-- we're in love in San Francisco. We have more friends in New York than anywhere in the world. But we're in Arkansas. And when I walk in front of the classroom, and I see those kids and they see me, and they hear me say that I'm gay and they see that I don't flinch when I say that, I know what I'm supposed to do. That's the aesthetic of what we publish. >> Lisa C. Moore: That's-- I mean I-- yeah, coming from the south, yeah. >> Jennifer Joseph: I have to tell you a funny story about Arkansas. Okay so when Justin Chinn [assumed spelling], when we did his first book Bite Hard, he went on tour with Beth Lisick who had just published her book, Monkey Girl. And Justin wrote a great story about this, which is in his book, Mongrel, I think which is published by one of the New York houses. But so he's just drove across Texas. Here's a small tattooed Chinese gay guy with this very tall blonde woman driving across the south, and they're like more and more nervous as it gets into Arkansas, and so they pull up to the bar where they have their readings in Arkansas Springs-- is that the name of the town? >> Bryan Borland: Or Hot Springs. >> Jennifer Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Bryan Borland: We have lots of springs. >> Jennifer Joseph: Anyway, something springs, and they're like, "Oh, God. Who's going to be there? What's the audience going to be like? And they walk in, and it's full of radical fairies who are like we're so glad to see you. Welcome home, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Eureka Springs. And they were-- and Justin was just like ,"Wow, we are everywhere." And how awesome is this? They were just like-- it's a wonderful story, and it's just this whole thing of being out in America and feeling that there's community everywhere. But I'll have to find that story for you and send it to you. It's a good one in Arkansas. But anyway, so the aesthetic of Manic D-- one of the things that's reall whacky is when you go into a bookstore, so many-- I hate this. I mean, anthology was called Beyond Definition. Bookstores are all about categories. You have your fiction, your poetry, your nonfiction, your this, your that, and everything's spine out. I mean, we try and have interesting spines just because everything's spine out. But when we get to do book fairs, and people look at all the books on the table with the covers. They're like, "Whoa! What is going on here?" And so if you're going to say anything about the Manic D aesthetic, it's coming from like the 60's San Francisco thing, which I guess is a little psychedelic. I guess. And it's one of these things where I love it when you get to see the covers face out. It's my favorite thing in the world because then you really get a sense of the press. And when we first got distribution, oh my goodness. I'd have to go to these marketing meetings, and they'd be like, "Your covers have to look like this." I'm like, "No." And they're like, "We know. We've been in business a long time. We sell hundreds of books for Grove and all these important presses. What do you mean no?" I'm like, "Well, this is what we do. We're representing our generations anesthetic. We cannot-- we don't have to look like New York houses. This is why we're alternative. We're providing an alternative, and we're going to do that." And I don't have an example. We did an anthology at the same time as Beyond Definition called Science of Life, and at that time, there was a magazine called Ray Gun that was doing a lot of really experimental typography and so the title, typography went off the edges, and they're like, "Type is going off the edges." And we're like, "Yeah, we're aware of that." The printer calls me. They're like, "The type's going off the edges." It's like, "Yes, it is." And they're like, "You can't do that." I'm like, "Yes, we can." And what happened was of course within two seasons, the distributors are holding up our book, Signs of Life, being like, "Oh, your book should look like this" to the new publishers. And I'm like, "Okay. Done with this." But so our aesthetic is very colorful, very fashion forward I guess, and unfortunately, Scott Eidelman [assumed spelling] who did a lot of our covers like Beyond Definition, got stolen by [inaudible] Press who signed him to an exclusive contract. But that's okay. That's okay because there are a lot of artists. As much as we publish younger writers, we also work with new artists who just want to get their work out there and who match-- their covers match our writing. >> William Johnson: Okay. Well, since this is a panel on LGBT publishing, I kind of want to get a definition of what is a gay book? What is a lesbian book? What is a queer book? I mean, working with Lambda, we have-- these debates happen actually on the site, on the Lambda site where people argue, "Oh, that book isn't gay enough to be reviewed." Or "That book is a straight person writing about a gay character." So, I was interested to hear from the panelists if you had any kind of definitions on what you think is queer. Is it content? Is it style? Is it the writer? Do you have any ideas on what you come up with when you think of an LGBTQ book? >> Lisa C. Moore: I think it's both. I mean, I think you have to take it on a case by case basis. I mean, for my books, I don't call them queer because I come from a certain generation and to me queer is a white word that's like-- it's not me. It's not part of me. It's very [inaudible]. It's like using the N word for me even though I just said the N word and not the Q word. So but queer seemed to be more acceptable for certain people to use as a [inaudible]. So I just don't use it. I'm having to come around because all the academics are now using it. And so if you want to get your books taught for queer studies, you got to use the word. But, I mean, I've-- some of my books could be argued that they're not queer, that they're not gay or lesbian, that it's just that the author that's writing them is gay or lesbian. Erzulie's Skirt is set in the Dominican Republic, and it's about relationship between a Haitian woman and a Dominican woman, both of them born and raised in the Dominican Republic. God, how-- okay. Just knowing what's going on in the world right now. But they're both practitioners of [inaudible], and there's no actual sex in the book, not lesbian sex, but when the [inaudible] descend, those two [inaudible] that's how they get together. And so the characters are involved romantically in that way . So it's not so much a lesbian book, but there's lesbian overtones. But I still think it's what you would call a queer book because it's definitely outside the norm. I mean, it's one thing to have Haitian characters in a Dominican book but to have them speaking Haitian Creole within the same pages as Dominican Spanish is just is unheard of, and that is very queer if you want to go with the academic definition of it. And the fact that these are two women living together and making a life together. They go to Puerto Rico, the U.S. via Puerto Rico and back. And complicating notions of what home is in the Dominican Republic. So that's-- I considered it a gay book, a lesbian book. So yeah, I published it. The new book, [inaudible], it just arrived yesterday. That's why I'm carting it around. It's like, "New baby. I feel like a midwife that's-- ." But it concerns African lesbians, African immigrants, and relationship between an African lesbian in the U.S. and a black American lesbian in the U.S. and then she meets a woman from Cameroon. I don't want to say sparks fly. But it complicates things. So that's queer in it's-- it's beyond queer in the white gay sense of the word. It definitely queers queerness because you're like, "Whoa, African immigrants? What?" So, yeah. I have different definitions for different books. That's my answer. >> Bryan Borland: I was very cautious at first about labeling what we do as a press. We're not exclusively LGBT. A lot of what we publish is and a lot of what has been honored is LGBT oriented. But I learned very quickly especially where we publish, if I use the labels, I can use them to our advantage, and so I like to say I'm a big believer in building a box for yourself, but what you do is you use that box to your advantage, and you climb up to the top of that box and you bust through it and you stand on top of that box so everybody sees you. I also think that it's the reader, it's the audience that queers the text. It's how the reader receives it. What's queer to one person might be absolutely normal to somebody else. So, once you write something, once we publish something and it ends up out in the world, who are we to say what it is? I've enjoyed watching how people have gravitated to different titles in different ways. So, sometimes I never know who's going to experience what with what we publish, but that's part of the fun, and that's part of the ride. >> Jennifer Joseph: It's an interesting question because one of the things we started doing, I think, with Cheryl Kline [assumed spelling] who is head of the West Coast Poets and Writers, for a long time we did her book [inaudible], which she always referred to as her big fat lesbian novel, and it's about three generations of women in California. But starting with that book, we did not put lesbian studies, gay studies-- we just put it out as fiction. And that's what we've done ever since. We just put out-- speaking of new books-- Miriam Gerba [assumed spelling] won the publishing triangle debut fiction award, the Edmond White award, several years ago for her book [inaudible], and this is her follow up. It's called Painting the Portraits in Winter short stories. It definitely has queer content. Did we mention anything about it on the back, in any of the press materials? No, we did not. I feel very strongly that one of the responsibilities of Manic D is to move the culture forward, to push the boundaries. When we think of David Sidaris [assumed spelling], do we think of him as a gay author? Do we think of-- or just as an author? As much as I truly believe in GLBT, LGBT, QQI publishing, the goal is to have everybody so integrated in society, the next generation is not going to bat a damn eye. It just is what it is. Who you want to love is your business, and people can read this fiction and be like, "Okay." You know what I'm saying? Whatever relationship the characters are in, whatever's being portrayed is 100 percent acceptable. If you want to identify as gender queer, third gender, asexual, pansexual, right on. And so we've had some success with that. We're-- straight readership has found [inaudible] and found it to be a very satisfying read. When I sent a copy of this, I contacted the ALA, GLBT round table about reviewing this book, and the gal who is the head of it was like, "Does it have significant lesbian content?" I'm like, "Well, yeah." Because everything surrounding it-- I didn't say position it as such. So she had-- was very concerned. I was like, "Just read it, and you can decide." And I understand that Lambda probably has that same issue as publishers are moving more towards not differentiating, just putting the work out there. And we're an interesting point. >> William Johnson: I mean, it's a tension. I mean, we see it between publishers say, "Oh how dare you review that book because it is not gay enough." I mean, it happens. So it's always interesting to me to hear what other publishers think about-- >> Jennifer Joseph: Well, what does that mean to be gay enough? It's kind of what we're talking about in society, being black enough or white enough or Jewish enough or Christian enough. You know what I'm saying? It's like how we-- how is it when we identify ourselves and our books versus how somebody else chooses to identify them? >> Lisa C. Moore: Well, all that's changing too. I mean, I remember when I was editor of Lambda Book Report, and we started getting books that were written by straight women, but it was all gay male sex. I mean, it was fan fiction, a lot of it. It was just like, okay. >> William Johnson: [Inajudible]. There's a-- for people who don't know, there is a sub genre of romance and erotica that is written by women for other women that is about gay male relationships. And they are very popular. >> Lisa C. Moore: It's a thing. It's a thing. Yeah. >> William Johnson: They're very popular, and a debate happened on our side around should we review these books that were written for women for women about gay men? >> Lisa C. Moore: And should they be up for lammies? >> William Johnson: Should they be up for a Lambda award? So that was the debate. So yes. >> Lisa C. Moore: After all the struggle that [inaudible] have had to go through to just get in a romance category. >> Jennifer Joseph: Manic D published a graphic novel called, Tough Love, that was [inaudible] in XY Magazine by Abby Denson [assumed spelling]. It was such an interesting thing about gay high schooler. I said, "Abby, you're a straight woman. Can you tell me where you come from with this?" She also wrote The Power Puff Girls comics. And she's like, "My dad's gay." I'm like, "Okay." And she's like, "It was interesting when it was in XY Magazine because we got really positive, great feedback on that." And so I had to kind of work through the whole process thing with her to get a better understanding of this because I didn't want to be involved with what you were just talking about, the women writing gay comics. That book found readership. And we got good feedback from high school kids who found it. "This book really helped me." I was like, "Oh, okay. " It served a purpose. >> Lisa C. Moore: That's the thing, yeah. I mean, because if you publish books to change people's lives, I mean that's what I've always said in interviews is I publish books to change people's lives. You got to think is this going to help someone? >> Bryan Borland: One of the things we've had to figure out at SRP, we have Jonathan which is a journal of gay fiction and Asaracus, which is a journal of gay men's poetry, and Adrian [phonetic spelling], which is a journal of queer women's poetry. But we say on our website, "If you feel like you belong, we don't police your identity in your work. All we care about is the work. If you identify with that journal, and you feel like you should be in it, send it to us." >> William Johnson: So I guess my next question is about the present and a little bit about the future. And this conversation's been happening where there was a time where our LGBTQ identity-- there's only a couple of sources where you could really see it on filter. I'd say it was porn or books. That's changed dramatically. T.v., the web. >> Lisa C. Moore: Empire. >> William Johnson: Empire. T.v. >> Lisa C. Moore: Besse. >> William Johnson: Besse. So, how do you see literature fitting in in that constellation of what's happening now with gay content in the media? Where does literature fit in that constellation? >> Bryan Borland: I think it feeds-- literature feeds everything else. For example, look at Orange is the New Black and Laverne Cox's character. And it started out as [inaudible]. Also, a lot of the media you see mainstream-- it's a certain type of LGBT individuals being represented. But there's so many more types out there, and you see that more represented in literature. So I think literature is a starting point for a lot of stuff, and it breaks ground before anything else does. >> Lisa C. Moore: Yeah. I think people still come out to books. I think they still find them in the library, and you can be in Arkansas and find a library with something in it. >> Bryan Borland: You've just given me a perfect in to tell a story that I have to tell here because it's the Library of Congress. I have to atone for something. When I was young, I would go into the library and any book that I would find with any type of LGBT content, I would put it in my backpack and walk out with it. I would steal library books. >> William Johnson: I did the same thing. >> Bryan Borland: I had to. I had to. I was mortified. I could not walk up and check it out. And so when I tell this story now, and if there are young people in the audience, I tell them if you ever steal an SRP book, just go for it. Do it. I'll replace it at the library. Steal our books. >> William Johnson: So kind. So kind. >> Lisa C. Moore: I do that with Does Your Mama Know? Because when I moved here to D.C., I went to the library because every city I go to I look for my books, and the librarian said, "It keeps getting stolen." I was like, "You just let me know. I'll keep replacing it. I understand." >> Jennifer Joseph: I think it's one of the things that's so interesting is that is whether it's Orange is the New Black or Transparent or what's that magazine cover, Caitlin Jenner, it's one of these things where I feel like I'm not a big fan of Vanity Fair, never have been or Caitlin Jenner or the Kardashians or anything along those lines. I'm pretty anti celebrity in general. But the truth of the matter is that the door is open, okay, and then everybody else can walk through. One of my favorite thing on the social media is all the transgender folks who pretended they were on the cover of Vanity Fair and were posting their own pictures, and they weren't looking like Annie Leibovitz photo, they were looking like themselves, and it was beautiful. It was a gorgeous thing. And so my feeling is this. We're living in a really wonderful socially progressive time in a way where in a very short amount of time, people have gone from being very afraid to less afraid that books are a very private thing. Unless you're at a reading where somebody's getting up and reading their work publicly, you're privately reading the words to yourself in a very quiet manner, and you can sit with those ideas quietly and over time you can think about those ideas that you just read, and if you want to talk to somebody about them or not talk to somebody about them, it's up to you, but you can sit with the ideas until they're okay or you figure out what you're going to do with those ideas. And that's why I think books are such an important part of moving things forward because you get the ideas out there. People sit with the ideas for awhile. People can find themselves in the books or they can say no, this isn't me. But that's where it starts and so moving forward, I just think we're moving to a place-- I mean, I know I have a daughter who's 19, and in seeing how she relates to her friends where-- I mean, yeah I understand it's San Francisco, but still it was sort of like you want to be transgender, that's okay. You want to be gay? That's okay. It's this first generation of it's all okay. Be who you are. And so the fact that we're moving to a more just society, a place of acceptance, just it's a happy thing for me and so I think that the work I've done, the work we've all done is moving things to this place. And the work is not over. It's going to be our work, the next generation's work, but you can visibly see the signs in the larger media sense as well as in the smaller media sense. >> William Johnson: And working for Lambda, I might be a little bit biased, of course, when it comes to LGBTQ literature, but I do see-- when I came out it was about identification. And I realized that books are more about illumination, and that's what books can do that other forms of media still can't in a lot of different ways. I mean, books can go deeper. So buy a book everybody. >> Jennifer Joseph: Or steal a book, yeah. >> William Johnson: Or steal it. >> Jennifer Joseph: Borrow one from the library. >> William Johnson: But not from here. Don't steal it from the Library of Congress. >> Jennifer Joseph: No. Not the Library of Congress. >> William Johnson: So, we don't have much time, but I want to ask about economics a little bit, the economics of publishing. Amazon, Kindles, e-books, how are you adapting, adjusting? What are the challenges? If you can, quickly, this new world order of kind of a rapidly web expanding world, how have each of you adjusted? >> Lisa C. Moore: We're being recorded, right? >> William Johnson: Yes. We are being recorded. Oh, well that changes. Amazon. I used to distribute my books through Amazon, but I never made money off it so I pulled my books off of Amazon, and now my distributor handles Amazon. So it lowers my blood pressure of quite a few points. >> Jennifer Joseph: Who's your distributor? >> Lisa C. Moore: Small Press. Yeah. Out in Berkeley. SPD. E-books. I have not joined the e-book revolution. I'm kind of old school in that way. I'm waiting for e-books for just to be one platform so I don't have to issue a PDF and a mobi for all the different things and then keep track of those sales for the author so they can get their royalties. It's a real pain in the-- we're being recorded-- butt, pain in the butt. So, I'm actually contemplating giving the electronic rights back to my authors so that they can deal with the hassle and they can get the money for it. If they're listening, we'll talk. Internet marketing-- I'm riding that wave. I'm not on Twitter yet, but I Facebook like a mug, boy. I was on Facebook this morning, and I got so many hits from just posting this picture saying the book is fresh out of the box. Mailchamp, Constant Contact, whatever it is. I know that a lot has changed since the 18 years that I've been-- started-- 18 years ago because I don't fax any press releases anymore. There's no paper going out unless it's a postcard with the book because people still do pass things around. I do a lot of hand selling. People still buy books based on recommendations from other people. >> Bryan Borland: We've just been around for five years. But we've had to learn really fast how to handle-- to navigate the economics of everything. We've tried advertisements. We've had books win awards, featured on NPR which really, really helps NPR people buy books. But what I tell our authors now, the author sells the book. For a small press, the author sells the book. You have to get out and work and work and work and treat it like it's your job. So we're going back to basics. And what I tell our authors is this is an opportunity. As a small press, there's only so much I can do for you. I can get this baby born, and we'll work together. And-- but go out and work, treat it like it's a job. Use every platform available to you, everything on social media, every reading opportunity. Go around the country. Go in people's homes. Do kitchen table readings. That's one of the things we're starting to do at SRP. Just put yourself out there. If you don't treat it like it's a job, you're not going to sell. You are the book. >> Jennifer Joseph: I guess I got to quit my day job in 1994, and I've been doing Manic D full time since then, but I'm still the only paid employee. And occasionally have some interns. I mean, I'm a good publisher and a bad capitalist because I've always believed in more sustainable model of doing business and so a combination of-- okay, so we did a bunch of book fairs. We do a lot of [inaudible] book fairs, the [inaudible] book fair, the Oakland book fair, a lot of academic conferences, feminism and social justice conference. We shared a table with [inaudible] this spring and another academic [inaudible] conference. So it's interesting because we do very well when we show up because people see all books, and they're like, "Wow, this is fabulous." We have international distribution through Consortium and [inaudible]. We do do e-books. And that's been great. That's like a third of our income. The international-- I mean, we've got a lot of our queer books, especially Alvin Orloff's [assumed spelling] fiction has been ordered from Amazon Poland recently, and I'm like, the idea that we're shipping Alvin Orloff to Poland and there are queer fans of Manic D in Poland ordering our books through Amazon. I don't know. It's like these little things that keep me going. I just love that idea. And we publish a couple of books that did very, very well. Most recently, a kid's book called A Rule is to Break, a Child's Guide to Anarchy, that came out a month before the election. It had a blurb on the back from Bill Ayers who is now an educator, but was a member of the Weather Underground, and so the Tea Party got a hold of this book. It was a month before the election, and one of their social media sites, one of their websites, they were like, "Isn't this terrible? It's a children's book endorsed by tourist and friend of Obama's, Bill Ayers, and here's a link on Amazon, and it's terrible." And we called Publishers Weekly, and they did an article and within 24 hours, it was on the front [inaudible] the UK Guardian and a bunch of other places. Like isn't this completely absurd. And it's a cute little book just like build stuff, don't buy it. Grow your own food, be kind to others, listen to the tiniest voice. It's like it's a very gentle anarchy. More of a utopian anarchy in any sort of violent anarchy [inaudible] kind of thing. But immediately-- because it was also going into Christmas, went into multiple printings, and so in order to fund the poetry books and some of the more marginalized less profitable books, we also did In Me Own Words, the Autobiography of Big Foot, which has sold 85,000 copies since it was published. And so that also funds a lot of the more marginalized type work. And so by-- and I agree with Bryan 100 percent. I say-- I never use the word marketing because that scares the heck out of authors. What I do is call it finding a readership. I said here's this wonderful work you produced. Here's this beautiful book. The circle is not closed until somebody is reading this book. And so you really want to close the circle. It's not about winning awards or getting great reviews because the other way we used to get the word out was through reviews. There are very few book reviews ever at this moment in history. So it's really word of mouth. I said, "Get out there. Are you proud of your work? Do you want to find a readership? Of course, you do. That's half of your writing. You're bringing it out there, and you want it to be received." And so, a lot of-- I'm very careful about who I work with because I want them to really understand that at this point, publishing is a business. It's always been a business. I'm like investing in your work. You have to invest in yourself. It's not enough to express your thoughts beautifully. You have to find a readership." And most of the people who I work with are like, "Okay, get in the car. I'm a punk rock whatever. I don't have a band, but here I go." >> William Johnson: Get in the van to the world. >> Jennifer Joseph: Exactly. >> Bryan Borland: One of the things I want to add about economics is a 15-year-old student in a classroom that I spoke in said something wonderful to me. When I speak in classrooms, I always tell the students to go to our website, pick a book, email me and I'll send it to them free, and I always say I'm a bad businessman because of that. And she wrote me, and she said, "You know what? Sometimes a bad businessman is the best businessman." That was so touching to me. I loved that. >> William Johnson: Okay, last question really quickly. And then I think we're going to take questions. Hopefully, we'll still have time for questions. But what are your dreams for queer publishing or LGBT publishing? What are you dreams for LGBTQ publishing? The future? What do you want to see happen? >> Lisa C. Moore: More diversity, more money, more money in my pocket. More money for my authors. Yeah, more diversity. I mean, I'm-- RedBone Press just one of the best lesbian fiction lammy a couple of weeks ago, which I'm still geeked about. I'm really geeked about. Yeah, boo. Shameless plug. And just the fact that this book beat out-- I mean, the competition was fierce, and I was just really in shock, really in shock. And just addressing diversity, I think that a friend pointed out to me you're the biggest black lesbian publisher, dare I say it, in the world, not just the U.S. You've won the most lammies. And I was like okay, I guess. And the weight just immediately descended. I was like, but I haven't published any history books, no mystery books, all the stuff that I want to do. So more diversity even within black LGBT publishing, the wherewithall to put more-- to contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Yeah. >> Bryan Borland: In five years since I fell into this, Sibling Rivalry Press has managed to somehow win the Lambda Literary Award in gay poetry and then just this year in lesbian poetry, which blows my mind because five years ago, I was on the outside of all this, and I think being on the outside is what has helped us grow, and what it's shown me is there are so many people on the outside that are hungry to be brought in. And so my goal is to bring those people in, to give people that safe space to create a safe space all over, to continue to do that. That's all I want to do. >> Jennifer Joseph: At the risk of never winning a lammy or a publishing triangle award again, I'd just like to say that I would just like to see LGBTQQI publishing not exist. I want to see it 100 percent acceptable, out from the margins, into the mainstream and just be part of the fabric and culture of the United States and the whole world, that all the things that keep people separate will disappear, the clearly defined margins, the boundaries, the definitions, the parsing of this one is this and this-- everybody should just be self autonomous, self defined and crfeate great writing. Just great writing. Tell their stories. Tell the truth, darn it. And you can mask it in fiction, but reflect a unique perspective, a unique voice in telling a universal story that everybody who's human can just tap into and feel okay about or not okay about and want to make changes that are necessary for the world to become a more just place. >> William Johnson: And on that note, I think-- do we have time for questions? Do we have time? >> Jennifer Joseph: Do you have questions? >> William Johnson: Do people have questions? Okay. So, I guess we'll take questions for the panel. >> I would like to know particularly for Lisa and Jennifer why your presses are named the way they are named. We already know from you, but-- >> Lisa C. Moore: Oh. RedBone Press is named RedBone Press because when I moved from Connecticut down to Atlanta-- I moved around a bit depending on what occupation I had, but when I moved to Atlanta, within black communities, my skin color is what somebody would call red or red bone. And coming from New Orleans, I mean, there's so many different shades of blackness in New Orleans, it's ridiculous. Even within my own family. But when I moved to Atlanta, everybody's, "Hey, what's up, red bone? Say, red bone. Smile red bone." So, I was like, all right. I wanted my press to be something that black people would immediately know was a black owned press. So I called it RedBone Press. >> Jennifer Joseph: When I started Manic D when I was 23, I had a really [inaudible] sense of humor. I think I still do to a certain extent. And I really liked presses that had names like Permanent Press and Allen Corn Bloom's [assumed spelling] original. He did Coffee House, but his first press was called Truth Based Press. And so there's a statistic that poets have a higher incidence of bipolar disorder then the general population. So I thought Manic D Press would be an amusing name for a poetry publisher. That's how we started out. And so it's kind of hilarious because as the time went on, the young people would be like Manic D, is that like a hip hop thing? Like [inaudible] whatever. I'm like, "Sure, yeah, sure, yeah." Because hip hop wasn't invented when I started Manic D. If the kids want to think that makes it hip, right on. >> Lisa C. Moore: Yo, Manic D. >> Jennifer Joseph: Exactly. Exactly. So, that's where it came from. And of course when I started and I would call up reviewers to try and get them to review the books, they are just looking for a way to say no. So they'd be like, "We don't review psychology books." I'm like, "I don't publish psychology books. Please don't hang up." Very interesting. >> Bryan Borland: I just now got your presses name. I've been saying it for years. Just this minute. And I have a psychology degree. Just this minute. >> Thank you so much. I think I'm on. My name is NJ [assumed spelling] Mitchell, and I'm artistic director here in D.C., and you are absolutely right. Your books are very performable. I wanted to go back to the second question that you asked the panelists as far as categories with what is a gay and lesbian book because I think that that question is so important to addressing how we open up to the media, the diversity in our community, and I think it is the way to lead in closing the gap between-- instead of just saying that making all things come together in the press if we close that gap with not separating out categories from this point to that one. So my question is is that a serious contemplation that's happening at Lambda? >> William Johnson: Oh yeah. It's a constant-- it is a constant discussion. Or as the academics would say, it's a constant discourse that is happening on the site, and I have my own views. I do think there is a gay aesthetic that something can be-- have straight characters and still have a very gay aesthetic. Some people might disagree with what I think. I think it's a sense of-- it's an outsider insider aesthetic. I think like [inaudible] , like knowing something is ridiculous but at the same time it's very important and serious. I think that's a very kind of gay aesthetic. So yeah, so I do think there are aesthetics that are gay, that go beyond if the characters are actually having sex or not. But that's my definition. People in the panel may disagree that that is a gay aesthetic or not, but I do think there are gay aesthetics. >> Lisa C. Moore: Oh, you're asking me? >> William Johnson: I mean, I don't know. Did I answer your question? Yes. It's an outsider, insider, and when you have an outsider insider, it forms a certain sensibility and that sensibility shows up in the art that you produce, and I think having a certain-- an experience as being a gay man moving through the world or a lesbian moving through the world, that sensibility is produced in a sense of aesthetics. So yes. I do. >> Jennifer Joseph: I like that you used the word camp to illustrate your point because I agree with you in that, that I think that certainly-- we're published four books for Alvin Orloff, and he's a stylist. His writing is very high stylized, but his camp aesthetic runs so deeply through all of his work, and it's hysterically funny, and it doesn't matter which time period he's writing about. And I agree with you on that completely. Interesting. >> Bryan Borland: I think the next generation will really determine a lot of this. What we're seeing even in Arkansas is the younger generation moving through things without the labels just like you talked about. And so I do think we're closer than we realize to a time when those labels won't necessarily carry the same weight or power, though I think that sometimes people will still crave them. >> Lisa C. Moore: Oh, I agree with him. You're welcome. Question? Criticism? Comment? Lunch? No. >> William Johnson: All right. So, any closing comments from the panel? If not, we can-- >> Jennifer Joseph: I just want to mention that I know that RedBone identifies mainly as a black lesbian pass because you published Marvin K. White who's one of my-- I love Marvin White's poetry. If you're not familiar with Marvin K. White's poetry, Marvin is-- he's terrific. Holy smokes. You should friend him on Facebook because he posts hilarious stuff too. It's so funny. Some of the poetry pals, it's like they don't even know they're writing poetry anyway. >> Lisa C. Moore: One of his books, called Status, he presented to me along with [inaudible] and said by the way, there's an extra book. It's his Facebook posts for a year. >> Jennifer Joseph: He's marvelous. >> Lisa C. Moore: Yeah. I mean, I started out as initially only wanting to publish black lesbian books because at the time I thought that there were still black gay owned presses, but there weren't. Those black gay men had died of AIDS and so I subsequently took on black gay men authors and Marvin was the first one. And then I reprinted In the Life and Brother to Brother because both of those books had gone out of print through Allison and just people kept approaching me asking about those books, and the fact that academics were saying that we still teach them but we're xeroxing all this stuff. So I went about and contacted the estates for both books all at the same time. It was a labor of love type of thing, but yeah, black gay men and lesbians. It's-- I haven't gotten a manuscript from a black trans writer yet. That is really excellent. So, I'm waiting. >> Bryan Borland: In closing, I would just like to thank Mark and the Library for having us here today. One more full circle moment for me. I was 15, I think, came to D.C., school trip and saved up all this money to come here. We got here. It was the week that the government shut down. And so instead of going to see everything, we went everyday to the mall, the actually mall, not the mall, the stores. So, of course, I went to the bookstore and I bought my first queer book, which was a novel by Dennis Cooper, which was pretty heavy for a 15-year-old to read, but I actually had the courage to buy it. It's a big city. I can do it here. And I hid it under my coat and read it on the way-- the plane home. And so here I am today. If I could show that 15-year-old where I am today how magical that would be, and it gets me. It does. I want to go back in time and say, "Just hang on, baby." >> Jennifer Joseph: Wow, cool. I just wanted to mention one other thing. This is a Manic D book from 1991 called The Roots of a Thousand Embraces by a poet named Juan Felipe Herrera [assumed spelling] who is now the U.S. poet laureate. And so Manic D published him more than 20 years ago, and it just-- I can't tell you how delighted I am that one of our authors is U.S. poet laureate. And this is the whole thing. Manic D-- it's all the folks who have been traditionally marginalized by society, this is my [inaudible]. Let's move them closer to center until they're recognized, and this was a great moment to have Juan Felipe recognized and become the new U.S.-- the first Mexican American. I [inaudible] has nothing at all to do with LGBT publishing. >> William Johnson: It's all right. It's all right. >> Jennifer Joseph: It's a Manic D [inaudible]. >> William Johnson: It's all right. >> Jennifer Joseph: Great moment. Great moment. >> William Johnson: I just want to say thank you to Library of Congress and thank you all for coming and please I guess afterwards seek out the publishers to make sure you have their contact information so you know how to buy their books. >> Lisa C. Moore: Some of us might be selling books right here. >> William Johnson: Don't steal them. >> Jennifer Joseph: Take them home. >> William Johnson. Yes. So in closing, as Billie Holiday says, thank you for your time and your money. Have a good rest of pride month. >> Mark Manivong: And please stop next door to see a book display of newly acquired LGBT materials. After that, there's a reception and another display in the Rosenwald Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building. If you just go the rare book reading room, the Rosenwald Room is right acreoss the hallway from that so please stop by, and you might be able to talk to some of our guests today. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.