GLR May-June 2026

Pride Issue: Homo Litterarius FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR

T HE THEME of Homo Litterarius plays on the double meaning of “homo”—let’s translate the Latin as “per son”—and concerns the influence that LGBT figures have exerted on literary culture as well as the loves, heartbreaks, and creative collaborations that have influenced their work. It’s no secret that queer authors and the sublimation of same-sex de sire have helped shape literary culture, and I hope these articles, which visit episodes from the 1600s to the present, will guide you toward LGBT writers, books, and literary events that have been underappreciated or ignored. English author E. F. Benson was famous in his time for the comic Mapp & Lucia novels and dozens of other works, but Sasha Garwood peeks behind the curtain to show what only his intimates knew: that George Wolfe Plank, illustrator of Benson’s The Freaks of Mayfair , was also his lover. Next, İ pek Ş ahinler transports us roughly 1,800 miles westward to Istanbul, delving into James Baldwin’s Turkish sojourn through an interview with his translator and confidante Zeynep Oral. Speaking of Turkey, Matthew Frye-Castillo explores how Yi ğ it Karaahmet’s Summerhouse and three other recent novels suggest that a new subgenre is upon us: fiction in which queer characters not only survive but literally get away with murder. Then Vernon Rosario shares the delightfully campy details of a decidedly less recent novel, 1605’s Island of Hermaphrodites . Moving into the late 20th century, Domenic DeSocio and

Andrew Holleran have written separate essays on Christopher Street magazine fifty years after its founding in 1976, examin ing its outsize impact on LGBT literature and, in Holleran’s case, reconsidering whether nipples really are the windows of the soul (a joke at the time). Another anniversary this year is that of the novel Blackbird , whose author Larry Duplechan marks its pub lication forty years ago by considering its legacy as the first widely read coming-out novel with a Black protagonist. Another landmark was the publication of trans scholar Susan Stryker’s pioneering Transgender History in 2008. A third edi tion has just been published, and Eli Erlick has interviewed Stryker for an update at this critical moment in the battle for civil rights and basic human dignity for trans people. This expanded Pride Issue also includes an Art Memo in which Artemis Kelosaari writes of the love affair between early 20th-century Finnish poets Uuno Kailas and Kaarlo Sarkia. Denise Noe explores one of history’s first recorded nonbinary figures, the Public Universal Friend (1776–1819). And Phil Tar ley interviews documentary filmmaker Rachel Mason, whose newfilm, My Brother’s Killer , looks at the long search for jus tice following the 1990 murder of a gay porn actor. Taken together, this issue’s features demonstrate the multi plicity of LGBT people and experiences and remind us why we have pride in the many elements that make up our community. J EREMY C. F OX

A vivacious vita full of queer relations: the erotic, the pedagogical, the familial, the romantic, the platonic, and, of course, the cinematic .

“ Writing in the Flesh is a brutally honest, hilarious, and super sexy celebration of queer kinship and friendship.” –Peter Dickinson, Simon Fraser University

Writing in the Flesh Essays on My Lives, My Bodies, My Families, My Places, My Movies Thomas Waugh

mqup.ca @McGillQueensUP

TheG & LR

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