Items

• Gay sunshine interviews. Volume 1
  In 1975, the editor of the ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’, Winston Leyland (1940-), founded the related book imprint Gay Sunshine Press, which published volumes of interviews. Most of the interviews had originally been published in the journal, which began its interview series with gay writers, artists and performers in 1973. This first volume includes interviews with William Burroughs, Jean Genet and Christopher Isherwood. Leyland conducted several of the interviews and noted that they all highlight “a definite gay sensibility in the arts”.
• Saint Genet : actor and martyr
  First published in French in 1952, this biography of Jean Genet (1910-1986) is shown here in English translation. Written by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers and writers Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), this work is the first volume of and introduction to ‘The Complete Works of Genet’. Considering him a man out of his time, Sartre outlines Genet’s life from his birth and abandonment as a foundling child, through his times as a thief, prisoner, vagrant, sex worker and later, playwright and novelist. Genet was also an out gay man who both wrote about and was imprisoned for this part of his life. Two works by Genet, ‘Querelle of Brest’ and ‘Treasures of the Night – The Collected Poems of Jean Genet’, were also seized during the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids.