Items

• A thirsty evil : seven short stories
  Gore Vidal (1925-2012) was a writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and screenplays, on a diverse range of subjects, published across many decades. Some of Vidal’s works centre on gay characters or themes, including some of the tales featured in this collection of seven stories. This edition, which was seized in the raids, was published by Gay Sunshine Press, although it is a reprint of the 1956 first edition published by Zero Press. Additionally, some of the stories had originally been published in magazines. Readers, therefore, had twenty-five years of access to this book’s contents prior to the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. The front cover shows an illustration by Joe Fuoco.
• Adonis García : a picaresque novel
  Set in Mexico City’s Roma district, home to students, bohemians, the marginalised and impoverished, this radical experimental novel by Luis Zapata (1951-2020) follows Adonis García as he makes his “shameless and impudent” way through life, as José Joaquin Blanco puts it in the introduction to this edition. Refusing convention in both content and form, Zapata’s eponymous Adonis sets out his sexually adventurous story as if transcribed from a set of tapes, in a freewheeling, verbatim style which makes bold use of white space. The novel was first published in Mexico in 1979 by Editorial Grijalbo as ‘Las Aventuras, Desventuras y Sueños de Adonis García, El Vampiro de la Colonia Roma’. Translator E.A. Lacey (1938-1995) was also a noted gay poet of the post-Stonewall generation.
• Black men/white men : a gay anthology
  A collection of forty poems, short fiction and non-fiction pieces which explore the intersections of race and sexuality “from the most scholarly to the most explicit”, by authors such as Langston Hughes, Eric Garber and Bruce Nugent. Contributions on sexual stereotyping, discrimination and anti-Black racism within the white gay community are interspersed with several high-quality monochrome photographs and drawings of gay men, both Black and white, pictured separately and in couples. Editor Michael J. Smith founded the advocacy organisation Black and White Men Together in 1980. Chapters sprung up in cities across the United States – there was even, briefly, a Dalston-Hackney branch in London – and the organisation continues today. Smith died of AIDS in 1989 aged 45.
• Bom-Crioulo : the Black man and the cabin boy
  Brazilian novelist Adolfo Caminha (1867-1897) wrote in the Romantic Naturalist tradition. His work, “polemic, provocative, misunderstood”, according to Raul de Sá Barbosa, who introduces this edition, was largely overlooked in conservative Brazil until it began to be revived in the early 1980s. ‘Bom-Crioulo’, which roughly translates as ‘the Good Black Man’, was first published in Rio de Janeiro in 1895, the same year as Oscar Wilde’s trial and just seven years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil. It depicts, frankly and without moralising, the relationship between a formerly enslaved Black man and a fifteen-year-old white cabin boy. E.A. Lacey, a noted gay poet of the post-Stonewall era, who translated ‘Bom-Crioulo’ from Portuguese, also translated Luis Zapata’s ‘Adonis García’ (another seized book) from Spanish.
• Cum : true homosexual experiences from S.T.H. Volume 4
  This volume of “more than 100 sexually explicit stories” is one of a few anthologies culled from ‘Straight to Hell’, the magazine self-published by Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), that were seized during the raids. The collection gathers ‘true’ stories of sexual experiences, sent to the magazine by its readers, interspersed with black-and-white photographs. The book notes that the pictures are posed by professional models, and their inclusion “does not imply that they are necessarily homosexual”. The humour of these publications is reflected in the title of the cover photograph, taken by Mike Arlen – ‘A typical laundry scene in present-day London’.
• Cute : and other poems
  A collection of around thirty poems, many of which had previously appeared in gay publications such as ‘Fag Rag’ and ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ as well as the avant-garde literary review ‘New – American and Canadian Poetry’. Everhard’s writing is moving, personal and direct. ‘For Marcie’ details the complicated feelings of the speaker on sleeping with a woman to whom he is unable to come out. ‘Reasons Why I Love You’ and ‘Enemy’ explore a love affair with a man named Richard – and its aftermath. The book’s cover features a drawing of a boy, face-on and in the foetal position, and on the inside flyleaf there is a sketch of a nude young man, all by Joe Fuoco. Born in 1946, Everhard died of AIDS in 1986.
• Enemy : a novel
  First published in the UK in 1981 as ‘The Deserters’, ‘Enemy’ was based initially on Robin Maugham’s play of the same name, which premiered in Guildford in 1969 before transferring to London. Maugham (1916-1981), the nephew of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham, drew on his experience in the Sahara during the Second World War for this tale of two soldiers, one British and one German, who stumble across each other in the desert. Maugham depicts a friendship that crosses boundaries of class, sexuality and nationality. Supported by Peter Burton, who edited Maugham’s short-story collection ‘The Boy from Beirut’, another of the books seized in ‘Operation Tiger’, ‘Enemy’ was the last book Maugham published before he died.
• Flesh : true homosexual experiences from S.T.H. Volume 2
  The second anthology of readers’ real-life sexual experiences from Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), compiled from his self-published magazine, ‘S.T.H. (Straight to Hell)’ and illustrated with explicit black-and-white nude photographs posed by models. McDonald used newspaper headlines to frame stories, interspersed with "demented interviews with diverse groups of homosexual men”, according to one reviewer, featuring quick-fire questions about sexual likes, dislikes and exploits. Other ‘S.T.H.’ anthologies seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids included ‘Meat’, ‘Cum’ and ‘Sex’. ‘Juice’, the fifth volume in the series, continued to cause problems with the establishment. A review in ‘OUT! New Zealand’s Alternative Lifestyle Magazine’ from December 1991 includes the info “Just released by customs”.
• Game-texts : a Guatemalan journal
  This meditative travelogue is written in a fragmentary style, combining quasi-spiritual musings on the natural world (“See that a stone is a stoning in the same sense that a flower is a flowering”) with casual accounts of sexual encounters with various Guatemalan teenagers. The 1982 mail-order catalogue of Los Angeles bookstore A Different Light puts it bluntly – “Personal reflections & sex with Latin American boys.” Although Erskine Lane (1940-) was awarded a 1976 Fels award for the best non-fiction published by a small-press magazine (‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ no. 26/27, in which it first appeared), the lack of reflection on race, class, colonialism and the power dynamics at play make this an uncomfortable read. Lane also worked for Gay Sunshine Press as a translator from Portuguese and Spanish into English.
• Gay fiction journal. No. 47 : anthology of fiction/poetry/prose
  ‘Gay Sunshine’ was published, in tabloid newspaper format, between 1970 and 1982. The first issues focussed on radical gay politics and liberation, but when Winston Leyland (1940-) became editor in 1971, he included an emphasis on literature. Leyland made the decision to publish this issue, which became the final one, in book format, as it was less ephemeral and easier to preserve than a newspaper. The issue contains poetry, fiction and prose, most of it previously unpublished, including the first English translation of Paul Verlaine’s story ‘A Draw’. The book also features illustrations, and the cover is by Joe Fuoco, who also illustrated other seized books, Gore Vidal’s ‘A Thirsty Evil’ and Jim Everhard’s ‘Cute’.
• 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”.
• Gay sunshine interviews. Volume 2
  This volume contains interviews with gay artists and cultural figures, including Ned Rorem, John Wieners and Samuel M. Steward. It also features Harry Britt, who was a gay member of the legislative San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and succeeded Harvey Milk, who had been the first openly gay man in such a role. Winston Leyland (1940-), the publisher of this book, had been ordained as a priest, a role he abandoned as he became more involved in radical and gay politics. This is most clearly seen in his work as a publisher, which he described as follows – “I see Gay Sunshine Press as a catalyst in the evolving Gay Cultural Renaissance and myself as deeply involved in that process”.
• Meat : how men look, act, walk, talk, dress, undress, taste & smell
  Described in the introduction by ‘Fag Rag’ co-founder and Walt Whitman scholar Charles Shively as “an unprecedented piece of literature”, ‘Meat’ is an anthology of writing from the first forty-seven issues of ‘Straight to Hell (S.T.H.)’, a self-published magazine sometimes known by other titles including ‘The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts’. Created by Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), the publication predominantly contains explicit true stories of gay men’s sexual experiences which have been submitted by readers. These are accompanied by photos of muscular men, not unlike those published in physique magazines, often posed by models from agencies such as the Athletic Model Guild. This collection is published by Gay Sunshine Press, and the back cover includes quotes from readers including Gore Vidal, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.
• Men loving men : a gay sex guide and consciousness book
  Disappointed by the heterosexism of ‘The Joy of Sex’ (1972), Mitch Walker (1951-) produced this practical sex guide for men “who want to love other men” and “be themselves”, in the same year as Charles Silverstein and Edmund White published ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’. Walker also emphasises queer kinship, distinguishing a more emotionally and socially encompassing “gayness” from a medico-scientific “homosexuality”. Explanations of sexual acts such as masturbation and fellatio are interspersed with quotations and images on love and sex between men from other times and cultures. The book is illustrated with expressive line drawings by Bill Warwick and black-and-white photography by David Greene. Copies of ‘Men Loving Men’ sent to ‘Gay News’ in the late 1970s were destroyed by Customs. It also met with Customs’ disapproval in Canada and New Zealand, where it was banned as indecent in 1983.
• My deep dark pain is love : a collection of Latin American gay fiction
  This anthology, edited by Winston Leyland (1940-), presents a selection of short stories, novellas and excerpts from longer works from a wide range of male Argentinian, Mexican, Cuban, Chilean and Brazilian authors. It is illustrated with graphic line-drawings by Argentian artist Jorge Gumier Maier and is a follow up to Gay Sunshine Press’s ‘Now the Volcano’ (1979) which focused on Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. Like the first anthology, Brazilian literature predominates in this collection. It is a collaboration between Leyland, who travelled extensively in Latin America, and frequent Gay Sunshine translator, E. A. Lacey (1938-1995). The two anthologies form part of a small body of books from Gay Sunshine Press with a Latin American focus, including Luis Zapata’s ‘Adonis García’ and Adolfo Caminha’s ‘Bom-Crioulo’, both of which were also seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids.
• Now the volcano : an anthology of Latin American gay literature
  Edited by Winston Leyland (1940-) and published by his Gay Sunshine Press imprint, this book is an anthology of short stories, poems, novel excerpts and a memoir, interspersed with illustrations. The collection presents a snapshot of gay male writing from Latin America, with an emphasis on Brazilian literature, which Leyland notes is the richest, including ‘Bom-Crioulo’ which was first published in 1895 (and which was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’ as a separate title). The book’s title refers to Malcolm Lowry’s Mexican-set novel ‘Under the Volcano’. Translator Erskine Lane’s own novel, ‘Game-Texts – a Guatemalan Journal’, was also published by Gay Sunshine Press and seized during the raids.
• Sex : true homosexual experiences from S.T.H. Volume 3
  “Laughing out loud with a hard-on”, as one reader put it in the back-cover endorsements. This is the third in a series of thirteen anthologies from the self-published magazine ‘S.T.H.’, or ‘Straight to Hell’, which was founded circa 1973 by editor Boyd McDonald (1925-1993) and is still published today. The premise is simple – readers send in their accounts of real-life sexual experiences. These are published with minimal editorial intervention under tongue-in-cheek tabloid-style headlines (‘Priests Expect Students to Put Out’). The articles are illustrated with black-and-white nude photographs posed by models, cut-and-pasted from old magazines. Copies of ‘Sex’ were also seized by Canadian customs officers in the mid-1980s according to newspaper ‘Body Politic’.
• Sex behind bars: a novella, short stories and true accounts
  This Gay Sunshine Press collection is a mix of fictional and non-fictional accounts of the (sexual) experiences of imprisoned gay men. Author Robert N. Boyd, who was a prisoner in Nevada, hoped the book would provide “a true perspective” and believed that this combination of fact and fiction, with some blurring between the two, was the most appropriate method of portraying that truth. Some of the stories and articles had previously been published in magazines such as soft-core pornography lifestyle titles ‘Mandate’ and ‘In Touch’, while others – such as the novella ‘No One Ever Wins’ - are new to this collection. On publication, ‘Sex Behind Bars’ was often advertised as erotica. Although Boyd agreed in an interview that it would be good if the book proved informative, his main aim was to entertain his readers rather than advocate for prison reform.
• Straight hearts' delight : love poems and selected letters, 1947-1980
  Containing thirty years of poetry and numerous letters, this book relates the lives and works of two key figures of the Beat Generation. Documenting chronologically the relationship between Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010), the book is not only a record of their love but also of the milieu in which they lived and worked. The book contains previously unpublished poems and is illustrated, including with a Richard Avedon photograph of the authors naked. Edited by Winston Leyland, the authors were involved in the book’s production and contributed footnotes. As with many Gay Sunshine Press (and Fag Rag) publications, it was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency established by the US Congress.
• Teleny : a novel
  This sexually explicit “Physiological Romance” was first published by pornographer Leonard Smithers in 1893 in a two-volume edition of 200 copies, anonymously and with a false place of publication to deter Victorian censors. Although ‘Teleny’ may have been produced collaboratively, strong hints that Oscar Wilde was at least the principal author were already circulating. It has been attributed to Wilde since the Olympia Press edition of 1954. ‘Teleny’ continued to be reprinted in expurgated editions over the course of the twentieth century. The Gay Sunshine Press edition is, according to editor Winston Leyland, “the first unexpurgated version in English based on the original manuscript”.
• The boy from Beirut : and other stories
  Robin Maugham (1916-1981), Second Viscount Maugham of Hartfield and nephew of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham, wrote short stories, novels, screenplays, plays and non-fiction. “Bisexual, though predominantly homosexual”, as he put it, Maugham published his first short story in 1943 (‘The 1946 Ms’, praised by George Orwell), turning more to gay themes in his post-1970 work. Published posthumously, Maugham’s ‘The Boy from Beirut’ consists of eight short stories, introduced by writer and former editor for ‘Gay News’, Peter Burton. These stories draw partly on Maugham’s time in North Africa during the Second World War and had all previously been published in the UK. The volume closes with Burton’s long interview with Maugham, first published in ‘Gay Sunshine’ magazine in the Summer/Fall edition, 1977 (no. 33/34).
• The boy harlequin : and other stories
  Fourteen short stories from a now little-known American author Girard Kent, the nom-de-plume of a Texan writer named Lon Rogers. Though the collection did well enough for Gay Sunshine Press to bring out a second edition in 1985, its mildly distasteful blend of humour and eroticism has not dated well. Several stories feature sexual relationships between adolescent boys and adult men, and as a perceptive contemporary review in New Zealand magazine ‘Pink Triangle’ noted, the characters feel more like “fantasy material” than fully realised protagonists. ‘The Boy Harlequin’ was Kent’s first book, and he seems to have published nothing further, either under his own name or his pen name.
• The disrobing : sex and satire
  Poet and author Royal Murdoch, known to friends as Kenneth, was born in California in 1898 and moved to Mexico City in the mid-1960s, where he died in 1981. ‘The Disrobing’, ten copies of which were seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids, is a posthumously published collection spanning fifty years, including poetry, diary extracts, letters and part of an unfinished novel. It was edited by Gay Sunshine’s Winston Leyland. Murdoch himself wrote of ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ that “I was already an old man when I first saw an issue” and “each issue brings me a renewed sense of liberation”. Murdoch’s prose works in particular describe life in pre-Stonewall America. His papers are now held by the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
• Treasures of the night : the collected poems
  A collection of six long poems by Jean Genet (1910-1986), first published between 1942 and 1948. They are presented here in a bilingual French/English version for the first time by translator Steven Finch, with the authorisation of Jean Genet and publisher, Éditions Gallimard. The French original occupies the verso (left hand side) and the English is printed on the recto (right hand side) in a facing page layout. Finch describes Genet’s poems as “a rich contribution to the expression of the gay movement and spirit”. This edition also includes the cover artwork of the rare first edition of Genet’s ‘Poèmes’, published by L’Arbalète in 1948, as well as striking, graphic black-and-white drawings by Bill Sullivan.
• Unzipped : a novella and six short stories
  The opening line of the first short story in this collection, aptly illustrated by Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen), gives a representative flavour – “At fourteen, Vincent Conte didn’t know whether he had a big cock or an ordinary one – at fifteen, he found out”. The back cover blurb declares that “Through all seven pieces runs a single theme – the explicitly detailed celebration of male-male sex, the excitement, the romance, the fun of it”. One reviewer for Australian publication ‘OutRage’ was less impressed, however, stating that the illustrations were the most exciting part of the book. American author John Coriolan wrote several other erotic novels from the late 1960s onwards.