The Lambda Literary Foundation makes a welcome return to Los Angeles

BY CHRISTOPHER RICE
PHOTOS BY DONNA ACETO

Who says nobody reads books in L.A.? Out-of-towners, that's who. Out-of-towners who have only spent a few days here, usually stranded at some convention hotel downtown, or stuck on the sofa of an old college friend. No doubts about it, our primary industries are music and filmed entertainment but let us not forget that this is also the town that fostered Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, and Joan Didion.

There is most certainly a tradition of the written word here. It is a tradition of incisive, contrarian voices that provide us with an enlightening alternative to the behemoth of popular culture and the fantastical illusions it derives profit from. Los Angeles writers helped invent noir, a genre where the pen is the sword that cuts away at the dark underbelly of every grand human ambition that shaped the American west.

So is it any wonder that great LGBT writers and thinkers such as John Rechy, Patricia Nell Warren, Felice Picano, and the late, greats Joseph Hansen, Paul Monette, and Betty Berzon, found a home here where they could challenge notions of sexuality and gender that were being used to trample our civil rights?

Los Angeles is a city of big dreams but not all of those dreams involve limousines and three-picture deals. Some of them are dreams of equality, tolerance, and social justice, and are just as ambitious and audacious as the yearning hopes of a thousand young would-be starlets.

For Lambda Literary Foundation, which will open its doors in L.A. in late May after 20 years on the East Coast, the dream is one of greater visibility for all forms of LGBT writing. We are, to put it simply, the only game in town when it comes to finding ways to promote and unite our country's LGBT writers in the face of an increasingly uncertain publishing climate, which has cast the fate of our most beloved gay bookstores into serious jeopardy. By moving here, we will join a thriving network of organizations that serve and elevate our community such as the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives and the Point Foundation.

The Big Apple is no longer the epicenter of LGBT publishing. In fact, after a decade of many small and independent presses doing a yeoman's job of LGBT publishing, L.A. is now the platform that will allow us to reach the breadth of our national audience in a cost-effective and media savvy manner.

Last year, for example, dedicated LGBT readers in the Coachella Valley responded enthusiastically when we held a fundraiser at my mother's (novelist Anne Rice) home in Rancho Mirage—further proof that the West Coast is both literate and receptive to our organization's goals. The Foundation's groundbreaking weeklong immersive retreat for LGBT writers was born in Southern California as well, on the campus of the University of Judaism, off Mulholland Drive. We are also the only organization in the country to consistently honor the very finest in LGBT writing with a well-known and inclusive awards ceremony held each year to coincide with the Book Expo of America. This year the 20th annual Lambda Literary Awards will be held at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood on Thursday, May 29.

Visit our Web site at www.lambdaliterary.org and become a member. This is another way you can welcome the Lambda Literary Foundation to town and prove to all your friends in other parts of the country that we too, despite our sunshiny dispositions and our penchant for bottled water and metaphysics, value the written word as a vehicle for creative and political and spiritual expression.

But we're more than just book people. Like all effective organizations serving our community, the Lambda Literary Foundation seeks to protect a cherished community resource from the twin devils of our own apathy and the homophobia that still exist among the mainstream. Join us in our efforts to demonstrate why our written words must be protected, and help us to counter the forces that would silence them forever.