Still More Stubborn Stars – a story that reflects on traditional Acadian culture in a modern world

posted Tuesday, January 25, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

STILL MORE STUBBORN STARS follows the story of Roger, a hapless but enthusiastic Come-from-Away who, arriving in Prince Edward Island with his family as a child, struggles to figure out the ‘Island’ way of life.Roger eventually rises to power, founding the sprawling Acadian Culture Centre in rural western PEI. Here he becomes an impresario of Acadian kitsch and a catalyst of […]

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David Sedaris is back with “A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)”

posted Saturday, January 22, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

There’s no right way to keep a diary, but if there’s an entertaining way, David Sedaris seems to have mas­tered it. After his best selling, Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, he’s back with a follow up, A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020). If it’s navel-gazing you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place; ditto treacly […]

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Last Night at the Telegraph Club – lesbian teen love in 1950s America

posted Friday, January 21, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.But America in 1954 is not a […]

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The Story of My Life – how one intersex non-binary individual struggles for acceptance

posted Monday, January 17, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

It’s not easy “choosing not to choose,” especially for a nonbinary teen in 2007. Corey was born intersex, but their father and stepmother didn’t make a big deal about it. Then Corey’s dad dies suddenly. Now Corey’s disapproving mother wants Corey to “pick a side”. Corey’s old enough to say no to medical intervention—but not […]

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The Girl Who Was Convinced Beyond Reason That She Could Fly

posted Saturday, January 15, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

The Girl Who Was Convinced Beyond Reason That She Could Fly is a visionary young-adult illustrated novel about Eggs, a homeless girl who knows how to fly. In a rusted unnamed city full of five-dollar hotels and flea markets, a young homeless girl named Eggs is trying to make her way in the world. She’s […]

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High-Risk Homosexual – memoir looks at being gay and Latinx in a machismo world

posted Tuesday, January 11, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez’s uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at thirteen years old to become a man. Readers follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse […]

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Damn Shame: A Memoir of Desire, Defiance and Show Tunes

posted Monday, January 10, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

DAMN SHAME: A Memoir of Desire, Defiance and Show Tunes is funny, moving, bawdy, and powerful. Written by 62-year-old actor, erotic provocateur and anti-ageist, anti-body shaming, pro-sexuality advocate David Pevsner. Over the course of his 40-year career in show business, he has done it all. He’s acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in independent films and numerous TV network shows […]

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Vancouver Vice – a look at the gritty history of Vancouver’s West End

posted Saturday, January 8, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a volatile period in the history of Vancouver, where broad social and cultural changes were afoot. This was perhaps most clearly evident in the West End, the well-known home to the city’s tight-knit gay community that would soon be devastated by the AIDS epidemic. But the West End’s […]

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The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran the Swinging Sixties

posted Friday, January 7, 2022

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

In the fifties and sixties, in the period leading up to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality and the founding of the Gay Liberation movement, a group of gay men behind the scenes of rock’n’roll was changing pop, politics and society for good. Through a mix of new interviews and contemporary reports, Darryl W. Bullock shines […]

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A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan

posted Saturday, December 18, 2021

by: Bryen Dunn in Books

Shane MacGown is a punk poet protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon, and accidental creator of one of the most controversial Christmas songs ever made.  The complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues’ notorious frontman from outcast to national treasure has never been told – until now. Fairytale of New York is a song about […]

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