Mark Merlis

Mark Merlis is an American writer and health policy analyst. He became an independent consultant in 2001, writing papers for government agencies and for organizations such as AARP, the American Cancer Society, and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Born in Framingham, Massachusetts and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Merlis attended Wesleyan University and Brown University. He subsequently took a job with the Maryland Department of Health to support himself while writing. In 1987, he took a job with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress as a social legislation specialist, and was involved in the creation of the Ryan White Care Act.

Beginning in the 1990s, Merlis published a series of novels. His first novel about a closeted

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Paul Russell

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Paul Russell received his doctorate from Cornell in 1983 for a dissertation on the novelist Vladimir Nabokov and is currently a Professor in the English Department at Vassar College.

His fourth novel, The Coming Storm won the 2000 Ferro-Grumley Award for Gay Male Fiction.

His short fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Black Warrior Review, and Carolina Quarterly.
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Joan Didion

Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United Stat
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Dava Sobel

Dava Sobel is an American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics. Her books include Longitude, about English clockmaker John Harrison; Galileo's Daughter, about Galileo's daughter Maria Celeste; and The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars about the Harvard Computers.
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Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson (1937-2005) was an American journalist and author, famous for his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become the central figures of their stories. He is also known for his promotion and use of psychedelics and other mind-altering substances (and to a lesser extent, alcohol and firearms), his libertarian views, and his iconoclastic contempt for authority. He committed suicide in 2005.
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Christopher Isherwood

English-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the basis for the musical Cabaret (1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.

With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .

After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932)
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James Baldwin

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.

James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.

He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France
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Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst is an English novelist, and winner of the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.

He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford graduating in 1975; and subsequently took the further degree of Master of Literature (1979). While at Oxford he shared a house with Andrew Motion, and was awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1974, the year before Motion.

In the late 1970s he became a lecturer at Magdalen, and then at Somerville College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1981 he moved on to lecture at University College London. In 1997, he went on an Asia book tour in Singapore.

In 1981 he joined The Times Literary Supplement and was the paper's deputy editor from 1982 to 1995.

He lives in London.
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Edmund White

Edmund Valentine White III was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer, and essayist. He was the recipient of Lambda Literary's Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
White was known as a groundbreaking writer of gay literature and a major influence on gay American literature and has been called "the first major queer novelist to champion a new generation of writers."
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Paul Monette

Online Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to
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Paul Russell

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Paul Russell received his doctorate from Cornell in 1983 for a dissertation on the novelist Vladimir Nabokov and is currently a Professor in the English Department at Vassar College.

His fourth novel, The Coming Storm won the 2000 Ferro-Grumley Award for Gay Male Fiction.

His short fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Black Warrior Review, and Carolina Quarterly.
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Stephanie Cowell

THE MAN IN THE STONE COTTAGE, a novel of the Brontë sisters, is set in 1846 Yorkshire, where the three sisters - Charlotte, Anne and Emily - navigate precarious lives marked by heartbreak and struggle. Charlotte faces rejection from the man she loves, while their blind father and troubled brother add to their burdens. No one will publish their poetry or novels. Amidst this turmoil, Emily encounters a charming shepherd on her solitary walks on the moor, yet no one else has ever seen him. Several years later, Charlotte, who is now the successful author of Jane Eyre, sets out to find him. THE MAN IN THE STONE COTTAGE is a poignant exploration of sisterly bonds and the complexities of perception, asking whether what feels real to one person can
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Truman Capote

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Truman Capote was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognised literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "non-fiction novel." At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

He was born as Truman Streckfus Persons to a salesman Archulus Persons and young Lillie Mae. His parents divorced when he was four and he went to live with his mother's relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. He was a lonely child who learned to read and write by himself before entering school. In 1933, he moved to New York City to live wi
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Emma Cline

Emma Cline is an American writer and novelist, originally from California. She published her first novel, "The Girls", in 2016, to positive reviews. The book was shortlisted for the John Leonard Award from the National Book Critics Circle and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize.
Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Tin House, Granta and The Paris Review.
In 2017 Cline was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.
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Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka lives and works in Singapore. He has written advertisements, rock songs, travel stories, and bass lines. This is his first novel.
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Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the American Book Award and the MacArthur “Genius Grant," he has also worked as a line cook, tobacco harvester, nursing home volunteer, and fast-food server, the latter becoming inspiration for The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts and New York City.
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William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearance
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Garth Greenwell

Garth Greenwell is the author, most recently, of Small Rain, which won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. His first novel, What Belongs to You, won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book. He is also the co-editor, with R.O. Kwon, of the bestselling anthology KINK: Stories. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, The Yale Review, and Harper’s, among others. His hono
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Patrick Nathan

Patrick Nathan is the author of Some Hell, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Republic, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, The Baffler, and elsewhere. he lives in Minneapolis.
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Thomas Grattan

Not to be confused with Thomas Colley Grattan

Thomas Grattan's short fiction has appeared in several publications, including One Story, Slice, and The Colorado Review, has been shortlisted for a Pushcart Prize, and was listed as a notable stories in Best American Short Stories. He has an MFA in Fiction Writing from Brooklyn College and has taught middle school English for more than a decade. He lives in New York City.
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Jordy Rosenberg

Jordy Rosenberg is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His novel, Confessions of the Fox, was published in 2018 by Random House US/Canada, Allen and Unwin AUS/NZ, and Atlantic Books UK. In 2021 Paseka published Confessions in Czech. A new novel, Night Night Fawn, is forthcoming from Random House/One World in 2026.
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Eliza Clark

Eliza Clark has relocated from her native Newcastle back to London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. She works in social media marketing, recently having worked for women’s creative writing magazine Mslexia. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s ‘Young Writers’ Talent Fund’. Clark’s short horror fiction has been published with Tales to Terrify, with an upcoming novelette from Gehenna and Hinnom expected this year. She hosts podcast You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? with her partner, where they discuss film and television which squanders its potential. Boy Parts is her first novel. You can find her @FancyEliza on both Twitter and Instagram.
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Blair Fell

Blair Fell writes and lives in New York City. Blair’s television work includes Queer as Folk, and the Emmy Award–winning California Connected. He’s written dozens of plays including the award-winning plays Naked Will, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, and the downtown cult miniseries Burning Habits. His personal essays have appeared in HuffPost, Out, Daily News (New York), and more. He’s a two-time winner of the prestigious Doris Lippman Prize in Creative Writing from the City College of New York, including for his early unfinished draft of The Sign for Home. Concurrently with being a writer, Blair has been an ASL interpreter for the Deaf since 1993, and has also worked as an actor, producer, and director.
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Tom Crewe

TOM CREWE was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction.

The New Life is his first novel. Crewe says:

'This is the book I knew I wanted to write long before I actually wrote it. I hope it reveals to readers an unfamiliar Victorian England that will surprise and provoke, inhabited by a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view.'
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Eric Schnall

Eric has worked on and off Broadway as a producer and marketing director for more than twenty-five years. He won a Tony Award for the Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and a Lucille Lortel Award for Fleabag. He has also written about techno and electronic music for Billboard and Revolution, profiling DJs and musicians from around the world. Eric lives in New York City with his partner and his dog. I MAKE ENVY ON YOUR DISCO—winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction—is his first novel.

Instagram: @ericschnall
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