Shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit AwardA professor of English literature writes the autobiography of his fantasy alter-ego, wanton movie star Gloria Grahame, while his own sexual desires go frustrated.Denton Moulton — a shy, effeminate male professor — lives inside his head, where he is really a long-dead movie star: the glamorous Gloria Grahame, from the golden age of Hollywood. Professor Moulton is desperate to reveal Gloria’s shocking secret before...

A daring foray into the groundbreaking genre of autobiographical fictionSad Old Faggot is the absorbing, sometimes embarrassing, always entertaining story of a lonely, self-obsessed, selfish, deluded, impotent 62-year-old gay man named Sky Gilbert who — despite his best intentions — cannot help but become a stereotype.Sky’s main claim to fame is founding Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 1979. But since leaving Buddies, he’s fallen on hard t...

The Judy Garland of the future tells it like she sees itThe year is 2050, and, contrary to popular belief, Judy Garland did not die in 1969. At the grand old age of 138, she’s re–embraced her real name, Frances Gumm; she’s a feminist scholar, working on her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto; and she’s writing her thesis on a little–known gay Canadian playwright and drag queen, Dash King, whose rather dismal career ended in a plethora of drugs and promiscuous sex. Obsessed with Kin...

“There used to be people dying and they didn’t know why and there was nothing anyone could do, but most of all—no one cared whether we lived or whether we died.”Love, sex, and pharmaceuticals are put to the test when a gay couple’s open relationship is threatened with dangerous consequences.Kurt, a silver fox dance instructor, and his young fiancé, Travis, have an arrangement: when one’s away, they’re allowed to stray . . . as long as they’re safe. One night, over ...

Shakespeare Beyond Science: When Poetry Was the World approaches Shakespeare as rhetorician. This means jettisoning the yearning to find the true meaning of Shakespeare's texts, as Shakespeare wrote at a time when poetry was not meant to be interpreted, but experienced as a window on the world. Sky Gilbert looks at Shakespeare in the context of the style wars that obsessed the early modern period, placing Shakespeare on the side of Lyly, Nashe, Sturm and the Greek rhetorician Hermogenes, a...

Brother Dumb is the memoir of a reclusive American literary icon. Brother Dumb is a how-to manual for meaningful critical engagement with the real world. Brother Dumb is a celebration of innocence, youth, and altruism. Brother Dumb is a true story of self-imposed exile. . . . Brother Dumb is also a work of fiction. Brother Dumb begins in the mid-40s, but spans decades, delving deep into the five tortured relationships that have shaped one writer's psycho-sexual history - but it also detail...

A professor of English literature writes the autobiography of his fantasy alter-ego, wanton movie star Gloria Grahame, while his own sexual desires go frustrated.Denton Moulton ? a shy, effeminate male professor ? lives inside his head, where he is really a long-dead movie star: the glamorous Gloria Grahame, from the golden age of Hollywood. Professor Moulton is desperate to reveal Gloria’s shocking secret before he dies. Does he have the right to tell this woman’s...

Finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for HumourA funny, boisterous, and deeply moving novel about aging hairstylist Roland’s childhood friendship with Birdy O’Day, whose fevered quest for pop music glory drives them apartRoland Keener is an aging hairstylist who’s lived and worked in Winnipeg all his life. He’s more or less content with the quiet and predictable days he shares with his partner of twenty-five years, Tony. That is,...

What is the cause and drive of the impulse to create art? What happens to an individual who is gifted with talent, but finds himself thwarted? Does that creative spark become some kind of death wish? These are the questions Sky Gilbert explores in The Blue House.Taking the form of a memoir, the novel relates the story of Rupert Goldmann, a cello virtuoso by the age of twelve, who becomes a composer, and whose life collapses into depression and possible madness when no orch...