WRITERS
SCOTT HEIM, RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ, DAVID LEVITHAN & KIM BRINSTER
One can't help but wonder about the darker layers beneath Scott Heim's (far left) boyish surface. His newest novel, We Disappear, concerns murdered and missing children, while Mysterious Skin (adapted to film by Gregg Araki in 2004), features pedophilia, teenage prostitution, and a possible alien abduction. Heim won't tell readers what to expect in his next book, adding only, "It's often the long periods of thinking that are the primary work."One of today's most incisive literary voices, writer-critic Rigoberto González (second from left) won the American Book Award for his 2006 coming-of-age memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa. Its follow-up, the new short story collection Men Without Bliss, exposes the debilitating effects of Latino machismo culture. This recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant will have his young adult novel, The Mariposa Club, published by Alyson Books in 2009.
In a Twittering era of Facebook play-by-plays, David Levithan (third from left) captures adolescent musing the old-fashioned way. When he's not writing authentic portrayals of queer teens, the editor for PUSH, a Scholastic imprint, oversees anthologies such as July's We Are Quiet, We Are Loud: The Best Young Writers and Artists in America. In October, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, a novel he cowrote, became a hit film starring Michael Cera.
Kim Brinster (far right) has a long association with New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, which bills itself as the world's first gay and lesbian bookstore: She spent 12 years as a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Greenwich Village, when she delivered boxes of books to the store's legendary founder, Craig Rodwell, the gay rights pioneer and onetime lover of Harvey Milk. In 1996 she started managing the store, and two years ago she and her partner, Janet Layard-Liesching, bought the store, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year.
