Inkandescent

Homography: mapping multiple perspectives of a single subject; words with same form, different meaning (see gay); homosexual history approached through autobiography; projective transformation (from personal to political plane); the third poetry collection from Polari Prize longlisted Nathan Evans, host of Bold Queer Poetry Soirée, edited by Joelle Taylor. George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Derek Jarman and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern are just some of the icons you’ll find within poems exploring queer heritage through queer relationships, using imagery drawn from the natural world and the underworld of fetish, in forms as diverse as the LGBTQ+ community, with humour, hope and honesty.

A memoir from the writer of BENT with a foreword by Ian McKellenSherman takes us on a journey through America in the mid twentieth century, starting in New Jersey – where he was born in the 1930s to a Jewish immigrant family – ending on Broadway with the premier of his seminal play Bent starring Richard Gere. On route, we encounter other famous performers including Meryl Streep, Bee Gees, Joan Baez, but the scene-stealing character is always his father – a charismatic narcissist who might have given Trump a run for his money. We stop off in Woodstock, Los Angeles and London – a city Martin would eventually make home; he relays his story with self-depreciating humour as he struggles to make it in theatre, with his sexuality, and under the shadow of the inheritable disease that killed his mother tragically early – a disease from which he finds himself finally free, as he turns forty in the book''s closing pages.Editor Nathan Evans says, ''It''s an honour to be working with Martin on his memoir: he''s such an important cultural figure, and a mentor for me, personally. I remember being nineteen, sat in the back of my parents'' car surrounded by boxes: I was on my way back to university, learning lines for a play I was in later that term. Mum turned around and asked what it was about; I didn''t need to answer: I simply showed her the cover, with those four bold letters. Although it would take her some more months to ask the next question, she knew then; I am just one of the many, many young men – from 1979 right through to the present – who''ve been so emboldened by Bent. This is the story of the man who had the honesty, and the bravery to write it.''

Following on from One Last Song—Evans’ debut novella about queer elders—his debut short story collection journeys the other end of the rainbow spectrum, and will be published in February 2025 to mark LGBTQ+ History Month. In nine stories spanning from the end of the twentieth century to the end of the world as we know it, he explores our youthful years through a character of each of the ages between sixteen and twenty-four—ages oft tick-boxed together. Set in shiny cities, stuffy universities and other alternative universes, they explore issues from class to climate-crisis and chemsex with tenderness, humour and inventiveness.