When Katherine V. Forrest won the Publishing Triangle Lifetime Achievement Award on March 28 (see page 33), she said, “We have inherited a great literary mantle, because it comes from pioneers of great vision and courage.” Below, we check in on a few of those gay literary icons.

Sasha Alyson loves to start up companies. At age 27, he founded Alyson Publications (now Alyson Books); five years later, in 1985, he founded Bay Windows, New England's largest GLBT newspaper. In 1995, he sold both and created Alyson Adventures, which plans gay and lesbian adventure tours. In 2002, he sold that company to do some traveling himself. During a 2003 visit to Laos, Alyson realized that many children had never seen a book. This led to the creation of his publishing company/literary organization, Big Brother Mouse, to publish and distribute Laotian children's books—several written by Alyson in Lao before he could speak the language. Now in its second year, the company offers more than 65 titles. Prior to Big Brother Mouse, Alyson had written several children's picture books as Johnny Valentine, including The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans.

In 1966, Victor J. Banis wrote (as Don Holliday) The Man from C.A.M.P., featuring gay secret agent Jackie Holmes. “Mostly because I wanted a novel about someone who was out and proud, in a book that ended happily— which is to say, a departure from the usual gloom and doom,” the 71-year-old Banis told PW. By 1968, he'd published eight more tongue-in-cheek C.A.M.P. novels, making this the first gay mystery series. In 2007, Running Press published Longhorns, Banis's first gay novel in nearly two decades. Last year also saw a collection of short stories, Come This Way, and the reissues of 20+ earlier works; Lola Dances and Drag Thing came out earlier this year. Says Banis, “I've been writing short pieces for numerous anthologies and online zines, and with speaking engagements and appearances, workshops and writing classes, I'm having the time of my life.”

Between 1957 and 1962 Ann Bannon published six wildly popular lesbian pulp fiction novels (including Odd Girl Out and Beebo Brinker) for Gold Medal Books, a division of Fawcett paperbacks. Then she disappeared from publishing to raise two daughters and return to school. She became Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences at Sacramento State University and retired in 1997. “I think I flunked retirement,” she says. “I've never been so busy in my life, lecturing, writing, reviewing and traveling all over the place.” She recently sidelined work on her memoir to participate in bringing The Beebo Brinker Chronicles to off-Broadway with producers Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner. Bannon wrote another novel in the early '90s, but admits that “It would need major surgery before it could be seen in print. I think the memoir will consume all my writing time for the forseeable future.”

Nancy K. Bereano founded Firebrand Books in 1985 and for the next 15 years was at the forefront of lesbian and small press publishing. The more than 100 titles Bereano published included several multiple award winners: Dorothy Allison's Trash, the entire Dykes to Watch Out For series by Alison Bechdel, Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories and Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues. She sold Firebrand to her distributor, Inland, in 2001, noting that “the issues in LGBT community became very different—moving away from identity and toward equity issues like marriage and military. Publishing also changed—it was easier and more affordable for a small press to publish a book but harder to distribute when the chains took over and there were fewer independent bookstores.” Bereano now devotes the majority of her time to LGBT aging issues and serves as a consultant on those issues.

“When I came to New York City in 1971 there were 285 publishers; now there are roughly seven,” says Michael Denneny. Denneny found a home at St. Martin's Press in 1976, the same year he helped start Christopher Street magazine and Manhattan's first gay newspaper, The New York Native. “Every editor should have a newspaper and a magazine at their disposal,” quips Denneny. In 1987, he founded the trade paperback line Stonewall Inn Editions, the first (and only) gay-lesbian imprint at a major publishing house. Says Denneny, “[SMP president] Tom McCormack was extraordinarily supportive, he said I just needed to break even and not spend too much money.” Denneny left SMP in 2002, the same year the imprint folded, feeling editing was being squeezed out of corporate publishing. He's now a freelance editor at The Independent Editors Group (www.books.com), which he finds “totally satisfying.”

Barbara Grier and Donna McBride, life partners since 1971, opened Naiad Press in January 1973 and a year later published its first book, The Latecomer by Sarah Aldridge. Naiad shut its doors in 2003 and Bella Books bought its remaining inventory and wrote new contracts with many of Naiad's authors. Says Bella Books president Linda Hill, “We inherited their mailing list, computers and their space, which we quickly outgrew.” Bella Books now publishes 30 titles a year and continues to bring back into print some of Naiad's more popular titles. “Barbara and Donna are happily enjoying their retirement in Florida,” reports Hill.

Before Greg Louganis and Martina Navratilova, Patricia Nell Warren created a gay sports hero in her 1974 novel The Front Runner, about a gay track star, which sold more than 10 million copies and was voted readers' favorite gay/lesbian novel in a Publishing Triangle survey. Warren launched Wildcat Press in 1993, which publishes only her books. “It's a tougher marketplace than when we started,” she says. “There's been a steady erosion of distributors who were friendly to our niche market.” TheFront Runner's film rights were originally optioned in 1975 by Paul Newman; they have since been re-optioned numerous times, but with Warren out of the picture. It wasn't until 2001 that she successfully went to court and secured the film rights for Wildcat International. Warren is currently working on a sequel to her nonfiction collection of sports stories, 2006's The Lavender Locker Room. She's also penning a new novel, Wrong Side of the Tracks, which is set in the closing days of WWII.

Publishing Triangle Awards
At New York City's New School, comedian Kate Clinton hosted the 20th annual Publishing Triangle Awards on April 28, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction, nonfiction and poetry published in 2007. Three legends in gay publishing were honored with special awards. Veteran mystery and SF novelist Katherine V. Forrest won the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. While maintaining her writing career, Forrest was senior editor at Naiad Press for a decade and is currently supervising editor at Spinsters Ink. “It's an extraordinary honor to receive recognition from your peers,” Forrest told the audience. “There are still books to be written, stories to be told and readers waiting to read them. Our glory years are still ahead.”

Carol Seajay and Richard Labonte were honored with the Publishing Triangle's Leadership Award both for their individual achievements and for their work publishing the e-newsletter Books to Watch Out For. Seajay co-founded Old Wives Tales Bookstore in San Francisco in 1976, the same year she began publishing The Feminist Bookstore News, which ran until 2000. Labonte worked with A Different Light Bookstore for 20 years and was a columnist for The Feminist Bookstore News for eight years. He has been the editor of the Best Gay Erotica series since 1997.

Awards in the competitive categories went to a mix of veterans and newbies. A complete list of the winners, together with an overview of the other GLBT awards programs—the Stonewall and Lambda Literary awards—can be found at www.publishersweekly.com/gayawards.—Kevin Howell