Items

• A thirsty evil : seven short stories
  Gore Vidal (1925-2012) was a writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and screenplays, on a diverse range of subjects, published across many decades. Some of Vidal’s works centre on gay characters or themes, including some of the tales featured in this collection of seven stories. This edition, which was seized in the raids, was published by Gay Sunshine Press, although it is a reprint of the 1956 first edition published by Zero Press. Additionally, some of the stories had originally been published in magazines. Readers, therefore, had twenty-five years of access to this book’s contents prior to the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. The front cover shows an illustration by Joe Fuoco.
• Cute : and other poems
  A collection of around thirty poems, many of which had previously appeared in gay publications such as ‘Fag Rag’ and ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ as well as the avant-garde literary review ‘New – American and Canadian Poetry’. Everhard’s writing is moving, personal and direct. ‘For Marcie’ details the complicated feelings of the speaker on sleeping with a woman to whom he is unable to come out. ‘Reasons Why I Love You’ and ‘Enemy’ explore a love affair with a man named Richard – and its aftermath. The book’s cover features a drawing of a boy, face-on and in the foetal position, and on the inside flyleaf there is a sketch of a nude young man, all by Joe Fuoco. Born in 1946, Everhard died of AIDS in 1986.
• Gay fiction journal. No. 47 : anthology of fiction/poetry/prose
  ‘Gay Sunshine’ was published, in tabloid newspaper format, between 1970 and 1982. The first issues focussed on radical gay politics and liberation, but when Winston Leyland (1940-) became editor in 1971, he included an emphasis on literature. Leyland made the decision to publish this issue, which became the final one, in book format, as it was less ephemeral and easier to preserve than a newspaper. The issue contains poetry, fiction and prose, most of it previously unpublished, including the first English translation of Paul Verlaine’s story ‘A Draw’. The book also features illustrations, and the cover is by Joe Fuoco, who also illustrated other seized books, Gore Vidal’s ‘A Thirsty Evil’ and Jim Everhard’s ‘Cute’.