Art and Sex in Greenwich Village : Gay Literary Life After Stonewall

F. Picano

Almost a decade after the Stonewall rebellion in the political fuse of Gay Liberation in 1969, its impact on the arts remained minimal. While a handful of gay plays, films and a small number of gaythemed books were available, few of these reflected the new, out-of-the-closet realitys of the post-Stonewall scene. That landscape began to change in 1977, when Felice Picano launched a small press devoted to gay books. SeaHorse, and author Larry Mitchell set up his own gay press, Calamus Books. Dramaturge Terry Helbing followed with a line of plays at his JH Press. By 1981 the three men joined forces to create Gay Presses of New York (GPNy), the most visible and influential publisher of gay books of its time. Together they brought out work by then unknown but soon-to-be-established authors such as Harvey Fierstein, Dennis Cooper, Brad Gooch, Joan Larkin, Martin Duberman, Robert Glück, Jane Chambers, Karla Jay, Gavin Dilard, as well as many more up-and-coming poets, novelists, amd playwrights. In the process, GPNy played a vital role in the growth of gay popular culture. Consisting of intimate, sexy, and often hilarious behind-the-scene moments, Art and Sex in Greenwich Village is Picano's first-hand account of that radical period of defiant art and literature.