Richard Labonte is currently accepting gay erotic writing for two upcoming Cleis Press titles.


City Boys

Editor: Richard Labonte
Publisher: Cleis Press
Deadline: April 30, 2007

Not many gay boys are born in the Castro, West Hollywood, or Chelsea – or in Dallas’s Oak Lawn, San Diego’s Hillcrest, Atlanta’s Midtown, St. Louis’s Central West End, Seattle’s Capitol Hill, or any of America (and the world’s) urban gay centers. These queer and queer-friendly neighborhoods are magnets that attract boys just coming out or men who come out late, oases of fag-friendly faces that seduce country boys into city life, suburban kids into the inner city, cyber kids into the real queer world.

Cleis Press is looking for stories – erotic fiction, or erotic autobiography with a strong narrative tone – for an anthology about discovering sex and a sexual community, about the “click” of understanding that there are others like us, about reading (or misreading) the codes that (for better or worse) define queer life. We want sex-charged stories that chart the geographic, the emotional, even the spiritual transition to a centered erotic self.

Original submissions under 7,000 words are preferred, though work that has appeared online will be considered. Queries and stories as .doc files to: Richard Labonte at cleiscityboys@gmail.com . Deadline: April 30, 2007, for Fall 2007 publication.

Best Gay Erotica 2008

Edited by Richard Labonte, judged by Emanuel Xavier
Publisher: Cleis Press
Deadline: April 30, 2007

Short stories, novel excerpts, memoirs, narrative artwork, essays – original or reprint – are now being accepted for Best Gay Erotica 2008, to be published by Cleis Press in late fall of 2007.

Maximum length preferred: 6,000 words; no minimum. Reprints must have appeared in print or online, or been scheduled to appear, between July 2006 and June 2007.

BGE is not a “theme” anthology, so anything goes – any fantasy, all flesh, any kink, every genre – as long as the work is intensely erotic, lusciously literary, and quite, quite queer.

Deadline for submissions is April 30, 2007 for late Fall 2007 publication; 35-40 stories will be selected by series editor Richard Labonte from among the submissions, with winners chosen from the finalists by this year’s judge, Emanuel Xavier – author of the novels PIER QUEEN and CHRIST-LIKE and the poetry collection AMERICANO, and editor of the anthology BULLETS & BUTTERFLIES; he appears in the Logo film THE SKI TRIP and was featured on RUSSELL SIMMONS PRESENTS DEF POETRY SEASON 3; and he is the founder of the HOUSE OF XAVIER. For more info: www.emanuelxavier.com

Queries and submissions to: bge2008@gmail.com, in .doc format.

Thanks for forwarding these to me, Jen!

You can find Maria on MySpace here and read her current call for essays on femme identity here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.