Posted on 19. Nov, 2014 by Alec Johnsson in Features, News

This week in the LGBT-themed arts:
Jaswinder Bolina writes an essay for the Poetry Foundation on the vulnerability of MFA candidates to classist isolation, and the fallacies of believing that poetry is less relevant today.
Slate chronicles the brief but influential (and possibly romantic) relationship between the two most crucial English gay poets of World War I: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.
On December 2, the New York Public Library is hosting a talk with Ayana Mathis and Matt Brim about the latter’s forthcoming book James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination.
Joshua Rothman offers a fresh perspective on the current conflation of literary fiction and genre fiction, using Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven as his jumping-off point.
The Cut interviews avant-garde fashion designer Jeremy Scott about coming of age, controversies, celebrities and his new book, which has a cover that uniquely employs the Droste effect.
Slate has posted an exclusive excerpt from Philip Gefter’s new biography on Sam Wagstaff, the foremost patron and boyfriend of groundbreaking late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
There is also an excerpt, on Vulture, from gay director Justin Simien’s companion book to his film Dear White People, about how reality television perpetrates stereotypes.
The Poetry Foundation also discusses this year’s Miami Book Fair International–which will also feature a commemoration of James Baldwin–with co-organizer Adam Fitzgerald.
The Hollywood Reporter covers the recent reunion–in Orange County, California–of Stephen Sondheim and the original cast of Into the Woods, which debuted in San Diego in 1987.
This past week saw this year’s annual Bent-Con, an LGBT-flavored science fiction and comic book convention in Los Angeles. Here’s a photo essay of the event.
Dan Schulman and Dana Goldstein reveal the process that their books went through from original conception, through development, to the bestseller list.
Joan Allen, William H. Macy, and Brie Larson are among the actors set to star in a Lenny Abrahamson-directed adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room.
Dave Holmes, TV personality and  columnist for Vulture, is at work on his first book, an autobiographical comedy tentatively titled Party of One.
– See more at: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/11/19/a-fresh-perspective-on-the-genre-fiction-debate-james-baldwin-and-the-queer-imagination-and-more-lgbt-news/?utm_source=Lambda+Literary+Review+November+14th%2C+2014&utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_medium=email#sthash.DsOFJnGf.dpuf