I have a short piece of homoerotic fiction up at Wattpad. It was written for a cancelled anthology about queer punks. It’s set in London and features cameos by Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious. Enjoy Join Hands
Beyond ‘Game of Thrones’: Exploring diversity in speculative fiction
A great article about Authors of Color who write Speculative Ficton!
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Guest Review: The Chaos
Here is my review of The Chaos, by Nalo Hopkinson, on Edi Campbell’s blog.
Title: The Chaos
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Date: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2012
Reviewer: Craig Laurance Gidney
In many ways, Sojourner “Scotch” is a typical teenager. She must navigate between her “good girl” persona when at home with her strict parents and her saucier persona at school, where she is a member of a hip hop dance crew. She has broken up with her boyfriend, and her (former) best friend is sniffing around him. And in many ways, Scotch’s problems are unique. She is the light-skinned daughter of a mixed race couple, so she has to deal with the “what are you?” questions all the time. Her older brother has just come back from juvie after being busted by her parents for having marijuana. And a couple more things: Scotch has a weird skin condition, where black, sticky splotches appear on her skin, and she’s been seeing floating horse heads swooping around…
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Muses: The Wildean Aesthete of the Harlem Renaissance
My story “Conjuring Shadows” was inspired by the Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent. As a writer, Nugent’s work was strongly influenced by modernism. It was highly elliptical and poetic. His most famous piece, “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” is a stream of consciousness mediation on art, racial and sexual identity. “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” is also a pioneering work of black gay writing. Nugent was also a painter and illustrator. His illustration work has the sinister eroticism of Cocteau’s scribbles, and the wicked decadence of Aubrey Beardsley, while his paintings are influenced by the Romantics. Like Oscar Wilde, Nugent also penned retold Biblical tales and myths. Nugent was also born in Washington, DC, like yours truly.
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Books I Wish I’d Written: The alchemical novel A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan
Whatever happened to Randall Kenan?
If you like magical realism, you must read his first, and to my knowledge, only published novel, A Visitation of Spirits. The book follows a young closeted black nerd (comic books are his obsession) named Horace. He wants to transform into a bird to escape the religious, homophobic community where he lives. He believes that his desire is the result of demonic possession. The novel chronicles a season in hell, to borrow Rimbaud’s phrase. Keenan’s prose soars and he uses all manner of narrative techniques to convey Horace’s interior emotional landscape. It’s what I would call an alchemical novel, one that transcends the limitations of realistic fiction to reveal greater truths. A Visitation of Spirits is a masterpiece of magical realism and belongs on the same shelf as Toni Morrison and Ben Okri. It is also a seminal work about black gay lives. Anyone who loves lush, surreal language should hunt down a copy!
I wish Kenan would write another book!
Craig Laurance Gidney 
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