A Great Gay Book: Stories of Growth, Belonging, and Other Queer Possibilities

Fitzgibbon debuts with a collection of visual art, essays, short stories, poetry, and interviews from the archives of the queer magazine Hello Mr., which he founded in 2012, printing 10 issues over the magazine’s six-year run. Listeners don’t need to be familiar with the magazine to enjoy the collection, but some may want to check out the print edition of Fitzgibbon’s book to access the images and photos. The majority of the writers and artists are cisgender gay men, with limited contributions from other queer people, including lesbians and trans women. The text is frank and overt in discussion of the subject matter. The formats and topics vary widely from academic discussions of censorship in queer literature and the reclamation of the word “queer” to literary speculative fiction stories and essays about the Grindr generation. Lee Osorio does an excellent job differentiating between voices across the 50-plus pieces. He is especially skillful in narrating the interviews, but listeners may still regret not hearing the authors narrate their own works.