Welcome to Hear Us Out. I hope some of you will know—or will get to know—my previous collection, Gay Fiction Speaks: Conversations with Gay Novelists (Columbia University Press, 2000). In some respects, Hear Us Out aims to pick up the story of contemporary gay fiction where that book left off. But if you’re a new initiate—don’t panic. Hear Us Out is presented as an autonomous work. You don’t need to bring anything with you.

Gay Fiction Speaks contains conversations with twelve of the most revered gay novelists writing in English—Dennis Cooper, Patrick Gale, Allan Gurganus, Andrew...

Gary indiana is the author of two story collections and seven novels: Horse Crazy, Gone Tomorrow, Rent Boy, Resentment: A Comedy, Three Month Fever, Depraved Indifference, and Do Everything in the Dark.

Indiana was born in New England in 1950. His first published book was Scar Tissue and Other Stories (New York: Calamus Books/Gay Presses of New York, 1987). This was followed by a book of three short stories, White Trash Boulevard (Woodstock, N.Y.: Hanuman Books, 1988). Indiana’s first novel was Horse Crazy (New York: Grove Press, 1989). Next came Gone Tomorrow (New York: Pantheon, 1993), then Rent Boy (New...

Bernard cooper is the author of two collections of memoirs, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum, the novel A Year of Rhymes, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again.

Cooper was born in Hollywood in 1951. He attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1979. On graduating, he abandoned the visual arts in favour of writing, initially supporting himself as a shoe salesman. He next taught at the UCLA Writer’s Program and, later, at the Creating Writing Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He is currently the art critic...

Christopher bram is the author of eight novels, including Father of Frankenstein, which was adapted into film as the Oscar-winning Gods and Monsters (1998), directed by Bill Condon; Gossip; The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes; and Lives of the Circus Animals.

Bram was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1952, but grew up outside Norfolk, Virginia, where he attended public school. He then studied at the College of William and Mary (1970–1974) before moving to New York in 1978. A first novel, “Gunny,” dating from his first years in the city, remains unpublished. Christopher Street published...

Michael cunningham is best known as the author of three novels: A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and The Hours.

Cunningham was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1952 and grew up in Chicago, Germany, and—mostly—Los Angeles. He received his B.A. in English Literature from Stanford University in 1975, and then moved to San Francisco for two years. In 1978, Cunningham enrolled in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was awarded the M.F.A. in 1980. He was then resident author at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center for a year, before moving to...

Jim grimsley is the author of six novels, including Winter Birds, Dream Boy, My Drowning, Comfort and Joy, and Boulevard.

He was born in 1955 in eastern North Carolina, and grew up there in a poor, rural community similar to those described in his first novels. As a boy, Grimsley was confined to bed for long periods on account of his hemophilia, which he shares with the character Danny, who features in Winter Birds and Comfort and Joy.

Grimsley studied writing at the University of North Carolina before moving to Atlanta, where he held a clerical position at Grady Hospital...

Stephen mccauley is the author of four novels: The Object of My Affection (filmed by Nicholas Hytner, 1998), The Easy Way Out, The Man of the House, and True Enough.

McCauley was born in 1955 in Woburn, Massachusetts. He studied English for a B.A. degree at the University of Vermont in Burlington, and went on to take the M.F.A at Columbia University. He then moved to Boston, taking a succession of jobs including teaching kindergarten and working in a travel agency. The publication of his first novel, The Object of My Affection (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), and its...

Colm tóibín is the author of a number of nonfiction books, and five novels: The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship. and The Master.

Tóibín was born in 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland. His father Micheal was a secondary teacher in the Christian Brothers School in Enniscorthy and founded its Castle Museum. His writings on the town were later edited by Colm Tóibín and published as Enniscorthy: History and Heritage (Dublin: New Island Books, 1998). Tóibín, the second youngest of five children, went to school in Enniscorthy and Wexford. He left in 1972...

Paul russell is author of five novels: The Salt Point, Boys of Life, Sea of Tranquillity, The Coming Storm, and War Against the Animals.

Born in 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee, Russell studied English at Oberlin College in Ohio, and was then admitted to the graduate program in English and Creative Writing at Cornell University, where he was awarded an M.A. in English, as well as an M.F.A. in Creative Writing for a collection of stories and a novella entitled “The Longing in Darkness,” which remains unpublished—deservedly so, according to Russell. Russell received his doctorate in 1983 for a dissertation...

Peter cameron is the author of a number of short-story collections and four novels: Leap Year, The Weekend, Andorra, and The City of Your Final Destination.

Born in 1959 in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, Cameron grew up there and—for two years—in London, where he attended the progressive American School. He graduated from Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, in 1982 with a B.A. in English Literature, and moved to New York. He worked for a year in the subsidiary rights department of St. Martin’s Press before starting administrative work for nonprofit organizations. From 1983 to 1988 he worked...

Matthew stadler is the author of four novels: Landscape: memory, The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee: His Researches, The Sex Offender, and Allan Stein.

Stadler was born in 1959. He grew up in what he has called “a liberal academic family” in Seattle, though for a short while the family moved to England. Stadler describes his mind as “dormant” through high school. At seventeen he moved to Washington, D.C., to work for a Quaker lobbying group. He then decided to study for a B.A. in political theory at Oberlin College in Ohio. As part of this, in 1979 Stadler studied for...

The english writer Philip Hensher is the author of four novels—Other Lulus, Kitchen Venom, Pleasured, and The Mulberry Empire—and a collection of short stories, The Bedroom of the Mister’s Wife.

Hensher was born in London in 1965. He went to school in Yorkshire and studied English literature as an undergraduate at Oxford University before taking a doctorate at Cambridge. He then began work as a Clerk in the House of Commons, while also writing fiction and journalism.

His first published novel was Other Lulus (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994). Hensher left Parliament on the eve of the publication of...

Dale peck is the author of three novels: Martin and John (published in Britain as Fucking Martin), The Law of Enclosures, and Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye. His most recent publication, “a work of creative nonfiction,” is What We Lost.

Peck was born in 1967 on Long Island (New York) but brought up in Kansas. He went to Drew University in New Jersey, where he submitted his first (unpublished) novel, “All the World,” as his senior honors thesis. Peck then moved to New York City although, in 1994, he based himself in London for a year. His first published...