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Monday, April 16, 2007

Tonight's Lambda Literary Award finalist reading and Peggy Munson's Striptease Origami

I’m doing a reading tonight as part of the Lambda Literary Awards finalists, but that’s not really what I want to tell you about. I haven’t read the book in question (but now am going to grab a copy and read it very soon!) but I would like to point you to the fact that at another recent Lammy Finalist reading, finalist Peggy Munson’s DVD (which was to be shown in place of her speaking) was censored. I don’t throw the term “censorship” around lightly but in this instance, it’s pretty clear. Peggy’s novel Origami Striptease (Suspect Thoughts Press) is a finalist in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category. However, the organizers chose to skip over Peggy’s DVD and did not, based on an emailed report by the publisher, Greg Wharton, make mention of the fact that Peggy’s portion was being skipped, due to the fact that male pronouns were used in the DVD causing it to read as “straight” (the character in question is trans).



To my mind, setting aside the nuances of trans identity in the novel for a moment, a book is nominated for an award and is chosen to be a finalist by a committee of people. In this case, “Finalists were chosen by a jury of judges who come from all walks of literary life: journalists, authors, booksellers, librarians, playwrights, illustrators. In all, 87 judges participated in the selection of finalists from the pool of 381 books that were nominated.” So to select an author’s work as a finalist and ask them to participate in a reading and then, instead of contacting them or showing any cause for concern prior to the event, to simply excise them from the program, is pretty problematic. Adding to this is Munson’s disability which prevents her from traveling, hence the DVD (read more on her blog about this). The good news for New Yorkers is that the DVD will be shown tonight at the reading (and at the reading in Boston on May 4th), along with readings by:

April 17, LGBT Center, New York


Reception 6 pm, Reading 7 pm

208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10014

Suggested Donation of $5



Ellis Avery, The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead)

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Glamour Girls (Haworth)

Marcia M. Gallo, Different Daughters (Carroll & Graf)

JD Glass, Punk Like Me (Bold Strokes)

Martin Hyatt, A Scarecrow’s Bible (Suspect Thoughts)

Peggy Munson, Origami Striptease (Suspect Thoughts)

Sina Queryas, Lemon Hound (Coach House Press)

Brian Sloan, Tale of Two Summers (Simon & Schuster)

Ron Suresha, Bi Men and Bi Guys (Haworth)

Robert Westfield, Suspension (Harper Perennial)

Andy Zeffer, Going Down in La-La Land (Haworth)


Since I have not read the book, I can't comment on the actual content of the book but I think it should be clear that there is very likely a reason other than that the book is "straight" that it got past that vast of a committee to become a finalist for Lesbian Debut Fiction. People are free to argue about the content of the book (or the DVD), and blogs are a great place to do that, but censoring someone from a reading they were invited to, especially without even speaking directly to the author or publisher, is not acceptable.

Also, after I watch the DVD tomorrow I'm going to do a short e-mail interview with Peggy for this blog so if you have anything you think I should ask her, post in the comments or write me at rachelkramerbussel at gmail.com

More information:

Lambda Literary Awards

Peggy Munson

Suspect Thoughts Press

Suspect Thoughts Press page for Origami Striptease

Other magazine's Charlie Anders on Munson's censorship

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