Wednesday, November 11: Book Signing & Reading w/ Aiden Shaw (author 'Sordid Truths')

Adult film superstar Aiden Shaw follows up his bestselling memoir My Undoing with a prequel that graphically charts the author's meteoric rise to becoming the highest paid gay adult film star in the world.

Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom chronicles the author's ascent from being just another broke and very horny college boy, who dabbled with the idea that he could sell his young body for hard cash, to becoming the internationally renowned adult film superstar.

Within a short time on the scene Aiden Shaw was something of a celebrity within his field, having been introduced to wealthy, weird, and wonderful eccentrics and famous—and famously closeted—Euro trash personalities and the celebrated elite. However, working as a prostitute turned minor league once gay adult film legend Chi Chi La Rue took Polaroids of the naked and aroused Shaw and launched his career. The rest is history, as is documented in more than fifty films that won him numerous honors.

BOOK: Sordid Truths

AUTHOR: Aiden Shaw

DATE: Wednesday, November 11

TIME: 7:30 p.m.

LOCATION: A Different Light Bookstore

Friday, November 13: Book Signing & Reading w/ William J. Mann (author of 'How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood')

Author William J. Mann (The Object of Desire, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn) gives us a closer look at Elizabeth Taylor, from her friendships with fellow gay icons Roddy McDowell, Montgomery Clift and James Dean and her outspoken, early support of AIDS/HIV research, at a time when no one in Hollywood was speaking out.

While the name Elizabeth Taylor often conjures up images of astounding beauty and unparalleled scandal, the Hollywood icon is much more than a beautiful face and a two-time Oscar winner. Taylor was one of the first Hollywood stars to exert her independence from the studio system and put in place a team of managers, publicists and agents, solely dedicated to promoting her career—on her own terms.

This streak of fierce professional independence combined with her tendency to live life and love to the fullest caused Taylor to throw off conventional behavior which helped bring about the culture of celebrity—some would call it a feeding frenzy—that we know today. Liz, Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton were the original paparazzi obsession. In How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, media historian William J. Mann shows us how Taylor successfully built her career and managed to keep herself in the headlines for more than fifty years.

BOOK: How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
AUTHOR: William J. Mann
DATE: Friday, November 13
TIME: 7:30 p.m.
LOCATION: A Different Light Bookstore

Thursday, November 19: Talk w/ Mary L. Gray (author of 'Out in the Country Youth, Media & Queer Visibility in RuOutral America')

From Wal-Mart drag parties to renegade Homemaker’s Clubs, Out in the Country offers an unprecedented contemporary account of the lives of today’s rural queer youth.

Mary L. Gray maps out the experiences of young people living in small towns across rural Kentucky and along its desolate Appalachian borders, providing a fascinating and often surprising look at the contours of gay life beyond the big city. Gray illustrates that, against a backdrop of an increasingly impoverished and privatized rural America, LGBT youth and their allies visibly—and often vibrantly—work the boundaries of the public spaces available to them, whether in their high schools, public libraries, town hall meetings, churches, or through websites.

This important book shows that, in addition to the spaces of Main Street, rural LGBT youth explore and carve out online spaces to fashion their emerging queer identities. Their triumphs and travails defy clear distinctions often drawn between online and offline experiences of identity, fundamentally redefining our understanding of the term queer visibility’ and its political stakes.

Gray combines ethnographic insight with incisive cultural critique, engaging with some of the biggest issues facing both queer studies and media scholarship. Out in the Country is a timely and groundbreaking study of sexuality and gender, new media, youth culture, and the meaning of identity and social movements in a digital age.

BOOK: Out in the Country

AUTHOR: Mary L. Gray

DATE: Thursday, November 19

TIME: 7:30 p.m.

LOCATION: A Different Light Bookstore

Saturday, November 21: Reading & Book Signing w/ Jim Arnold (author of 'Benediction')

Gay Filmmaker Battles Cancer, Sarcastic Ghosts and Double-Crossing Coworkers in Jim Arnold's new novel, Benediction.

Ben Schmidt cannot sleep. At forty-four, he fears aging, despite the vitality of his frequent love affairs with numerous attractive men. And when Ben is diagnosed with prostate cancer, he embarks upon a soul-searching journey for love and survival.

Benediction is a dark-comedy that anyone middle-aged, gay or straight, will appreciate. Rather than another novel about a gay man with AIDS, Ben’s prostate cancer embraces a larger male audience, showing a human and universal side to a gay man. Ben’s romantic escapades are the gay equivalent of heterosexual male characters with healthy sexual appetites out of the pages of Philip Roth or John Updike. The novel’s humor and use of the supernatural add spice and a surreal vision to questions of life, love and death. Brutally honest yet beautifully insightful, Benediction is a debut novel to be read, remembered, and read again.

Jim Arnold is the author/director of feature film screenplays and teleplays including the documentary short “Our Brothers, Our Sons,” about generational differences around HIV/AIDS in gay men. Jim has written for “Frontiers,” “Variety,” “Prime Health & Fitness” and other periodicals and fiction anthologies. He began his career in musical theatre and holds a BA in journalism and film from Marquette University. He has studied film production/writing in the MFA program at the University of Southern California, the Writers Program at UCLA, and at Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco. Jim lives in Los Angeles. Benediction is his debut novel.

BOOK: Benediction

AUTHOR: Jim Arnold

DATE: Saturday, November 21

TIME: 7:30 p.m.

LOCATION: A Different Light Bookstore

Tuesday, November 24: Bo Dixon in the Flesh (Calendar Signing)

BO DIXON: Reinvented 2010 is the former COLT model's first complete calendar with the thick-bearded, hirsute powerhouse appearing in different characters for every month of the year. Fans can enjoy Football Bo, Wrestling Bo, Leather Bo, Swimsuit Bo, and of course, Birthday-Suit Bo. Bo Dixon has become an icon of masculinity and muscle in the gay/bear community.

Bo Dixon visits A Different Light in an exclusive, intimate, in-the-flesh appearance. You can look and now, you can touch!

CALENDAR: BO DIXON: Reinvented 2010
AUTHOR: Bo Dixon
DATE: Tuesday, November 24
TIME: 7:30 p.m.
LOCATION: A Different Light Bookstore