For today’s topic, and my last post for 2017, I thought we could discuss some of our favourite LGBT writers from history. I know a huge number of my favourite writers from the past were LGBT. Many are the obvious, famous names such as Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Not to mention Marlowe and Shakespeare, if you go along with the suppositions about the two of them.
In many cases, I read their works before knowing much about their lives. However, it’s always interesting to reread later and consider how that additional knowledge affects your reading of a story. You can often interpret between the lines in a way that puts a completely different slant on a book.
What about other Queer Sci-Fiers? Who are your favourites? Did you read them with prior knowledge of their backgrounds, or did you discover more about them only after reading their work? Do you find any of them particularly inspirational, and why?
Asta’s Annotations is a bi-monthly column in which author and editor Asta Idonea (aka Nicki J. Markus) discusses the world of LGBT publishing and offers tips and tricks to help budding authors.
Asta was born in England but now lives in South Australia. She has loved both reading and writing from a young age and is also a keen linguist, having studied several foreign languages.
Asta launched her writing career in 2011 and divides her efforts not only between MM and mainstream works but also between traditional and indie publishing. Her works span the genres, from paranormal to historical and from contemporary to fantasy. It just depends what story and which characters spring into her mind!
As a day job, Asta works as a freelance editor and proofreader, and in her spare time she enjoys music, theatre, cinema, photography, and sketching. She also loves history, folklore and mythology, pen-palling, and travel, all of which have provided plenty of inspiration for her writing. She is never found too far from her much-loved library/music room.
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