FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Top Pen Press Inaugural Title, Shaming the Devil, Named Multiple Literary Award Finalist

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (March 19, 2010) – In February 2009 Top Pen Press introduced the collected fiction of noted poet, author, editor G. Winston James, and thereby set as its mission to establish itself alongside other noteworthy presses at “the pinnacle of POC Queer Publishing.”  Just over one year later, James’ collection of twelve fundamentally human, thought-provoking and at times viscerally disturbing stories, evoking comparisons to Greek Tragedy and to the writing of notable authors as diverse as James Baldwin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner and Toni Morrison has been selected as a Finalist in a number of prestigious national literary competitions, thereby setting the bar high for future Top Pen Press titles. 

Shaming the Devil:  Collected Short Stories was selected from more than thirty nominated titles from a variety of presses, including University of Wisconsin, St. Martin’s, Harper Collins and the renowned literary publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux to become one of the top five Debut Fiction titles in the 22^nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards.  Similarly, the collection was selected as one of six outstanding titles vying for the prestigious Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, which was created in 1988 to honor culture-driving fiction from LGBT points of view.  The title was also named a Finalist in the category of Gay/Lesbian Fiction for ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards which were designed to discover distinctive books from independent publishers.

Top Pen Press publishes work that illuminates, confronts and perplexes perceptions of queer people of color. The goal of the press is to foster greater personal and intellectual investigation and understanding of the complexities of lives outside the heterosexual, American mainstream by publishing meticulously well-written literary novels, short story and essay collections, anthologies, as well as poetry.  Top Pen Press seeks to introduce and promote the most provocative and creative writers of these new queer times.

G. Winston James is a Jamaican-born poet, author, essayist and editor.  He holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and is the author of the poetry collection The Damaged Good: Poems Around Love and the Lambda Literary Award finalist collection Lyric: Poems Along a Broken Road.  James is also co-editor of the historic anthologies, Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing and the Lambda Literary Award finalist publication Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity.

IN STORES NOW

ISBN-10:  0-9770797-0-8

ISBN-13:  978-0-9770797-0-4

Specs:       Softcover, 176 pp.

Price:       $14.95 USD

Top Pen Press

P.O. Box 223436

Hollywood, FL 33022

Email:  toppenpress@gmail.com

Website:  www.toppenpress.com

Top Pen Press is proud to announce that Shaming the Devil: Collected Short Stories by G. Winston James has been mentioned as one of “The Best LGBT Books of 2009″ by the blog BandofThebes.com in an article for which the blog’s editors “asked a few dozen authors ranging from eminently established prizewinners to emerging kickass wunderkinds to name the best lgbt books of 2009.”  Band of Thebes hopes that ”[i]n turn, their list of favorite reads will become readers’ favorite resource for its staggering scope and illumination of the year’s finest lgbt novels, story collections, essays, memoirs, nonfiction, graphic books, YA, and poetry.” 

In the article, Trebor Healey, award-winning author of A Perfect Scar and Other Stories says of Shaming the Devil, “After reading the stories, I was very impressed and have thought about them a lot ever since. They delve deeply into the inner recesses of the human and the gay heart and they shed light on an aspect of gay life that doesn’t get much light, ie the African-American gay experience with no holds barred.”

See what all of the buzz is about!  Pick up your copy of Shaming the Devil today!

SHAMING THE DEVIL
Collected Short Stories
By G. Winston James
(Top Ten Press ISBN978-0-9770797-0-4)

Reviewed By Stanley Bennett Clay

Poet G. Winston James makes a remarkable fiction debut with SHAMING THE DEVIL, a
collection of short stories that examine black, predominantly homoerotic
experiences with beauty, passion and a boldness that renders it both
transcendental and deeply personal. One need not be gay or black to enjoy these
well-honed nuggets of literary art that twist, turn, enthrall, and provoke in
ways that only a poet can. Mr. James is not merely a fantastic storyteller and
thinker but a wordsmith Michelangelo whose nearly every sentence is
painstakingly crafted into well-cut diamonds. Forgive the hyperbole, but I am
simply overwhelmed.

The collection opens with UNCLE, innocently, even sweetly, narrated by a little
boy celebrating his sixth birthday while his body celebrates feelings for his
uncle that he does not understand. An empathy-inducing reminiscence of new and
uninformed sensations, desires and longings, it will take many a reader back to
those first frightening and fantastic pre-pubescent shivers engendered by the
very presence of a hero-worshipped same sex relative.

While RAHEN (my personal favorite) boldly tackles gay bashing and rivets until
the heartbreaking end, CONFINING ROOM flips the script on homie-sexuality. And
take note of this beautifully written phrase from THE SPACE BETWEEN: “He opens
her with four fingers. He speaks rivers inside her. She does not know what to do
with her hands. The rest of her body. Or the thoughts, like famine and harvest,
roiling in her head.”

UNDER AN EARLY AUTUMN MOON is the tale of a late night tryst with a surprising
twist set in the fuckable landscape of a public park. PATH and SICK DAYS are
thematically linked both in tone and content; tracking the light hearted—-in
fact downright hysterical—escapades of a metrosexual homosexual’s quest for
transient trade and the attended consequences of infidelity.

JOHN poignantly examines a self-loather’s confrontation with his demons via a
therapist and a hustler, and although I’m not much of a fan of sadomasochism, I
found SOMEWHERE NEARBY brilliant in its mix of cruel sex, brutal assault,
intellectualism and the power of brooding self-examination at death’s door.

A seventeen-year-old boy weathers a violent physical and psychological storm in
his native Jamaica as his older gay brother, banished years earlier by a
now-absent father, lays dying of AIDS in the brief but powerful STORM.  And
CHURCH returns a prodigal world traveler to his hometown congregation where his
moving revelation restores faith in a true and loving God.

This twelve-story collection ends with THE EMBRACE, a bright and buoyant story
of three friends and their sexual fantasies that slowly turns erotically
haunting when one of them introduces another to a mysterious lothario. THE
EMBRACE is sure to leave you breathless.

As in any story collection, some are better than others. But there is not a weak
one in this bunch, as the author gives each narrator a unique voice, each story
its own fascinating twist, and writing as appealingly grandiose and artful as
Morrison and Baldwin.

Indeed, Baldwin and Thomas Glave are the only BGM writers to win the prestigious
O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction.  Based on a couple of the best stories in
SHAMING THE DEVIL, it would not surprise me one bit if G. Winston James was
chosen to make this a literary trinity.

Special Los Angeles Black Pride Celebration performance of Stanley Bennett
Clay’s “Armstrong’s Kid”  followed by a champagne reception Sunday July 5th.
Email back for details.