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

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!

G. Winston James Displays Hall of Fame Plaque

Past years’ inductees have included Dorothy Allison, Ann Bannon, Maureen Brady, Patrick Califia, Mark Doty, Katherine V. Forrest, Nancy Garden, Jewelle Gomez, Jim Grimsley, Tara Hardy, Ellen Hart, Kenneth Holditch, Joan Larkin, Lee Lynch, William J. Mann, Stephen McCauley, Val McDermid, Tim Miller, Felice Picano, J.M. Redmann, David Rosen, Steven Saylor, Carol Seajay, and Patricia Nell Warren.

Award-winning author Trebor Healey writes:  This story collection offers profound meditations on desire and longing and the courage required of each of us to bring forth what is in us. James pulls out all the stops in this stunning collection, examining with an unflinching moral vision issues of not only sexuality and gender, but religion and community, race, violence, HIV/AIDS, intergenerational sex/eroticism, class and the life and death struggle at the center of every human heart.

In a world increasingly filled with unchallenging, feel-good fiction and film, James reminds us that being alive is to be in the heat of battle—a battle we are often losing. For James, survivors are those who are paying attention, looking at the struggle with a clear eye and an open heart. They are the heroes who—if they survive when the smoke clears—have a worthwhile story to bring back to us.

G. Winston James is not afraid to question the self-destructiveness of one’s sexuality or the consolation found in religious communities, even when they are far from perfect. This is the most refreshing gay fiction I’ve read in years.

The poetry of “The Space Between” is unrivaled in any erotica I’ve read to date, impressive in its insight and language. Through precise imagery, masterfully concise narrative, suspense and moral ambiguity, James establishes the skewed intimacy that sheds a devastatingly uncomfortable light upon pedophilia, rape and sexual exploitation. I’ve never read a story of this type that left me feeling like I suddenly knew what it was like to be such a victim. Profound.

“Storm,” reminiscent of Faulkner, is a tour de force of poetic family narrative: surreal, succinct and heart-breakingly tragic.

“Church” is so beautifully affirming a human story in its examination of one’s religious upbringing, moving beyond the usual focus on bigotry and schism to discover the underlying power and consolation of one’s spiritual community of origin.

“Rahen” examines the complexities of a gay bashing—from the implicit approval underlying even the most severe condemnation of the perpetrators to the self-preserving betrayals among the terrified gay kids and the urge to silence even among the most just authority figures. In “Rahen,” the best gay-bashing story I’ve ever read, James raises the moral stakes to the level of Greek tragedy.

“The Embrace” presents all the excitement, anxiety, promise and dread of allowing yourself to take a chance and fall or jump into a romance that will either liberate or destroy you. A classic story of the only way to find some things out is to put aside one’s fear, trust one’s heart and go for it.

Treading on territory many writers today avoid like the plague, James is fearless in his exposure of men on the ‘down-low’ and the dangerously skewed paranoia around child sexuality and eroticism. So, you want to know what’s really going on? Read G. Winston James.

A book full of ideas, James re-examines and sheds light upon issues that are far too often glossed over—for instance, the paradox of what we desire; the eroticism of being a child; the tenderness inside violence; the sexual intimacy of siblings;  the madness of the human heart.

James explores in vivid, raw, disturbing detail the gritty realities of gay black life. These are stories that need to be heard, and that shockingly even 40 years into the gay movement are still being silenced, ignored or overlooked. I’ve been waiting for someone like James to tell me these essential stories of gay life.

James presents moral truths and their ambiguity, which makes their exploration so vital. Raising all kinds of questions, I don’t want to hear. Oh, but I do, we do.

The big issues in a queer life are still religion, race, class, courage and insight—all the parts that the inane, superficial and consumerist media more or less ignore. James’ stories are not stories of victims, but rather of individuals grappling with violence, oppression, negligence and their own courage to be who they are at whatever the cost. James’ voice is a mature voice, a voice too little heard in gay fiction these days, or in fiction generally, a genre that has grown so tepid in the past few decades that it borders on irrelevant. With these stories, James breathes new life into American fiction. Recommending his work to readers is too weak a statement—rather I implore readers:  you need to hear this man’s voice. You’ll walk away a larger human being—and that, my friends, is the time-honored point of literature. James is the real thing and then some.

Trebor Healey is the Ferro-Grumley and Violet Quill award-winning author of the novel Through It Came Bright Colors, as well as the short story collection, A Perfect Scar and Other Stories.

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (February 10, 2009) — Top Pen Press introduces the collected fiction of noted poet, author, editor G. Winston James.  Comprised of twelve fundamentally human, 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, Shaming the Devil is an erotic, brutal, emotional and thoroughly thought-provoking collection examining the individual, familial, and societal complexities of desire.

Ferro-Grumley and Violet Quill award-winning author, Trebor Healey proclaims that “James’ stories are not stories of victims, but rather of individuals grappling with violence, oppression, negligence and their own courage to be who they are at whatever the cost.  James’ voice is a mature voice, a voice too little heard in gay fiction these days, or in fiction generally…With these stories, James breathes new life into American fiction.”

Randall Kenan, winner of multiple literary accolades including the prestigious Whiting Writers’ Award and Rome Prize declares that “James’ vision of sexuality and the human condition is soul-shaking…As with Fyodor Dostoevsky, at times you begin to think G. Winston James knows everything about human nature.  This book is like electricity, but reading it will do more than simply shock you.”

Dr. Wilfred Samuels, editor of the Encyclopedia of African-American Literature asserts that “like Baldwin, [G. Winston] James validates all forms of sexuality, particularly homoerotic sexuality, as a legitimate subject matter of serious literary exploration; however, unlike Baldwin, James does not abandon or murder his central characters—as Baldwin does in Another Country, in fear that the world might not be ready for this subject matter.”

At a time when LGBT leaders seem reluctant to challenge efforts to desexualize homosexuality, author Alphonso Morgan pronounces that “[i]n the fiction of G. Winston James, sex is revolution, peep shows are poetry, and the dark places that exist in parks and public restrooms are lit with a blinding insight into the hearts of men.  Shaming the Devil is a curt, subtle, fluid collection… The best new fiction I have read this year.”

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, short fiction writer, 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 MARCH 2009

ISBN-10:  0-9770797-0-8
ISBN-13:  978-0-9770797-0-4
Price: $14.95 USD

Top Pen Press
P.O. Box 223436
Hollywood, FL 33022

Email:  toppenpress@gmail.com
Website:  www.toppenpress.com