Teaching the Cat to Sit by Michelle Theall

'I got to the old adage write what you know. 'When I first started writing a book, it was very much this sort of novel form.

She changed course, however, during the writing process. It was better than the money I have spent on a shrink's couch,' said Theall, who first began work on the book in 2007.Īt first Theall had planned to pen a novel. 'The best therapy in the world was writing this book. It also details Theall's battles with her devout Catholic mother, who lives in Texas.

Her life story is woven around how the parochial school the couple had been sending their son to decides to ban admitting children of gay parents. The book recounts her struggle to remain faithful to the Catholic Church while coming to accept being a lesbian. Michelle Theall, who lives in Boulder, Colorado with her partner and son, spent years crafting her memoir Teaching the Cat to Sit before it was published this year. This year's winners were A Heaven of Words: Last Journals by Glenway Wescott, and Body Geographic by Barrie Jean Borich. The foundation annually awards the best in LGBT literature, and its contests for best lesbian and best gay memoir are two of the most 'popular and competitive ones,' said Valenzuela. It has always been popular,' said Lambda Literary Foundation Executive Director Tony Valenzuela. 'I can't say I see memoir as having become more of a trend. With a similar theme is Silicon Valley-based author Sunshine Mugrabi's When My Boyfriend Was A Girl, described as a 'behind-the-scenes look at a non-traditional relationship between a bisexual woman and her transgendered husband.' Well-known LGBT media fixtures Diane and Jacob Anderson-Minshal detail how their relationship survived Jacob's transition 'from lesbian feminist to straight white guy' in their memoir Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders. In A Song for Lost Angels: How Daddy and Papa Fought to Save Their Family, San Francisco resident Kevin Fisher-Paulson describes how he and his husband spent a year caring for medically challenged infant triplets, only to have their drug addicted mother regain custody due to the intervention of an anti-gay social worker. Poz magazine founder Sean Strub's memoir of the early days of the AIDS epidemic also received considerable attention in early 2014.Īnd the titles keep coming for LGBT autobiographies. Two of the most talked about book releases this spring, for instance, were tomes focused on the federal litigation that struck down Proposition 8, California's voter-approved ban against same-sex marriage.

Whether it is the nonfiction section or the latest fiction release, LGBT reading lists are bursting with titles seemingly ripped from news headlines. Reality, these days, is pervading LGBT literature aisles in bookstores across the country.

Teaching the Cat to Sit by Michelle Theall