What do you think queer literature specifically has to say with its hybrid forms? Gay: I don’t think you can overlook nonfiction in talking about queer literature. Queer and trans people have, amazingly, taken that demand and subverted it, and that’s why those kinds of stories are so important. Also, Roxane, the point you were making about how some of the greatest truths of queer culture and activism have been done in nonfiction … Oddly enough, queer fiction writers have long hidden behind persona and character to write about queer culture and about themselves. I remember interviewing Galgut once and saying, “Your character Damon” — and he stopped me and said, “No, that’s not a character, that’s me.” I thought to myself, “I’m trying to protect you here,” which is a very quaint protectiveness on my part.

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Persons: …, Adrienne Rich, “, ” Lorde, Lorde, ” — Tomi Obaro Soller, Roxane, I’m, we’d, Edmund White, Marcel, Proust, André Gide, Ernest, Hemingway’s, Hemingway, Ed, Gide — White, Willa Cather, Mukherjee, Damon Galgut, Damon, Galgut, Damon ” —, ”, “ I’m