13Jun/25

Mo Fanning

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June 13, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 21: Mo Fanning!

Mo Fanning returns to share his new novel: Rainbows and Lollipops. We discuss setting a story close to home – Birmingham in this case, healing from loss, and friends growing into found family!

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Mo Fanning is a Birmingham-based novelist whose character-driven fiction explores the complexities of love, identity, and human connection through the lens of LGBTQ+ experiences. With his signature blend of humour, heartbreak, and hope, Fanning creates deeply relatable characters whose journeys reflect the universal search for belonging in an often-challenging world. Drawing inspiration from his Midlands roots, Fanning infuses his writing with authentic voices and settings that resonate with readers seeking stories that celebrate the beauty of imperfection and the transformative power of resilience. His innovative narrative approaches and genuine emotional depth have earned him a dedicated following among readers who appreciate contemporary fiction that balances entertainment with meaningful exploration of human relationships.

When not writing, Mo lives with his husband Mark and their beloved Labrador Ernie, continuing to find inspiration in the streets, stories, and people of his beloved Birmingham.

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August 30, 2024

It gives us great pleasure to present a Season 9, Episode 34 Interview – Mo Fanning!

Mo Fanning joins us to share his latest novel Husbands! We discuss the dark side of Hollywood, telling stories while protecting identities, and finding happiness in the end.

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Mo Fanning is a part-time novelist, part-time stand-up comic and full-time ageing homosexual. He currently lives in the Black Country backwater town of Stourbridge but aspires to something more rural without neighbours.
With a unique talent for blending romance and comedy in intriguing settings, Mo is an emerging voice in the contemporary fiction scene and aims to be the best-known writer of LGBTQ romance.

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06Jun/25

Robert Raasch

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June 6, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 20: Robert Raasch!

Robert Raasch shares his novel: The Summer Between. We discuss coming out in earlier decades, the importance of location shaping story, and why we have to learn who’s harmful to us and who’s loving and supportive!

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Robert Raasch was raised in Northern New Jersey. He is a writer, architect/designer, and visual artist who is an active participant in 24PearlStreet and the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He divides his time between Chicago, New York, and Copenhagen, where he is working on his second novel.

Robert is spearheading a grassroots campaign this summer to promote his critically acclaimed novel The Summer Between. Recent appearances, interviews and reviews have included The Bay Area Reporter; The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide; Andrew Rimby’s The Ivory Tower Boiler Room; Matt Baum’s Sewers of Paris; and in New York, at The Bureau of General Services Queer Division: Robert was in conversation with acclaimed Author, Christoper Bram.

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30May/25

Jonathan Lerner

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May 30, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 19: Jonathan Lerner!

Jonathan Lerner shares his memoir: Performance Anxiety. We discuss the civil rights era, why being LGBTQ+ was even more lonely, and what it was like to find community while realizing you were different!

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Jonathan Lerner is the author of the novels Caught in a Still Place, Alex Underground, and Lily Narcissus, and the memoir Swords in the Hands of Children. He is a journalist focusing on urban design and environmental issues and a longtime contributing editor at Landscape Architecture Magazine. He lives with his husband, the nonprofit leader and community advocate Peter Frank, in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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23May/25

Sophie Haeder

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May 23, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 18: Sophie Haeder!

Sophie Haeder shares her novel: The Land Within. We discuss being inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, the romantasy genre, and the prominence of LGBTQ+ characters in this literary style!

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Born in 1992, Sophie Haeder lives in the picturesque countryside of Bavaria, Germany, where she embraces her nerdy nature alongside her roles as a wife and a mother of a little girl. With a lifelong passion for fantasy, encompassing everything from fairies to witches to trolls, she has found solace in imaginative play since childhood. Serving as a gamemaster for her Dungeons & Dragons group brings her immense joy. This love of storytelling eventually led her to writing, a natural progression from her professional career as a content marketing manager. She loves fantasy and art, and her writing combines all of her interests into one. That’s why she does all the artwork for her books herself, including the cover, the map, and every other illustration in her book. If you play D&D yourself, you may recognize some of the mechanics of magic and world-building that follow this kind of vibe. But of course it is not necessary to know anything about D&D to enjoy her book.

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16May/25

John R. Gordon

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May 16, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 17: John R. Gordon!

John R. Gordon shares his novel: Mother of Serpents. We discuss evil spirits & madness, blending history & myth, and why it’s important to write queer, interracial families!

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John R. Gordon lives in Shepherds Bush, London, England. He is a screenwriter, playwright and the author of nine novels, Black Butterflies and Warriors & Outlaws, both of which have been taught in the USA; Faggamuffin, Colour Scheme, Souljah, Drapetomania and the interracial YA romance Hark. He writes for the world’s first Black gay television show, Patrik-Ian Polk’s Noah’s Arc, for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination. He is the creator of the Yemi & Femi comic, for adult readers.

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09May/25

Margaret Gardiner

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May 9, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 16: Margaret Gardiner!

Margaret Gardiner shares her novel Damaged Beauty: Joey Superstar. We discuss being raised to be silent, finding one’s way through damage toward healing, and the dark side of fame!

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Model. Speaker. Panelist. Host. Journalist. Author.
Margaret Gardiner became an international cover girl at 16, Miss Universe at 18, and ultimately, the fashion editor at goldenglobes.com.
She’s worked with A-list stars from Angelina Jolie to Zendaya. She knows what it is like to be on the red carpet, in the spotlight – and what goes on behind the scenes.
With a degree in psychology, and a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, her debut novel is for every person who has ever been made to feel less.

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02May/25

Del Blackwater

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May 2, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 15: Del Blackwater!

Del Blackwater shares her novel: Dead Egyptians. Her lifelong love & pursuit of Egyptology has lead her to writing about Egypt in 1902, and a gay British Egyptologist who was there when the Egyptians began to take back their country, plus mysticism, reincarnation, and porch time!

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Del Blackwater is a novelist and travel writer based in Wisconsin.

Her life vacillates wildly between a quiet existence in the country and a feverish, risk-centric existence when on the road. Her travels have taken her to four continents, and she makes questionable decisions in all of them.

While Egypt is inevitably the high-water mark of both her travels and her writing, she tries to spend time in other places as well.

Del is the author of Dead Egyptians, a historical fantasy series set in the Edwardian era. She is also published many times over as a board game and tarot deck designer, notably as the creator of Playlist Wars, a music game.

When not keeping busy, she unwinds by taking care of a menagerie of critters and enjoying something she calls porch time.

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25Apr/25

Scott Terry

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April 25, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 14: Scott Terry!

Scott Terry shares his novel: The Gift. We discuss fiction exploring the intersection of racism and homophobia under the certainty of religious superiority.

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Scott Terry (also writing under Scott M. Terry) was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, and spent his childhood praying for God and Armageddon to heal him of his homosexual thoughts. At the age of sixteen, he escaped from home and was riding bulls in the rodeo as a gay cowboy.

Scott’s memoir, (Cowboys, Armageddon, and The Truth) was named one of the Top 20 Must Read Books of 2013 by Advocate magazine. It was named one of the best LGBT releases of 2012 by Out In Print and Band of Thebes book lists, and was a double-award winner of the Rainbow Book Awards (Best Gay Debut, and Best LGBT Non-Fiction, 2013). Scott’s new novel, The Gift, is a work of fiction and released in Spring 2025. Scott has written often for the San Francisco Chronicle, and his essays has been featured in the Huffington Post and Alternet Magazine, amongst others.

Scott’s rodeo gear, clothing, and championship buckles are in the permanent collection of the Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles), and are currently on display in the museum’s Imagined Wests exhibit. He and his husband operate an organic farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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18Apr/25

Jim Provenzano

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April 18, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 13: Jim Provenzano!

Jim Provenzano shares the audio revival of his novel: Now I’m Here. We discuss writing love story arcs and perspectives, and the art of producing an audiobook.

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Jim Provenzano is the author of the novels Finding Tulsa, Now I’m Here, PINS, Monkey Suits, Cyclizen, the 2012 Lambda Literary Award winner Every Time I Think of You, its sequel Message of Love (a Lammy finalist), the stage adaptation of PINS, and a short fiction collection, Forty Wild Crushes. He edited and published his late uncle John Rigney Jr.’s 1950s novel, The Lost of New York, in 2022. His latest work is the YA novella, Lessons in Teenage Biology, out June 1, 2024.

Degrees include a BFA in dance from Ohio State University and an MA in English from San Francisco State University. Born in New York City and raised in Ohio, he lives in San Francisco.

A journalist in LGBT media for three decades, and the guest curator of Sporting Life, the world’s first gay athletics exhibit, he also wrote the award-winning syndicated Sports Complex column for ten years. He is the Arts Editor with the Bay Area Reporter.

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11Apr/25

Elizabeth Costello

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April 11, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 12: Elizabeth Costello!

Elizabeth Costello joins shares her debut novel: The Good War. We discuss writing feminist, noir, coming-of-age fiction, and then introduce Portland’s Ekphraestival, bringing writers and visual artists together.

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Elizabeth Costello is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her publications include the poetry chapbook RELIC and arts and culture writing for SF Weekly and 7×7. She works (remotely) as an editor for UC Berkeley and co-founded the ekphraestival, a generative exchange among visual artists and poets that culminates in readings and exhibitions in April, national poetry month. Her debut novel, The Good War, is out now from Regal House and was described by Publishers Weekly as “dark and intense…lyrical…Moody and atmospheric, this gritty tale is worth a look.”

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