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Authors campaign to save Britain's only gay bookshop
Charlotte Higgins (The Guardian, 22-3-2007)
Authors are campaigning to save the UK's only dedicated gay and lesbian bookshop, threatened with closure because of rising rents and pressure from the internet.
Gay's The Word, which has been selling books in Bloomsbury, central London, since 1979, is hoping to secure its future by raising £20,000 to pay the rent, building a strong internet presence and beefing up community activities.
Ali Smith, the Whitbread award-winning novelist, said: "It'd be a political, cultural, communal and human loss if it went. The independents will be on the up again soon in a big way as readers get increasingly fed up of the three-for-two faceless chainstores."
American novelist Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story, said: "It's a shop that keeps gay titles on the shelves for years in a way no regular bookshop, even one with a gay section, would ever do. The staff know the books and can give advice. It would be very sad to see it go."
Booker-nominated novelist Sarah Waters said: "For me it's more than a bookshop. It was one of those places you went to when you first arrived in London; it had its noticeboard and it was a meeting place. It felt very empowering that it was here and it is still important that there is a visible place for people to go."
Andrew Johnson, a librarian from Birmingham, said while browsing the shelves: "I always make a point of coming here because it stocks such a great range. I'm holding a novel - Armistead Maupin's Further Tales of the City - but in the past I've bought lifestyle titles, non-fiction books. This is one bookshop that covers a multitude of interests." The range of titles, described by manager Jim MacSweeney as everything "from academic studies to trash", includes Sodomy in Early Modern Europe, edited by Tom Betteridge; The Gendering of Men 1600-1750 - The English Phallus, by Thomas A King; and The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips, by Rebecca Chalker. Then there's Charles Anders's The Lazy Crossdresser, the favourite title of assistant manager Uli Lenart.
Mr Lenart said the shop is an important social resource. "We get teenagers coming in on the verge of tears. This is a place where you can feel less alone."
It hosts a gay writers' group, and Mr Lenart is considering setting up a reading group for rent boys.
The shop has survived peril before: in 1984 it was raided by Customs and Excise and the shop's directors were charged with conspiracy to import indecent books. The case collapsed.
Authors campaign to save Britain's only gay bookshop
Charlotte Higgins (The Guardian, 22-3-2007)
Authors are campaigning to save the UK's only dedicated gay and lesbian bookshop, threatened with closure because of rising rents and pressure from the internet.
Gay's The Word, which has been selling books in Bloomsbury, central London, since 1979, is hoping to secure its future by raising £20,000 to pay the rent, building a strong internet presence and beefing up community activities.
Ali Smith, the Whitbread award-winning novelist, said: "It'd be a political, cultural, communal and human loss if it went. The independents will be on the up again soon in a big way as readers get increasingly fed up of the three-for-two faceless chainstores."
American novelist Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story, said: "It's a shop that keeps gay titles on the shelves for years in a way no regular bookshop, even one with a gay section, would ever do. The staff know the books and can give advice. It would be very sad to see it go."
Booker-nominated novelist Sarah Waters said: "For me it's more than a bookshop. It was one of those places you went to when you first arrived in London; it had its noticeboard and it was a meeting place. It felt very empowering that it was here and it is still important that there is a visible place for people to go."
Andrew Johnson, a librarian from Birmingham, said while browsing the shelves: "I always make a point of coming here because it stocks such a great range. I'm holding a novel - Armistead Maupin's Further Tales of the City - but in the past I've bought lifestyle titles, non-fiction books. This is one bookshop that covers a multitude of interests." The range of titles, described by manager Jim MacSweeney as everything "from academic studies to trash", includes Sodomy in Early Modern Europe, edited by Tom Betteridge; The Gendering of Men 1600-1750 - The English Phallus, by Thomas A King; and The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips, by Rebecca Chalker. Then there's Charles Anders's The Lazy Crossdresser, the favourite title of assistant manager Uli Lenart.
Mr Lenart said the shop is an important social resource. "We get teenagers coming in on the verge of tears. This is a place where you can feel less alone."
It hosts a gay writers' group, and Mr Lenart is considering setting up a reading group for rent boys.
The shop has survived peril before: in 1984 it was raided by Customs and Excise and the shop's directors were charged with conspiracy to import indecent books. The case collapsed.
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