Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Jim Elledge and David Groff Culture Club in Space: An Anecdotal Poetics Benjamin S. Grossberg Walt Whitman: u0022Glow on the extremest verge . . .u0022 Mark Doty Latin Moon Daddy Charles Rice-Gonzalez Making a Man Out of Me Richard Blanco Under the Influence Chip Livingston My Mother's Grave Is Yellow Dale Peck Some Notes, Thoughts, Recollections, Revisions & Corrections Regarding Becoming, Being & Remaining a Gay Writer Justin Chin My Three Dads Charles Jensen Orpheus in Texas Saeed Jones u0022It does not have to be yoursu0022 Mark Bibbins A Hidden Life (On Joy Williams) Paul Lisicky Positively Not: A Talk about Poetries and Traditions Brian Teare Romantic Jeff Mann The Tallahachee [sic] Meets the Arve, or Unexpected Gay Confluences in the '70s Greg Hewett How I Learned to Drive: The Education of a Gay Disabled Writer Kenny Fries How to Skin a Deer Martin Hyatt The Little Girls with Penises Jim Elledge Oubloir David McConnell Beloved Jotoranos Rigoberto Gonzu00e1lez Leaving Berlin Ellery Washington Teenage Riot: Notes on Some Books that Guided Me through a Profoundly Hormonal Time Alistair McCartney My Radical Dads David Groff The Mentor I Never Met: Janet Frame Aaron Hamburger My Father's Novel Richard McCann Fugitives James Allen Hall Some Notes on Influences or Why I Am Not Objective Michael Klein I Will Tell This Story the Way I Choose Shaun Levin Thom Gunn: A Memoir of Reading Randall Mann Queering an Italian American Poetic Legacy Peter Covino Vanity Fairey Interviews Writer Noel Alumit Noel Alumit The Four of Them Thomas Glave Jumpstart Tim Miller Caliban Dave King My First Poetic Mentor Was a Welshman Named Leslie Timothy Liu The World Is Full of Orphans Raymond Luczak The Seismology of Love and Letters Brian Leung Botticelli Boy Rick Barot Miss Thing Paul Bonin-Rodriguez Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Father Karl Soehnlein   Contributors

About the Author

Jim Elledge is professor of English at Kennesaw State University and author of A History of My Tattoo: A Poem; The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day: A Novel; and Various Envies: Poems.

David Groff, an independent writer and poet, is author of Theory of Devolution and coeditor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and Whitman's Men: Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers.

Reviews

"Betsy Donovan's delightful jacket design for Who's Yer Daddy: Gay Writers Celebrate their Mentors and Forerunners juxtaposes vintage masculine archetypes, hot-pink pride, and sassy slang in a way that perfectly conveys the smart, earnest, and utterly engaging contents of one of the best gay collections to be published in years."--Passport Magazine

"Gay bibliophiles and aspiring writers, especially those interested in the creative process, will enjoy this engaging collection."--Library Journal

"A diverse and colorful anthology. This is the first major work to focus on accomplished writers, on the specific topic of their creative influences."--Jerry Rosco, author of Glenway Wescott Personally

"A wonderful anthology about literary mentors to a host of interesting gay male writers in the past few decades. An original aspect of this book is the diversity it represents."--Philip Gambone, author of Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans

"These vibrant essays draw the reader in, illuminating a rich, intriguing, and previously unexplored subject."--Will Fellows, author of Farm Boys and editor of Gay Bar

The genesis of this anthology of "literary ancestors" was a session moderated by Elledge (English, Kennesaw State Univ.; ed., Queers in American Popular Culture) at the 2009 Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference, where many of these pieces were delivered. These were fleshed out by Elledge and Groff (coeditor, Persistent Voices) to a total of 39, most previously unpublished. The focus is on gay, male authors, but within that confine is diversity of ethnicity, character, and voice. The coeditors and authors expand the concept of mentorship considerably; "inspiration" or "muse" might be more accurate. Whatever they're called, these "daddies" are not all literary figures, and of those many are neither gay nor male; dip in and you're as likely to come up with Captain Kirk or Bette Midler as Walt Whitman. The quality of the pieces varies, but most are literate, insightful, and self aware. -VERDICT Although the material here is neither as flippant nor sexually provocative as the title suggests, gay bibliophiles and aspiring writers, especially those interested in the creative process, will enjoy this engaging collection.-Richard J. Violette, Victoria P.L., British Columbia, Canada (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.