Based on the autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, director and co-screenwriter Daishi Matsunaga’s “Egoist” (Strand) is one of the most original and moving gay movies of the year. Slightly reminiscent of Hong Khaou’s 2014 “Lilting” (starring out actor Ben Whishaw), in which a mother and her son’s lover bond following a calamity, “Egoist” finds the perfect balance between eroticism and emotion.

Here’s a funny, gay, “small world” story. In the 1990s, years before I actually met Raymond Luczak, we were both published in the long-running (1976-1995) gay culture magazine “Christopher Street.” In fact, “Lincoln Avenue,” the short story of mine published in the issue of “Christopher Street” which featured Luczak’s “Notes of a Deaf Gay Poet” article on the cover, would go on to be the titular piece of my short fiction collection published by none other than Luczak’s Squares and Rebels Press in 2014.

Anyone who has been following queer singer/songwriter Caroline Rose since her independently released 2010 debut album “I Will Not Be Afraid” through her latest, 2023’s “The Art of Forgetting” (New West) knows that she’s comfortable slipping in and out of genres.

Jason Yamas has been an actor, a writer, a filmmaker, and a drug dealer. It's his time as a drug dealer which is the subject of "Tweakerworld," his first book.