And they tend to be about characters negotiating the conventions of the time – and bucking them. I think it isn’t just because they’re ready to empathise with queer characters but also because these books tend to involve an element of self-discovery or self-realisation, a theme that has universal – and arguably, increasing – appeal. I often wonder why so many straight readers connect with gay-themed books. By contrasting what happened to him in the early 1970s with the welcome he receives from his community today, I want to celebrate the progress we’ve made as a society. Again, it’s set in the working-class north and is about a lonely and secretly gay postman who sets off in search of the love of his life, a man he hasn’t seen for 50 years. My latest book is The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle.
These include books by Justin Myers, Steven Rowley, and Graham Norton, plus lesbian author Laura Kay and bisexual writer Lily Lindon. This isn’t limited to literary fiction – I’m thinking of what the publishing industry calls “commercial” novels accessible books that are aimed at a mainstream readership. Now, I think we are in a golden age of gay fiction. In 2017, with the support of the media and several celebrities, it became Unbound’s fastest crowdfunded novel ever. So I took my first novel – The Madonna of Bolton, a loosely autobiographical story about a working-class boy growing up in the 1980s who clings onto Madonna to help him survive growing up gay – and decided to crowdfund it through the publisher Unbound. I was devastated and went back to feeling like a misunderstood, rejected young boy. The implication was that gay themes may be palatable to the educated but not the “lower” classes.
In a series of letters and then emails, I was told “this feels a little niche”, “I’m not sure this story has a strong enough hook to really appeal to a mass market readership”, and “this type of book really needs to fall into the literary fiction arena, think Edmund White or Alan Hollighurst ”. My first efforts to write novels featuring gay characters all met with rejection. I also discovered that publishing hadn’t progressed as much as other art forms. Matt Cain: “I found my escape in pop icon Madonna, her message of self-empowerment and her passionate defence of her gay friends.” (Photo: Michael Putland/Getty)
I started to understand how I could achieve it. I started to see that my dream of being a writer might just be achievable.
While this was happening in the 00s, through my work as a TV producer and journalist – for outlets such as The South Bank Show, Channel 4 News and Attitude magazine – I started to meet artists working across the creative industries.
A growing visibility for gay men in real life was proving the point made by Harvey Milk when he implored every gay person to come out: “Once they realize that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all.”Ĭinema, TV and theatre were discovering that our lives often make good material for drama as they tend to involve more emotional intensity than the average straight life, not to mention events such as familial rejection, and in the past, professional dismissal, criminal conviction, and even torture. The success of 1999’s Queer as Folk, plus gay characters in soap operas and contestants on talent shows, and later, films such as Brokeback Mountain in 2005, were demonstrating that straight people were ready to empathise they wanted to hear our stories. As the AIDS crisis receded, tabloid headlines portraying gay men as dangerous sexual predators disappeared. Opinion | Pride is now just a chance to show off your 'gay friendly' credentials in empty gestures 05 June, 2022 When Pride Month 2022 is and schedule of main events 01 June, 2022 Opinion | Russell T Davies's 'Queer as Folk' changed my life, it should be shown in schools 09 February, 2022īut towards the end of the 1990s, things began to change.