Your list reminds me of the heady days of gay publishing, when it seemed like every city had at least one gay bookstore, and the shelves were stocked with offerings from the specialized gay imprints of several major publishing houses.

Oh, the joy discovering such a space in the 1980s — browsing with a sense of amazed discovery! Like swimming in an oasis after years in the desert.

Of course you're right that the coin has two sides. One the one hand, gifted novelists like Edmund White were ghetto-ized, relegated to speciality markets rather than being more widely circulated.

On the other, they were published. Anyone could, if they wished, find a library or bookstore that had the novels or could order them.

Also, the publishing houses nurtured and supported some of these authors, providing professional editing, artwork, and marketing, even if the marketing was tightly focused on gay communities rather than readers at large.

Take Felice Picano, one of my favorite authors from the glory days of the gay imprints. I met him at a book signing at a New York City gay bookstore, A Different Light, perhaps, but my memory is hazy on the details. I don't even recall which of his novels I was there to have signed. But he was a celebrity in the gay world, a literary superstar most of the rest of the world had never heard of.

We were better for that, for the whole phenomenon of the gay novel, I think.

But then starting in the '90s and finishing by the end of the naughts, the gay imprints started to close. The reasons were complex, having something to do with gay bookstores going out of business — for many of the same reasons brick and mortar bookstores were going out of business everywhere.

The change was positive in ways, as some publishing houses began marketing novels with queer content to general audiences, but I think it's safe to say that such novels became relatively more rare.

Authors like Picano, Scott Heim, and others no longer had the support and resources available from major publishing houses. Even if such support had been second-class, it had still been enough to get gay books into gay hands.

Of course there is no dearth of gay or other queer fiction today. Self-published novels abound, and some of them are very good. Some of them break through and go mainstream-ish. And, as you point out, publishing houses are more likely to include queer themes and characters in mainstream novels. This is very positive.

Still, reading your story this morning sent me into a bit of a nostalgic reverie. Just seeing some of those covers again!

I remembered my younger self browsing the shelves of gay bookstores, seeking out the newest novels from my gay literary heroes.

I know everything changes, and the old days I'm remembering were also very troubled days. But still and all, the ghetto-ized world of gay publishing had its upside.

Thanks for this story, and I look forward to more from you.

By this way, I publish, Prism & Pen on Medium. We exist to amplify queer voices, and this story would have been a perfect fit for us.

If you'd like to submit future stories, we'd be delighted to help you find more readers.