 The
Independent Gay Writer is pleased to present another
informative
article byPatricia Nell Warren "EDITORIAL EGALES: IMPORTANT RESOURCE FOR SPANISH-LANGUAGE GLBT BOOKS" Copyright (c) 2004 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved. While most people know her by her many books, these are but one asset in a lifetime of work. In just three decades, Patricia Nell Warren has become one of the most popular and respected authors of gay literature in the world. With eight successful novels to her credit and an estimated readership of over twenty million people worldwide, her books are considered by many to be an intrinsic part of the gay rites of passage as well as a literary synthesis of the gay life experience. more... |
| First, the
disclosure. I'm an
Egales author, and have three titles in print with them. But
it's
hard not to be impressed by this Spanish publisher's accomplishments,
and to hope that they'll become better known in the United
States. After all, the U.S. and Puerto Rico has a
sizeable—and
growing—market for Spanish-language GLBT books. Editorial Egales ( www.editorialegales.com) is about to celebrate 10 years as the first (and so far the only, as far as I know) Spanish-language publisher specializing in GLBT books. They have offices in both Madrid and Barcelona, and an impressive list of 110 titles in print. Its co-founders, Connie Dagas and Mili Hernandez, are activists who have made their determination to rebuild our literature felt in Spain, and to make their titles available everywhere that Spanish-language books are read. In October I had the chance to spend several days in the co-founders' company, when I was in Barcelona to head the awards jury for Barcelona's International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Barcelona, the capital of Catalunya, is not only Spain's most cosmopolitan city but a long-time center of Spanish book publishing. Over many coffees and glasses of red wine, Mili, Connie, two staffers and I did a whole lot of shop talk, and I learned some things about the changing scene in Spain. Gay rights have made enormous strides there, capped by a law legalizing gay marriage that was just passed by the new Socialist government. Indeed, right now it could be said that gay people are better off in Spain than they are here. Mili is the more visible one, short, high-energy, silver hair cut very butch -- the talking head often seen on Spanish television when a GLBT spokesperson is needed. She runs the office in Madrid. Connie is tall, quiet, intense, a native of Catalunya, and runs the Barcelona office. Both are astute businesswomen in a country where few independent businesswomen could be seen in the 1960s, when I lived in Spain. As an adjunct to the publishing house, Mili and Connie opened a bookstore chain, Complices, with successful stores in both Madrid and Barcelona -- the first gay bookstores in Spain. Spain only recently emerged from a long (1939-1975) dark era of right-wing Catholic dictatorship. When General Franco died in 1975, not the least of the challenges facing Spanish culture was that liberal literature, publishing, printing, reviewing and bookselling had been quashed for nearly 40 years. If a book got in trouble with the Spanish censors, the printer went to jail along with the publisher and author. It was even dangerous to have old books from the liberal Republic era visible in your personal library or your antiquarian bookstore -- especially books with any amount of gay or lesbian content. Franco nursed a special hatred for gay people, so the works of important writers who were fairly open about their sexual orientation during the pre-Franco era -- among them Federico Garcia Lorca and Ana Maria Martinez Sagi -- virtually disappeared from sight for 40 years. When I lived in Spain in the 1960s, most people froze socially at the mere mention of Lorca's name -- yet outside of Spain, Lorca was routinely included in every anthology of great modern poets! Rebuilding this bombed-out edifice of gay culture took some time. Even as a gay political movement slowly emerged from the 80s into the 90s, the actual infrastructure of GLBT media and publishing in Spain was still shaky. Some Spanish authors turned to the U.S., only to find that most U.S. trade publishers and small presses were not very interested in Spanish-language literature...in spite of the fact that a growing percentage of the U.S.'s total population speaks Spanish! In the early 90s I met Spanish author Carlos Suarez Radillo -- also a celebrated figure in Spanish theater -- during his book promotion travels around the U.S. He had come out and written his first gay novel, strongly autobiographical, titled Someone Else in the Mirror, and was trying to find a publisher. One would think that someone with his reputation would see his manuscript snapped up. But Carlos had no luck here with either mainstream or gay publishers. Finally his book found a home in Spain with Laertes, one of the older established trade publishers who were starting to publish the occasional gay book. In his conversations with me, Carlos lamented the scarcity of GLBT literary resources in Spain. | In the mid-90s, that
started to
change, thanks to a handful of Spanish
media pioneers. About the same time Egales launched their
imprint,
festival director Xavier-Daniel launched the prestigious Barcelona Film
Festival ( http://www.gaybarcelona.net/ficglb/
), funded by the Catalan
government, which grew into an important venue for new and experimental
GLBT filmmakers. There are now several GLBT film festivals in
Spain.
The emergence of Spanish gay filmmakers creates -- hopefully!! -- the
opportunity for more films based on gay books. Now there are also GLBT magazines, including a fine new one, GayBarcelona (www.gaybarcelona.net ), whose founders I also met while I was in the city. Over more glasses of wine, editors Daniel Bigorra and David Prada and PR director Angel Bigorra told me they are committeed to supporting books and publishing book reviews. (I wish I could say the same for many gay magazines in the U.S.) Though owned by women, Egales publishes literature by both genders. Many of the female and male authors on their list are more familiar to readers in Spain, Europe, UK, Central or South America. Some are known in the U.S. The current webpage features gay narratives by Gallego Alcaraz, Benoit Vallier, Antonio Jimenez Ariza, Neil Bartlett, Christopher Bram, among others. Lesbian narratives include books by: Peggy Herring, Araucha Apellaniz, Maroxa Gomez Pereira, Katherine Forrest and Rita Mae Brown. Mili and Connie also market their titles into the Spanish mainstream. They lament the fact that Spanish bookstores keep new titles on the shelf for only two or three weeks. After that, the relentless returns start. "It's make or break in those first few weeks," they said. So Egales pushes hard and creatively on the initial promotion. When they published The Front Runner, Connie capitalized on its love story by launching it on Barcelona's answer to Valentine's Day. This is the feast of St. George in April, La Diada de Sant Jordi or "Day of Lovers." Barcelona is not only a book-loving city, but a flower-loving city! So the tradition is for a pair of lovers -- straight or gay -- to exchange gifts of a rose and a book. All over the city, florists and booksellers set up temporary stalls. By the end of the day, millions of roses and perhaps half a million books change hands! Needless to say, Egales is always out there on the streets with their bookstall. In the U.S. Egales titles are distributed by Alamo Square Distribution and Bookazine. I hope I'll see more of them in gay bookstores here, especially in large metropolitan areas where there are a lot of Spanish-speaking gay people. In an era when the "gay community" is supposedly more "globalized," it's shocking to see how parochial some of our bookstores can be when they stock their shelves. Hopefully the time will come when every gay bookstore in a large U.S. city has a shelf featuring some foreign-language titles from the most prominent GLBT publishers in other countries. Egales books can be purchased online ( www.editorialegales.com ) by anyone who can't find them in a store here. The translations are widely regarded as good. They are European-style trade paperbacks, high quality, with nice paper and distinctive covers that are usually black and white or one-color. Last year I saw a whole display full of them in Miami at Lambda Passages Bookstore -- they made a nice collection. U.S. authors wanting to submit a Spanish-language manuscript, or a published English-language title that they hope might be accepted for translation, can contact Egales at: egales@retemail.es. *************** Copyright (c) 2004 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved. |