My Divas--Auntie Mame and Camille Paglia

I'm proud to be a contributor to the new volume My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (ed. Michael Montlack), which was recently published by the University of Wisconsin Press. It's a wonderful collection of essays about how iconic women, real and fictional, have served as role models for gay men or, by example, helped them emerge from the confines of the closet. My own contribution, on the flamboyant Auntie Mame (as portrayed on film by the great Rosalind Russell) was recently hailed by Camille Paglia (writing on Salon.com) as her favorite essay in the book. Her review devotes an entire paragraph to my work, which is an amazing compliment.