Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner. I am planning an essay collection to commemorate Patricia (and already have an academic publisher that’s “definitely interested”). Pretty much any aspect on Patricia’s life and works would be welcome. There may also be a conference, but it would probably be a Zoom meeting. If you're interested, please contact me as soon as possible.

The Front Runner: athletics and homosexuality (the last taboo?), college life, fan mail, global reception, Olympic Games

The Fancy Dancer: Catholicism, smalltown homosexuality, Native American heritage

The Beauty Queen: right-wing politics, Evangelicals, S/M, pre-AIDS, censorship

All of the above novels: relationship to other gay novels, such as Gordon Merrick’s Peter and Charlie trilogy, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, or Larry Kramer’s Faggots

Harlan’s Race: AIDS, Moral Majority, the Bible

Billy’s Boy: queer science fiction, teenage sexuality, intergenerational relationships, high school life, parenting

The Wild Man: Hemingway, the torero’s queerness, post-fascist Spain, wildlife conservation

One Is the Sun: Mayan spirituality, paganism, matriarchy, animals, the West, history as written by the defeated

Warren’s Ukrainian poetry: the current war, Ukrainian heritage, Communism

The Front Runner movie: “the most celebrated failure to produce a film from gay fiction” (Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet)