Newsday from New York, New York • 121

PUBLISHING Gay Books Come Out on the Counter By Perri Knize Thousands of people from around the world flocked to Greenwich Village last week to commemorate the 20th anniversaiy of the Stonewall Inn riot, the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement. And while parading and partying, visitors and New York natives were buying books lots of books. During this week I always buy five times what I tisually do, said a beaming Betsy Lenke, a New Jersey resident, as she piled new titles into her arms at A Different Light on Hudson Street, one of New Yorks two gaylesbian bookstores. This is like Christmas to me." A celebratory spirit is permeating the gay publishing industry as welL Sales have doubled in just the past five years, say the owners of New York's gay bookstores, which also serve a thriving national market with mail-order catalogs. Gay and lesbian small presses have jumped from six houses two years ago to 20 today, said Michael Denneny, an editor at St.

Martins Press. And, he said, bookstores specializing in gay and lesbian literature now number about 35 in the United States, up from about 10 in 1984 and up from one store in 1969. Last month, the American Booksellers Association convention in Washington, D.C., hosted the first annual Lambda Awards for gay and lesbian titles in 14 categories. And the first lifetime achievement award was presented to author Edmund White by the Publishing Triangle, a new association of gays working in the publishing industry. Funds for that award were donated by Macmillan, E.P.

Dutton and Random House mainstream houses that only a few years ago wouldnt have devoted so much attention to gay books, industry insiders say. Now they welcome volumes written by publicly gay authors, or about issues affecting gays, or fiction with gay protagonists. And the few publishers who have historically carried gay titles have started gay imprints: St. Martins Press has Stonewall Inn Editions, New American Library has Plume, and Lyle Stewart has Meadow land Books. Five years ago St.

MartinB Press, the leading mainstream publisher of gay titles, carried just 30 gay books. Now it carries 80. My sales force used to feel that going into gay bookstores was a job, said Michael Denneny, the editor who came to St. Martins in 1977 with a mission to pioneer gay publishing. Now, they go in and write up $5,000 worth of orders.

It is often the biggest account in their region. Writers and editors say this boom has been on the horizon since the Stonewall Rebellion, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, attacked police trying to arrest them and then rioted in the streets for three days. As more and more people come out, they feel able to pick up an obvious gay book and take it to the cash register, said Ed Iwanicki, an editor at Viking. Until the gay-rights movement, that book was under the counter and quite literally in the closet. Now, its lucrative for big houses to get involved in gay titles.

The new climate has, in turn, emboldened gay writers. Theres an incredible Bynergy of people coming out in a Bupportive environment with stores willing to sell books, publishers willing to publish and writers willing to write, Newiday Jim Cummins Norman Laurilla owns A Different Light bookstore. said John Preston, columnist for the Lambda Rising Book Report and author of several books. Gay editors fought to publish gay titles, Preston said. Writers took risks with their careers to prove that good writers can write good books about gay life.

With gay Americans now coming out in their teens and gay literature being taught in college, the markets expansion was inevitable. Central to these developments, said Preston, are the gay bookstores, which provide publishers with a critical link to the market. The Btores act as community centers and are run by people who read what they sell and who care about their customers, publishers say. In addition, surveys show the average gay reader is highly literate. Books like Randy Shilts best-selling And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic also have helped legitimize gay publishing: It made more than $1 million for St.

Martins. The AIDS crisis spurred a torrent of self-help, self-healing, psychology and AIDS-related fiction that has only just started to slow. This is an unwelcome opportunity to become more vocal, Baid Jane Troxell, editor of the report. Gay men and women are struggling to survive and they are no longer being silenced and hidden." St. Martins Denneny said the health crisis has changed the way he does business.

Eight years ago, I would have thought it grotesque to ask a writer if he would live long enough to finish a book," he said. Now I have those conversa tions regularly. In the 70s, being gay was about sex. The 80s are about death. Eros and Thanatos, the two great themes of western literature.

There needs to be a lot of writing about AIDS." But AIDS titles are not the biggest sellers. Some say the fall-off in AIDS book sales is a reflection of the fall-off in new AIDS cases among the gay population. Literary fiction is whats hot, with detective stories, mysteries and black humor starring gay protagonists the most popular. New nonfiction titles deal with ethics, religion, alcohol abuse and family relations. New directions in the genre explore Btraightgay relationships and relationships with children.

Stephen MacCau-leys Object of My Affection is about a gay man and his straight female roommate. The Boys and Their Baby, by Larry Wolf, is about a gay man and a straight man who live together and have a child. At A Different Light and the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on Christopher Street, books about child rearing are prominently displayed. Denneny, who said his first gay book at Macmillan in the mid-70s caused an uproar, has shifted his focus from getting titles in print to getting a leg up on competition. Hes targeted academe as the next frontier.

I think within a decade you are going to see gay-studies programs on campuses," he said. With our trade paperback line, were poised to take advantage of that market with a backlist that will sell year after year." HI Newiday BIRTH OF A BILL Delivering More Midwives By Laurie Goodstein IN NEW YORK STATE, babies are busy being bom but there are fewer doctors than ever to usher them into the world. Nurse-midwives are filling the gap as more physicians fed up with the high cost of malpractice insurance abandon obstetrics, especially in low-income areas, where medical care is most needed. A bill designed to multiply the ranks and the status of midwives is to be introduced in Albany this week. If it passes, it would make New York the first state to have its own midwifery licensing board, raising midwifery in prestige from a certified to a licensed profession.

It also would allow midwives to practice without requiring them to become registered nurses. Thats necessary, some say, because of the severe shortage of nurses. The StatA Nrirkingssotiktioji. and' I handful of midwives oppose the bill, but hospital representatives, state health officials and midwifery organizations see it as a dose of salvation. There are about 350 certified midwives statewide, including more than 200 in 32 hospitals around the city.

Agencies that help place midwives in hospitals say up to 100 more are needed. Without it, were dead, said Pixie Elsbery, a nurse-midwife who directs the midwifery service at North Central Bronx Hospital. We have had to close the unit to new patients many times because of the demand." The nursing association says the legislation would be expensive to implement. But public health officials say the law actually could save patients and hospitals millions of dollars, judging by the 12-year-old program at North Central Bronx Hospital. Because midwives emphasize a natural birth pro- on Page 13 I CITY BUSINESS5 Newsday Susan Farley Midwife Sylvie Blaustein watches over t.

new mother Trlcia Spence and her OmT 1 i1 1 1 1 a 1 i.