Werewolves Come Out Of The Closet

PR Log (Press Release) – Jul 24, 2009 – Everybody’s talking about them…werewolves. Whether it is Stephanie Meyer’s “New Moon”, Shakira’s “She Wolf” or the threat of remakes like “An American Werewolf in London” not to forget the forthcoming remakes, “The Wolfman”; we’ve got these hirsute shapeshifters on the brain. They’re sexy, they’re provocative and they’re firing our imaginations across the world. With the waxing of the werewolf QueeredFiction Press (out publishers of queered speculative genre) proudly announce that they’re doing their bit by helping a few good wolves step out of the urban fantasy closet and into “QUEER WOLF”.

In their Queer Legends series, QueeredFiction presents “QUEER WOLF” an anthology collection of werewolves living, running and loving in the city.  They’re out, they’re proud, they’re werewolves and they’re here to tell you their story. The collection is prefaced by Dr. Phillip A. Bernhardt-House who has the dubious distinction of being an expert on queer werewolves, with one of the only published academic essays on this topic (in “Queering the Non/Human”, ed. Giffney and Hird, 2008). He will soon have a book out that sprang from doctoral research (forthcoming from Edwin Mellen Press, late 2009).  

Extracted from Dr Bernhardt-House’s QUEER WOLF Preface
“Of the many subjects of supernatural fiction that might arouse the sexual instincts, werewolves have—until quite recently—not generally been among the first choices in twentieth and twenty-first century popular writing. However, a look at the history of lycanthropy reveals that werewolves have always had an erotic association.”
[…]
“What is not generally known, though, is that the image of werewolves, likewise, also often had a specifically homoerotic dimension.”
[…]
“It may seem strange, therefore, to imagine a time when all werewolves were potentially ‘queerwolves’ ever having existed, and yet this is the origin of most ideas about lycanthropy that many cultures have. As pagan practices were replaced by Christianity, and a more permissive sexual range of possibilities was stigmatized, even the werewolf image was considerably cleaned up and ‘domesticated,’ in a sense; if in no other way, its gradual desexualization and its erasure of homoeroticism were certainly identifiable results.”

To hear their stories, read the anthology with bite…

“QUEER WOLF”    ed. James EM Rasmussen
ISBN 978-1-920441-00-5
300 pages * $14.99

A Queer Moon is Rising...
“Their world lies between the shadows and the moonlight, between man and animal…and in the city under neon moons and through iron-treed streets, the queer wolves run.”
Bound within QUEER WOLF is an exciting collection of 17 contemporary, urban and sensual werewolf tales; a gathering of queer wolves presented by exciting, new and established authors.
Stories by: RJ Bradshaw; Naomi Clark; Charlie Cochrane; Laramie Dean; Moondancer Drake; Ginn Hale;  Erica Hildebrand; Michael Itig; Lucas Johnson; Andi Lee; Charles Long; Stephen Osborne; Robert Saldarini; Quinn Smythwood; Jerome Stueart; Anel Viz; Cari Z
http://www.queeredfiction.com/queerwolf.htm

Werewolves are out in every way; they’re stealing the limelight and QueeredFiction says that’s not merely a full moon on the rise…it’s a queer one. So pick up a copy of “QUEER WOLF”.  Go on…sink your teeth in; they all bite.

QueeredFiction Press
Out between the pages since the beginning of 2009, this publisher is intent on delivering great queer genre fiction! QueeredFiction is a start up small press publisher that will focus on the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transexual ‘Genred’ market. We have begun publishing in 2009, with Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror titles, all with strong Queer content, characters and genre elements…most of all great Queered Fiction.



((Released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license.))