Chicago artist Dan Crowley works in many different mediums. Over the years his sculpted puppets have been sold in galleries across the country. Tiffany & Co in Chicago showcased his sculpted characters in award winning Holiday window displays, as has the Stuart Weitzman stores. Dan’s shoe characters are in Jane Weitzman’s book “Art & Sole” and Donna Kato’s book “the Art of Polymer Clay”. His cartoon strip “Uncle Dan” ran weekly in the Windy City Media Publication, Nightspots for three years. The Chicago Public Library showcased Dan’s oil painting series of famous people from history as frogs. This group of paintings continues to grow as frog portraits became something Crowley was known for. He began his career in 1985 as an illustrator for the Children’s Garment Industry in Manhattan, drawing teddy bears for kid’s clothing. Now-a-days he works in his studio assisted by his cats “the Nicklebys”. 

Tim Barela’s Leonard & Larry are back! The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection contains every Leonard & Larry strip, from their first appearance in Gay Comix to The Advocate and Frontiers magazine. Strip creator Tim Barela gave voice to a generation of LGBTQ people. Whether we were gay, straight, into music, or into leather, we could see our lives mirrored in the sometimes crazy but always loving Leonard & Larry universe.

The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection contains all the strips from the long out-of-print previous collections of Tim Barela’s work: Domesticity Isn’t Pretty, Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead, Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall, and How Real Men Do It. Also in this collection are cartoons from Mountain Man and the never seen before Grizzly ‘N’ Ted series. In addition, the Complete Leonard & Larry Collection features forewords by internationally respected animation historian Charles Solomon and Gay Comix pioneer and pop culture historian Andy Mangels, plus an introduction by Tim Barela.

James Magruder is a fiction writer, playwright, and translator. His work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, The Idaho Review, Subtropics, Arts & Letters, Third Coast, AU, Prairie Schooner, Bloom, The Normal School, The Hopkins Review, Gargoyle, the anthologies Boy Crazy and New Stories from the Midwest, and elsewhere. His début novel, Sugarless, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelists Award, and shortlisted for the 2010 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Northwestern University Press published his linked story collection, Let Me See It, in 2014, and it was a Montaigne Medal Finalist in 2015. His second novel, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, was released in 2016 from Queen’s Ferry Press and reissued by Chelsea Station Editions.

Yvonne Zipter is the author of two nonfiction books (Ransacking the Closet and Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend), three poetry collections (Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal, and Like Some Bookie God), and a number of short stories, including “Günther’s Wife,” which won first place in LitPot ezine eclectic’s Flash Fiction Contest, and “Third Date,” which was selected for Best Lesbian Love Stories, 2005. She was also the author of the syndicated humor column “Inside Out,” on lesbian life, which ran for ten years in newspapers from Washington, DC, to Oklahoma City to San Diego after its debut in Chicago’s Windy City Times.

St Sukie de la Croix, 69, has been a social commentator and researcher on Chicago’s LGBT history for three decades. He has published oral-history interviews; lectured; conducted historical tours; documented LGBT life through columns, photographs, humor features, and fiction; and written the book Chicago Whispers (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) on local LGBT history. St Sukie de la Croix, the man the Chicago Sun-Times described as “the gay Studs Terkel,” came to Chicago from his native Bath, England, in 1991. He has had columns in local publications or online news and entertainment sources such as Chicago Free Press, Gay Chicago, Nightlines/Nightspots, Outlines, Blacklines, Windy City Times, and GoPride.com as well as numerous others outside the city.

Author of eight books, entertainment journalist Gregg Shapiro’s interviews and reviews run in numerous regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications. Shapiro lives with his husband Rick and their dog Coco in South Florida.

​Gay men communicate in many ways, sometimes a glance, sometimes a smile, and sometimes a whistle. In How to Whistle, Gregg Shapiro brings us men of all types sometimes seeking to be with each other and sometimes looking for themselves. They dance, they indulge, they camp, and they enjoy life. Shapiro employs his deft poetic voice to bring you men that will stay with you, men you'll find yourself thinking about for a long time.

Rattling Good Yarns Press is an independent publishing house specializing in LGBTQ fiction, history, and whimsey. The British expression, a rattling good yarn, means a story that is excellent and exciting. We are devoted to bringing works to light that are neglected by mainstream publishers.

Philip Gambone, a gay man, never told his father the reason why he was rejected from the draft during the Vietnam War. In turn, his father never talked about his participation in World War II. Father and son were enigmas to each other. Gambone, an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer, spent seven years uncovering who the man his quiet, taciturn father had been, by retracing his father's journey through WW II. As Far As I Can Tell not only reconstructs what Gambone’s father endured, it also chronicles his own emotional odyssey as he followed his father’s route from Liverpool to the Elbe River. A journey that challenged the author’s thinking about war, about European history, and about “civilization."

St Sukie de la Croix, 69, has been a social commentator and researcher on Chicago’s LGBT history for three decades. He has published oral-history interviews; lectured; conducted historical tours; documented LGBT life through columns, photographs, humor features, and fiction; and written the book Chicago Whispers (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) on local LGBT history. St Sukie de la Croix, the man the Chicago Sun-Times described as “the gay Studs Terkel,” came to Chicago from his native Bath, England, in 1991. He has had columns in local publications or online news and entertainment sources such as Chicago Free Press, Gay Chicago, Nightlines/Nightspots, Outlines, Blacklines, Windy City Times, and GoPride.com as well as numerous others outside the city. 

Daniel grew up and attended college in New Jersey, then moved to the Boston area for law school. He worked for several years as a corporate/securities attorney before throwing caution to the winds and pursuing a career in creative writing. After his partner (and future husband), Leo Cabranes-Grant, accepted a university teaching position in California, Daniel moved with him to Santa Barbara.

Several of Daniel's short stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and dozens of his stories, essays, and articles have appeared in anthologies, literary journals and newspapers in many countries and languages. His work has been taught in college and university courses. He holds degrees from Princeton University (A.B.), Harvard Law School (J.D.), and Vermont College (M.F.A.).

Paper Cuts: My Life in Chicago’s Volatile LGBTQ Press is the story of Rick Karlin’s life writing for Chicago’s newspapers, balancing that with his family life outside of it. Joining the staff at GayLife in 1978 gave Karlin a front-row seat at some of the momentous events in post-Stonewall LGBTQ history. From the privileged vantage point of a newspaper office, he watched the rise and fall of disco, the AIDS crisis, same-sex marriage, bars opening and closing, and LGBTQ newspapers coming and going. Like gossip columnists, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, Karlin knew the dirt going on behind the scenes. … Scratch the veneer of what Karlin calls his “so-called celebrity” and you will find a man of conviction, morals, and a keen sense of community. In short, Rick Karlin is a jewel in the crown of Chicago’s LGBTQ press. In 1978 he dived into a polluted pool and, holding his nose, swam in it for decades. And Chicago is all the better for it.

Rattling Good Yarns Press is an independent publishing house specializing in LGBTQ fiction, history, and whimsey. The British expression, a rattling good yarn, means a story that is excellent and exciting. We are devoted to bringing works to light that are neglected by mainstream publishers.