Description

Meet the out crowd that’s really “in”—the gay and lesbian stand-up comics who’ve come out of the closet and stormed the mainstream with the hippest and wittiest comedy acts of the last three decades.

In A Funny Time to Be Gay, Ed Karvoski Jr. traces the evolution of gay and lesbian comedy from the few pioneers in New York's Greenwich Village in the seventies, to the mavericks who played San Francisco's famed Valencia Rose in the eighties, to the comics who starred in their own TV specials in the nineties and continue to headline comedy clubs. With short introductions that reveal the performers’ approaches to both their sexual and professional identities, over thirty hilarious monologues capture the diversity of the gay and lesbian comic community.

About the author(s)

Ed Karvoski Jr. has worked in various aspects of the entertainment and publishing industries for over 30 years. He's the author of five books, including the bestseller A Funny Time to Be Gay, Award-Winning Men, and The Movie Queen Quiz Book. Karvoski and his books have been featured in The New York Times, USA Weekend, Publishers Weekly, The Advocate, and Out. Additionally, The Village Voice called him "an insatiable vacuum cleaner in the showbiz closet!"

Reviews

“There’s not a closet big enough to hold this book! The performers, many of whom I’ve worked with, are here and now. You’ll get to hang out and laugh. Enjoy this!”-- Whoopi Goldberg

“The sex may be safe, but the comedy isn’t. This is the kind of funny, bias-bashing book that all of America – gay and straight – should be reading.”--Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher

“You think Ellen DeGeneres had it tough, hiding her homosexuality in the closet all those years until after she hit the big time in television? What about comics long out of the closet who have struggled in relative obscurity in large part because they are openly gay?... Many of their routines are available to a wider audience through a new compilation, A Funny Time to Be Gay, collected by Ed Karvoski Jr.”--Tom Kuntz, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“According to publishers and retailers, this is indeed ‘a funny to be gay’… A Funny Time to Be Gay is among the strong, consistent sellers.”-- James A. Martin, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

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