WELCOME TO PALM DRIVE PUBLISHING (pdf)

Founded in 1997, Palm Drive Publishing is an independent small literary press based north of San Francisco in the wine country of Sonoma County. Publisher Mark Hemry, dedicated to presenting and preserving gay popular culture and history, has produced more than forty authors in novels, memoirs, short story anthologies, essay collections, and photo books.

Those writers include variously: British critic Edward Lucie-Smith, Jim Provenzano, Jack Fritscher, Ron Suresha, Joseph W. Bean, Larry Townsend, Jim Stewart, Simon Sheppard, Mark Thompson, Richard Labonté, David Van Leer, Peter Paul Sweeney, PP Hartnett, Michael Wynne, Janice Shapiro, and film director Neil Jordan.

He edited , designed, and published the late Jim Stewart’s multi-honors winner Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s San Francisco; as well as Jack Fritscher’s Lammy finalist Some Dance to Remember which won “Book of the Year” from ForeWord Magazine. His 2001 edition of Fritscher’s What They Did to the Kid scored the “Storyteller of the Year” from ForeWord, and was reviewed by CNN as “One of the Top 100 Books You Should Be Reading.”

Hemry’s Kindle edition of Folsom Street Blues won the gold as Best Book from the e-Lit Book Awards for Erotic Non-Fiction, adding to the printed memoir’s multiple honors.

Palm Drive’s other literary award honorees include The Geography of Women: A Romantic Lesbian Comedy (Independent Publisher awards) and Gay San Francisco (ForeWord and San Francisco Book Festival nonfiction awards). The two books, Gay San Francisco with its sequel Gay Pioneers: How Drummer Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999, both also won “Best Nonfiction Book” literary awards from the National Leather Association International in 2008 and 2017.

Hemry also edited the gay fiction anthologies Stonewall Stories of Gay Liberation; Tales of the Bear Cult: Best Stories from the Best Magazines; and Chasing Danny Boy: Powerful Stories of Celtic Eros, featuring Oscar winner Neil Jordan, director of The Crying Game.

In collaboration with legendary author, Larry Townsend, Hemry also published Rainbow County and Other Stories which gave Palm Drive its first literary win at the national Book Expo America (BEA) in Chicago with the 1998 Small Press Best Book Award from Independent Publisher magazine.

In addition to Folsom Street Blues, his curation of memoirs includes Janice Shapiro’s Philly Girl; photographer Jim Wigler’s Faces of AIDS; and his own colorful bibliography photo book: Drummer: An Historical Perspective of Covers, Contents, and Staff.

Forthcoming titles include Love and Death in Tennessee Williams; Gay Popular Culture: Radical People, Arts, and Ideas; and new editions reviving the classic books Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera and Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth featuring High Priest Anton Lavey.

Palm Drive’s award-winning combination celebrating the unique link of literary and erotic qualities in diverse gay writing makes a welcome home for Lambda Literary Award winner Jim Provenzano’s seventh novel, Finding Tulsa (Autumn 2020).

Press About Palm Drive Publishing