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This Day in Gay History 1968 - MICHAEL THOMAS FORD is an American author of primarily gay-themed literature, born on this date. He is best known for his "My Queer Life" series of humorous essay collections and for his award-winning novels Last Summer, Looking for It, Full Circle, Changing Tides and What We Remember. Michael Thomas Ford is the author of more than fifty books for both young readers and adults. He is best known for his best-selling novels Last Summer, Looking for It, and Full Circle and for his five essay collections in the "Trials of My Queer Life" series. His work has been nominated for eleven Lambda Literary Awards, twice winning for Best Humor Book and twice for Best Romance Novel. He was also nominated for a Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award (for his novel The Dollhouse That Time Forgot) and a Gay lactic Spectrum Award (for his short story "Night of the Were puss"). Although he received many literature awards. Ford began his writing career in 1992 with the publication of 100 Questions & Answers about AIDS: What You Need to Know Now (Macmillan), one of the first books about the AIDS crisis for young adults. Named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, the book became the most widely used resource in HIV education programs for young people and was translated into more than a dozen languages. The follow-up to that book, The Voices of AIDS (William Morrow, 1995), was a collection of interviews with people whose lives have been affected by the HIV-AIDS crisis. This book too was named an ALA Best Book, as well as a National Science Teachers Association-Children's Book Council Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children and a Booklist magazine Editors' Choice. Ford's next book, 1996's The World Out There: Becoming Part of the Lesbian and Gay Community 1998 saw the release of two books, the first being OutSpoken (William Morrow), a collection of interviews with gay and lesbian people that was again aimed at young adults. The book was named both a National Council of Social Studies-Children's Book Council Notable Children's Book in the field of Social Studies and a Booklist magazine "Top of the List" selection, and received a Lambda Literary Award nomination, Ford's second in the YA division. Ford's second book to come out that year was Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me (Alyson Books), the first of what has come to be known as the "Trials of My Queer Life" series. The book received a Lambda Literary Award for Best Humor book, winning out over titles by lesbian comic Kate Clinton, columnist Dan Savage, and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Ford next wrote 'That's Mr. Faggot to You (Alyson Books, 1999). Ford obtained a Lambda Literary Award, edging out previous winner comedian Bob Smith. That same year he began recording his weekly radio show for the GayBC Radio Network. In October 2008, Ford returned to his young adult roots with the publication of Suicide Notes (HarperCollins), the blackly comic story of a young man forced to come to terms with his emerging sexuality after a failed attempt at ending his life puts him in a psychiatric hospital. In 2009 Ford released his fifth novel with Kensington, What We Remember, a portrait of a family torn apart when the father, believed to have committed suicide, is found to have been murdered. As the mystery around his death is unraveled, so too is the tragic history of a family that isn't what it seems. What We Remember won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Mystery. In December 2009 Ballantine released Ford's Jane Bites Back, the first of a three-book series about Jane Austen, who still exists as a vampire bookshop owner living in the New York suburbs, who has to deal with two suitors and a dark figure from her past. In May 2010 Ford published The Road Home, his sixth novel for Kensington Books. Mike lives in rural Ohio with his partner and two rescue dogs. He does not like to shave.
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