When Raymond Luczak was growing up deaf in a hearing Catholic family of nine children, his mother shared conflicting stories about having had a miscarriage after-or possibly around-the time he was conceived. As an elegy to his lost twin, this book asks: If he had a twin, just how different would his life have been?

Jonathan, edited by Raymond Luczak, features fiction by established and emerging gay authors. Included in the fifth installment of Jonathan: Chuck Teixeira, Robby Nadler, Trebor Healey, Matt Dean, Lance Garland, R. Daniel Evans, Lewis DeSimone, Mitch Goldsmith, Arthur Durkee, and Jonathan Corcoran. Proudly published by Sibling Rivalry Press.

As a boy growing up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Raymond Luczak delighted in the mysterious attractions of nature in a huge expanse of abandoned woods and fields known as "across the street." In This Way to the Acorns, he remembers encountering unexpected guests of the woods: a scraggly fox, a starving doe, an industrious chipmunk, all enveloped against the backdrop of nature. If he remembers the first shimmers of spring, he does not forget the stark reality of death, or, ultimately, the forgiving power of the seasons. This Way to the Acorns is a flinty-eyed ode to that overpowering sense of childhood wonder. An afterword by the author is included in this tenth anniversary edition.

With the ghosts of Emily Dickinson, Arthur Rimbaud, Sappho, and Walt Whitman leading the way, How to Kill Poetry showcases a highly selective overview of Western civilization poetic development from its oral traditions to the silence of pixels. The narrative then jumps 200 years into the future where the unfortunate consequences of global warming create a dramatic backdrop against which poetry--if it is to have any redeeming value--must survive.

Poetry. LGBT Studies. In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed collection MUTE, Raymond Luczak sets out on a turbulent journey after ending a 15-year relationship. The poems of ROAD WORK AHEAD follow Luczak as he meets kindred souls on his travels and wonders what it means to love again. He opens the suitcase of his heart in far-flung cities and points beyond. His poems, pungent with musk and ache, will open yours too.

In Among the Leaves, 18 queer male poets share stories what it means to live in the Midwest. We learn what it's like for them to play football and come up short. We feel their lingering effects of bullying. We experience the undeniable power of seasons affecting their moods as they ache for a meaningful connection. We learn what it means to celebrate in spite of the odds against them. But more than anything, we discover anew through their poems the redemptive power of love and renewal among the leaves growing and falling.

In 2002, Raymond Luczak handed us his call to arms for deaf artists everywhere. Ten years later, he revisits the book that challenged assumptions about being an artist. Has anything changed? Yes and no. Luczak's meditations on what makes art "art" and deafness "deaf" asks artists everywhere to rethink their work and live differently. This tenth anniversary edition incorporates new observations made over the past decade. "Written in the form of quick bursts of opinion arrived at over his many years as a poet, playwright, and filmmaker, Luczak seeks to shake deaf artists out of the cages built by the hearing world . . . There are plenty of opinions to argue with in this volume. Yet Luczak calls us to ask important questions of ourselves." - Emily Drabinski, Out

"Oh, why can't the deaf community be more like a family?" is the plaint of a character in Raymond Luczak's title play Whispers of a Savage Sort. It also goes far in characterizing the main thread that runs through his remarkable collection of work offered in this new volume. Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience presents a progression of plays that depict Deaf people in situations well-known by the community's members. Written to be signing-driven, these plays feature Deaf characters from the various strata of Deaf society. Each play centers on different yet equally familiar issues. Snooty brings to life the difficulties of surviving the social pecking order in a deaf residential school. The main character's only escape is a rich fantasy life in which he is in control. Doogle confronts its characters with the intrusion of technological communication devices parallel to the virtually forced intimacy of such a small, close community. Brought into stark focus by the specter of AIDS, Love in My Veins explores how trust, betrayal, and ultimately forgiveness can transform a Deaf couple's love for each other in a Deaf community. The collection's eponymous Whispers of a Savage Sort reveals the relentless damage that rumor and innuendo can do to a diverse group of Deaf individuals. The emotions, identities, and consequences created by Luczak in these dramas illuminate the Deaf American community in fascinating detail rarely seen in any medium today.