A Last Supper of Queer Apostles

Searingly political, extravagantly stylish non-fiction from a queer Latin American literary icon, in English for the first time"I speak from my difference" wrote Pedro Lemebel, the Chilean writer who became an icon of resistance and queer transgression across Latin America. His innovative essays-known as crónicas-combine memoir, reportage, history and fiction to bring visibility and dignity to the lives of sexual minorities, the poor and the powerless.In a baroque, freewheeling style that fused political urgency with playfulness, resistance with camp, Lemebel shone a light on lives and events that many wanted to suppress: the glitzy literary salon held above a torture chamber, the queer sex and community that bloomed in Santiago's hidden corners and the last days of trans sex workers dying of AIDS, each cast in the starring role of her own private tragedy.As Chile emerged from Pinochet's brutal dictatorship into a flawed democracy, Lemebel re-wrote the country's history from the margins, and today his subversive voice echoes around the world.

Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) is considered one of the most important queer writers of twentieth-century Latin America and was also an activist and a performance artist. Born in Santiago, Chile, he became a renowned voice of Latin American counterculture during the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath. He received Chile's José Donoso Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is best known for his crónicas and one novel, My Tender Matador, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was adapted in 2020 into a critically acclaimed film by Chilean director Rodrigo Sepúlveda.Gwendolyn Harper won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Work in Progress grant from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation for A Last Supper of Queer Apostles. She holds an MFA from Brown University.