Hard »

Although Hard is his first novel, Wayne Hoffman has been a writer and editor for 15 years. By day, he’s a journalist: He is currently managing editor of the Forward, America’s national Jewish newspaper. Previously, he was senior editor at Billboard, the bible of the music industry, and a founding editor of the New York Blade, the largest gay newspaper in the country. His cultural reporting has appeared in more than 50 publications, including the Washington Post, the Village Voice, The Nation, The Advocate, the Boston Phoenix, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

He has also worked on a number of books. He co-edited the award-winning anthology Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism (South End Press). He penned short stories and personal essays for several more collections, including an homage to his ex-lover in Boy Meets Boy (St. Martin’s), a tale about intergenerational sex in Generation Q (Alyson), a conversation with his mother in Mama’s Boy (Painted Leaf), and a story about Princess Diana in Bar Stories (Alyson). He is also a travel writer; in addition to contributing to several guides, he authored the 2003 book Fodor’s How to Take a Road Trip.

In his spare time, Wayne has marched with Queer Nation, lobbied Capitol Hill with the Human Rights Campaign Fund, and organized demonstrations with Sex Panic. He served as associate producer for the AIDS documentary “Our Brothers, Our Sons,” in which he also appeared. He modeled for the 1998 “Kissing” calendar by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. In 1998, Wayne was named one of the country’s “Best and Brightest Under 30” bythe Advocate, the national gay newsmagazine.

A native of Silver Spring, Maryland, Wayne has lived in Greenwich Village for the past 10 years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in social politics, and his master’s degree from New York University in American studies.

Taking place over the course of a single year, Hard periodically stops the action to delve into the sexual psyche of its main characters, exploring what motivates them, what turns them on, what defines their identity — what makes them hard.

As Faggots explored the 1970s sexual universe of gay men in New York, Hard takes a serious look a generation later, taking readers into adult theaters, online chat rooms, bedrooms, and into the minds of the gay men who have sex there. But while Faggots was written before AIDS, the characters in Hard are very much affected by the epidemic: Frank lost his lover to the disease, Gene is HIV-positive, Aaron’s lover unwittingly puts them both in danger, and Moe’s sexual politics are deeply informed by AIDS. There's nobody in Hard who hasn’t had his sexuality and politics shaped by the epidemic.

There's also a motley crew of activists and sex partners, co-workers and family members, porn stars and B-list celebrities. The complex web of characters and subplots create a rich portrait of New York in the 1990s. And, like Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, Hard does it with edgy humor, snappy dialogue, and a scene-driven episodic structure.

Publishers Weekly

Sexual politics-both public and private-play out against the cityscape of mid-1990s Manhattan in Hoffman's absorbing year-in-the-life of a group of gay men. Amid a citywide crackdown on public sex venues, the editors of two gay newspapers take opposing sides. One editor, Moe Pearlman-the 26-year-old grad-school dropout at the heart of the novel-is a founding member of the Alliance to Save Sex (get it?) who participates in civil disobedience more Candace Bushnell than Thoreau: with promiscuous oral sex, he "tak[es] a stand on his knees." The other editor, Frank DeSoto, remembers the AIDS epidemic of the '80s-when he lost his lover- and sees the crackdown as a matter of public health. Humanizing the story are the characters occupying the space between: aspiring photographer Kevin, who makes ends meet turning an occasional trick, endangering both himself and his lover, Aaron; and Gene, who must learn to give up his only fetish-control-when he's diagnosed with HIV. Though shallow characters initially stunt the narrative, the larger issues of sexual rights and AIDS add depth to their voices, making this sexually explicit debut novel an intriguing exploration of politics and psyche. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.