They Change the Subject »

Douglas A. Martin's first novel, Outline of My Lover, was nominated for the American Library Association's GLBT Book Award, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and named an international book of the year in the Times Literary Supplement. It has been adapted in part by the Ballett Frankfurt in the production Kammer/Kammer. The author of two collections of poetry, Martin currently teaches at New School University in New York.

Treacherously comic and poignant, the autobiographical stories in They Change the Subject follow a young man’s quest for identity through love and desire. Sustained by a single voice, the stories simultaneously offer a fractured novel and stand, powerfully, on their own. At the center of each tale is the heightened, visceral possibility of unexpected emotional encounters—from an escort’s dates in Manhattan hotels to a photo shoot that doubles as seduction. Always pushing toward a bigger shiver of passion, Martin’s young-man-on-the-make learns how to adapt his persona to suit his lovers’ needs and tries to embrace his own experience—and his self—by becoming the purest object of desire.