100 of the Most Influential Gay Entertainers

by Jenettha J. Baines

Original couture fashion design. Flawless makeup. Perfectly executed performances. Attention-commanding stage presence. This is only the beginning of what makes an entertainer engaging and truly memorable. Welcome to a backstage pass into the intimate details of the lives of some of the world’s most influential gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and inter-sexed entertainers. These are their stories. Discover their fears and motivations. Experience the joy, excitement and fascination of working in the entertainment business.

These entertainers are locally appreciated, nationally known, and world traveled. They have performed everywhere from small smoke-filled clubs to Las Vegas stages. Their impact on the GLBTQI (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, inter-sexed) communities in the United States and around the world is immeasurable. Entertainers such as RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants Nina Flowers, Ongina, and Rebecca Glasscock; legendary performers Mr. Charlie Brown from the infamous Backstreets of Atlanta; Tommie Ross and Hawaiian Goddess Dina Jacobs; celebrity impersonators Hot Chocklate as Tina Turner, Coti Collins as Reba McIntyre, Leigh Shannon as Bette Miller, and Andy “6-Pak” Citino as Kid Rock; Queen of Hawaii Tiana Anderson, Queen of Bermuda Sybil Barrington; the many faces of Tasha Long; the mother of Atlanta Niesha Dupree; female-to-male illusionists Romance St. James and Gage Gatlyn; the multi-talented actress and star of “The Dred Love Experience”, MilDred “DRED” Gerestant; the beautiful and talented Raquell Lord, Erica Andrews and Stasha Sanchez; “at large” Kelexis Davenport, Chelsea Pearl and former Alvin Ally student and house music diva Ebonee Excell; New York actress and comedian Harmonica Sunbeam and her sidekick Sugga Pie Koko, and the greatest femme and stud promoters of all time, Miss Theresa from New Jersey, Regina Franklin from Atlanta, Madison from New York, and many, many more entertainers across the United States and beyond!

Kingdom Magazine Vol. 1

by Ken Vegas & Carlos Las Vegas

“Kingdom Magazine” was dedicated to documenting drag king history, drag shows, our arts and photographs, from performers all over the World.

Inspired by the Drag King communitty at IDKE (The International Drag King Etravaganza), Ken Vegas and Carlos Las Vegas, teamed up with incredibly generous drag king contributors, photographers and artists to document what was happening at the time. There was a lot of activity in the scene of emerging drag artists, troupes and gender politics that Ken and Carlos knew that they had to create a space for these voices and efforts to be documented for future generations of drag kings, genderbenders and historians to reference.

We hope you enjoy taking a peek into the world of drag that was occuring in the early part of the 21st century.

We offer Kingdom Vol. 1 as a free printable download (PDF) with more editions to come as they are made avaialble.

Drag: The Complete Story

by Simon Doonan

Drag is transformation, communication, and, above all, exaggeration, where gender non-conformity is the plat du jour. This fearless book observes this increasingly complex world by exploring drag’s journey – from the surprising, to the sophisticated, to the utterly bizarre – through the twentieth century and up to the present day.

With witty text, dazzling photography, and corralled into thematic chapters, this is the first flamboyant and poignant survey of drag culture. Drag is not just for fabulous queens and drag enthusiasts, but for anyone interested in gender fluidity and the culture surrounding it.

Just One of the Boys

by Gillian M. Rodger

Female-to-male crossdressing became all the rage in the variety shows of nineteenth-century America and began as the domain of mature actresses who desired to extend their careers. These women engaged in the kinds of raucous comedy acts usually reserved for men. Over time, as younger women entered the specialty, the comedy became less pointed and more centered on the celebration of male leisure and fashion

Girls Will Be Boys

by Laura Horak

Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn all made lasting impressions with the cinematic cross-dressing they performed onscreen. What few modern viewers realize, however, is that these seemingly daring performances of the 1930s actually came at the tail end of a long wave of gender-bending films that included more than 400 movies featuring women dressed as men.

Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures

The Rise and Fall of a Lesbian Social Scene

by Kerryn Drysdale

This book takes the globally recognised phenomenon of drag king performances as an opportunity for critical inquiry into the rise and fall of an urban scene for lesbian and queer women in Sydney, Australia (circa 1999-2012). But what happens when scenes fade, as they invariably do? Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures is unique in capturing the perspective of a scene at the moment of its decline, revealing the process by which the contemporary drag king movement becomes layered with historical significance.

For a FREE PDF Download of this book, please contact the author Kerryn Drysdale. She will happily send you a copy.

Sex, Drag, and Male Roles

by Diane Torr & Stephen Bottoms

This book documents the evolution of Torr’s work by blending first-person memoir and commentary from Torr with critical reflections and contextualization from leading performance critic Stephen J. Bottoms. The book includes a consideration of the long cultural history of female-to-male cross-dressing and concludes with Torr’s “Do-It-Yourself” guide to becoming a “Man for a Day.”

Under the Mink

2^nd edition
by Lisa E Davis

A novel about New York City in the good old days (1949) and entertainers who worked in drag, when that got you jail time instead of a TV show.

When Brooklyn Was Queer

by Hugh Ryan

Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story. Not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been a systematic erasure of its queer history—a great forgetting.

The Drag King Book

by Judith “Jack” Halberstam & Del LaGrace Volcano

This book, the first to chart the explosive rise of drag kings, combines the photographs of (100 of drag kings from London, New York, and San Francisco) Del LaGrace Volcano with the text of Judith Halberstam.

The Drag King Anthology

by Donna Troka, Kathleen Lebesco, Jean Noble

Dispelling the myth that drag kings are simply, “women doing drag”, the Drag King Anthology, presents enlightening essays that address gender, sexuality and feminism.Using prose, poetry and, photographs, an eclectic mix of scholars, performers and fans offer cultural and political, insights on the international growth and, development of drag king troupes and communities.