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St Sukie’s Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures
“An adult fantasy and fairy tale book that documents the surreal side of Sukie’s historical imagination… illustrated with a brilliant, haunting precision by Roy Alton Wald.”
—Windy City Media Group
$15.95
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Description
The Janitor of Lunacy
St Sukie’s Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures is a book for adults who never lost that childlike sense of wonderment. The book sits firmly in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Alan Garner, Lord Dunsany, and other British authors who lived with the fairies, lemonade birds, and tequila bunnies. The book takes the reader on a journey through the imagination of St Sukie de la Croix, where nothing makes sense, and nothing ever will. If you wonder what happens when you throw a broken vacuum cleaner into a bottomless pit, or why American bald eagles wear such terrible wigs, then St Sukie’s Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures is the book for you. It begins when a very young St Sukie gets hired by three polar bears to become the Janitor of Lunacy in the garden of his own imagination. Every morning, St Sukie enters the secret garden to solve the problems of the woodland creatures who live there. Problems so peculiar in nature, they defy logic or anything resembling common sense. If you watch Fox News, wear Hush Puppies and cardigans, then you most likely won’t like this book. However, if you truly believe that hens can be beauticians, that meerkats fly spitfire planes, and penguins practice tai chi on beds of azaleas, then read on. You have nothing to lose but your mind.
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About the Author
Written by: St Sukie de la Croix
St Sukie de la Croix has been a social commentator and researcher on Chicago’s LGBT history for three decades. He has published oral-history interviews; lectured; conducted historical tours; documented LGBT life through columns, photographs, humor features, and fiction; and written the book Chicago Whispers (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) on local LGBT history. St Sukie de la Croix, the man the Chicago Sun-Times described as “the gay Studs Terkel,” came to Chicago from his native Bath, England, in 1991. He has had columns in local publications and online news and entertainment sources, including Chicago Free Press, Gay Chicago, Nightlines/Nightspots, Outlines, Blacklines, Windy City Times, and GoPride.com, as well as numerous others outside the city. In 2008, he served as a historical consultant and an on-screen interviewee for the WTTW television documentary “Out & Proud in Chicago.” In 2005 and 2006 he had two of his plays, “A White Light in God’s Choir” and “Two Weeks in a Bus Station with an Iguana,” performed by Chicago’s Irreverence Dance & Theatre Company. A popular and engaging lecturer, he has spoken at a range of venues, from Chubb Insurance to Boeing and from Horizons Gay Youth Services to the Chicago Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. His crowning achievement came in 2012 when the University of Wisconsin published his in-depth, vibrant record of LGBT Chicagoans, Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. With a foreword by noted historian John D’Emilio, the book received glowing reviews and cemented de la Croix’s deserved position as a top-ranking historian and leader. In 2012, de la Croix was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. Two years later he moved to Cathedral City, California, and in 2017 published The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity, a novel set in 1924 Chicago, followed by The Orange Spong and Storytelling at the Vamp Art Café in 2020. In 2018 he published The Memoir of a Groucho Marxist, a work about growing up Gay in Great Britain, and in 2019, Out of the Underground: Homosexuals, the Radical Press and the Rise and Fall of the Gay Liberation Front. Also in 2019 he published St Sukie’s Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures with celebrated illustrator Roy Alton Wald. It was in 2019 that St Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen launched their Tell Me About It Project, which led to the 2019 publication of Tell Me About It, Tell Me About It 2, and in 2020, Tell Me About It 3. In 2020, St Sukie’s latest work of fiction, The Orange Spong and Storytelling at the Vamp-Arts Café, the second book in the popular Spong Series, was published. He is also the author of the popular comic Twilight Manors in Palm Springs, which follows the hysterical adventures of Brian & Stéphane, a retired gay couple. The series includes Twilight Manors in Palm Springs, God’s Waiting Room, and Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Strange Case of Donna Reed’s Missing Wig, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Peculiar Case of the Follies Dancer, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Lady in Gray & The Bessie Mae Diamond, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Great New Orleans Powder Puff Caper, and Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Hunt fo the Hairdo Killer,
Roy Alton Wald grew up in Winchester Center, Connecticut, a small town in the foothills of the Berkshires. After graduating from the Gilbert School, Roy moved to Massachusetts to study illustration and design at the Art Institute of Boston. His interests were in painting, lino block prints, and book illustrations.
Roy makes his home in Cathedral City, California, with his husband and two dogs. His inspirations come from the flora and fauna of his youth in New England, the California desert, and his international travel. Their dogs are his constant companions as he draws in his studio on the edge of the desert.
“Living in the desert with my husband has given me the time to work seriously on my artwork. There’s a lot in my head just waiting for the right inspiration to break free.” Morning walks provide photographic reference material for fantasy illustrations. Roy’s prior work includes a book cover for “The Memoir of a Groucho Marxist” by St Sukie de la Croix, and together they produced “St Sukie’s Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures,” and “St Sukie’s Asylum for Deranged Toys.”
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Praise
“An adult fantasy and fairy tale book that documents the surreal side of Sukie’s historical imagination… illustrated with a brilliant, haunting precision by Roy Alton Wald.”
“St Sukie’s Strange Garden is a place where memories and personal experiences are recorded in a way that is both haunting and celebratory. It is a must-read for those who appreciate the ‘strange’ in LGBTQ history.”