Works by
George K. Ilsley
(Writer)

Random Acts of Hatred (2004)
In these raw, uncompromising stories, author George K. Ilsley explores the thin line between love and hate, and the outer parameters of desire that can both heal and destroy. Random Acts of Hatred infiltrates the dark confines of decidedly queer sensibilities, in which young men are undone by self-loathing and the powers-that-be, begging the question: What happens when people know they are hated?

And yet in between the primal fantasies and bitter ironies are images of humor and light: the wayward families, the unspoken gestures and the faces in the -mirror-of posers and dreamers, saints and demons. Both gay and straight, they suggest a new definition of masculine power as a field with two poles, dissonant and equal at the same time.

Evocative of Dennis Cooper and David Wojnarowicz, Random Acts of Hatred collects the fragments of a disintegrated generation, numbed yet empowered by their varied, inexplicable desires.

ManBug (2006) -- Nominated, 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Male Fiction
The first novel by George K. Ilsley, whose first story collection, Random Acts of Hatred, was published to acclaim in 2004. Told in dream-like fragments, ManBug unfolds as a love story between Sebastian, an entomologist with Asperger's Syndrome, and Tom, a spiritual bisexual who may or may not be recruiting Sebastian for a cult. They navigate their relationship as damaged goods, seeking meaning and value in themselves through the other; they also try to avoid the inevitable toxins around them, both real and imagined-like bugs avoiding insecticide-while asking the question, Just how much poison can any of us absorb? ManBug is a beguiling, tragicomic novel about beauty, horror, desire, and what lurks just beneath the skin.