‘My Fairy Godfather’ pays tribute to The Castro, LGBTQ+ and coming of age story…

San Francisco-based author Robert Mailer Anderson acclaimed for his novels Boonville and graphic novel Windows on the World, has officially released his new book My Fairy Godfather  (May 2024) from Fantagraphics Underground.

My Fairy Godfather underscores what many parents know and what new-to-parenting guardians may quickly discover: that lying beneath the façade of teenage cynicism is the profound desire to be understood and loved.

Reeling from the death of her parents in a car crash, teenage Billie travels over the rainbow and under tangled concrete overpasses from her native Austin, Texas to the improbably named town of Liberal, Kansas. She plans to live with her godfather, Adam, a lonely gay film geek stuck inside a jock’s body. Adam and his partner Steven run the Starlite, a movie theater and safe haven for their eccentricities and artistic yearnings.

Liberal, the adopted home of Oz’s Dorothy, is also home to small-town intolerance. But Billie is still able to find kindred spirits: Clara — a goth lesbian Dorothy impersonator who’s used to being an outsider — and Dylan — a teen who finds himself caught between his old allegiance to rigid cliques and his magnetic attraction to this new girl who rocks Frida Kahlo tees and cowboy boots.

It’s the story of grief, love, friendship, compromise, support, acceptance, and finding the path to one’s true self.

Set in Liberal, Kansas, a teenager moves in with her gay, film geek Godfather and his partner who run the Starlite movie theater, a safe haven for their eccentricities and artistic yearnings. My Fairy Godfather tells a story about how music and film connect us to who we’ve loved, who we’ve been, and who we are becoming — and that lying beneath the façade of teenage cynicism is the profound desire to be understood and loved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Mailer Anderson is a San Francisco-based writer, producer, and activist. Among other honors, he is a San Francisco Library Laureate. His other works include the novel Boonville and the graphic novel Windows on the World, as well as a play entitled The Death of Teddy Ballgame. He also co-wrote the films Pig Hunt and Windows on the World.

To learn more:  Robert Mailer Anderson

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Jon Sack is a US- and UK-based artist and writer. He graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths College in 2006, and his work has been published and covered internationally. His comic books include La Lucha, which is about violence in Juárez and the lawyers working to combat it, and Iraqi Oil for Beginners, about the complicated history of oil in Iraq.