Gay Lit’s Gone Mainstream

Mr. Hicklin, a bookstore owner, is a former editor in chief of Out magazine.

Just over 10 years ago, I opened a small bookstore a few hours northwest of New York City. The shelves are arranged by affinity: notable people choose their 10 favorite books; elsewhere, titles gather around more whimsical themes. Early this year, I found myself creating a shelf I could not have imagined when I started: queer sports romances.

That’s where you now find “Heated Rivalry” beside “Thirty Love” and “Futbolista”: closeted hockey players, closeted tennis players, closeted college soccer players. The covers promise muscle, yearning and secrecy. Though the protagonists tend to be men, many of the genre’s writers and readers are women. At first, I saw these books as a........

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