Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise

*A Town and Country Must-Read Book of Summer*
*A BUZZFEED BEST BOOK OF JUNE*
*A Washington Post "Book to Read This Summer"*
*AN ADVOCATE BEST LGBTQ+ BOOK OF 2022*
*A USA Today "Book to Celebrate Pride Month"*
*A New York Times "Editor's Pick"*
*A Kirkus Reviews Hottest Book of Summer*

A groundbreaking account of New York's Fire Island, chronicling its influence on art, literature, culture and queer liberation over the past century

Fire Island, a thin strip of beach off the Long Island coast, has long been a vital space in the queer history of America. Both utopian and exclusionary, healing and destructive, the island is a locus of contradictions, all of which coalesce against a stunning ocean backdrop.

Now, poet and scholar Jack Parlett tells the story of this iconic destination--its history, its meaning and its cultural significance--told through the lens of the artists and creators who sought refuge on its shores. Together, figures as divergent as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Frank O'Hara, Patricia Highsmith and Jeremy O. Harris tell the story of a queer space in constant evolution.

Transporting, impeccably researched and gorgeously written, Fire Island is the definitive book on an iconic American destination and an essential contribution to queer history.

ISBN-13: 9781335475183

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Hanover Square Press

Publication Date: 06-14-2022

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 9.12h x 6.25w x 0.92d

Parlett, Jack: - Jack Parlett is a writer, poet and professor. He completed a PhD at Cambridge University on gay cruising in New York poetry, and now holds a Junior Research Fellowship in English at University College, Oxford, where he also teaches literary theory and modern American literature. His poems have appeared in Hotel, Blackbox Manifold and the BFI Flare zine, and his essays have appeared in Poetry London, the Cambridge Humanities Review, Lit Hub and elsewhere. He lives in London.