He’s the author of the poetry chapbook, Same Blue, Different You, and an academic text, The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr, also out this year. Parlett is currently a research fellow at University College, Oxford, where he studies American literature and queer writing. Check Twitter and people offer up critiques of how the island might become more inclusive.Ī multihyphenate scholar and poet, Dr. Scan Instagram in the summer and it can feel like everybody is partying in the Pines without you, taking commemorative photos in front of rainbow walls. There’s a performance to whose parties you get invited to, at which lavish, modernist home. While Fire Island has fostered such rich works of art, for many, the island is synonymous with an enclave for cis gay white men, a playground for party drugs and cruising in the famous Meatrack. Maurice Sendak began writing Where the Wild Things Are during a stay, betraying some familiarity with the beach’s delights. In the 1970s, Andrew Holleran penned his classic, Dancer from the Dance, a romantic tale of gay love and loss in the Pines. Carson McCullers, James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, and many more writers we read today vacationed and dreamed here. Through an investigation of the queer writers who took up residence in Cherry Grove and the Pines (the island’s queer communities), Jack Parlett assembles a literary history that embraces complexity. 25 Inspiring Images From the NYC Pride Marchįire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise takes a 30,000-foot view, helmed by one of the island’s greatest gifts: literature.