The Five Black Writers Who Got Away

The five black gay writers, now deceased, who I would have loved the "By the Book" Q & A column in the New York Times Book Review to have interviewed are Melvin Dixon, Joseph Beam, Assotto Saint, Essex Hemphill, and last but definitely not least, James Baldwin.

Their comments on literature, black writing, the publishing industry, race relations, favorite books, etc. would have been enlightening, inspiring, insightful, and enthralling. Maybe even irreverent at times.

Unfortunately, their premature deaths occurred long before "By the Book" ever appeared in the pages of the book review.

How I Became An "In The Life" Contributor

How I came to write about the Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent for Joseph Beam's 1986 anthology, In the Life, is an interesting story.

Joe, who worked at a gay bookstore in Philadelphia called Giovanni's Room, wrote me a fan letter and sent it in care of the New York Native, a weekly gay paper that I wrote for in a freelance capacity in the early eighties.

The bookstore carried the Native which Joe told me he only read if it had an article in it by me. He was admittedly hungry for articles about other black gay men of which there was not that much, particularly in the gay press.

A short time later, Joe asked me to write an article about Bruce Nugent and gave me his phone number in Hoboken, New Jersey. Looking back, Joe probably got the number from Tom Wirth, Nugent's friend and literary executor, who reissued the controversial journal, Fire!!, that Nugent, Langston Hughes, and others put out in the 1920s.

Up to that point, I knew nothing about Nugent. But I took on the assignment and wrote an article in which I tried to put Nugent's life and career within a larger context of what was happening in Harlem and elsewhere, artistically and otherwise.

Years after In the Life came out, I discovered that I'd  been in error when I said that Bruce Nugent was the last living member of the Harlem Renaissance. He wasn't. Dorothy West, also a writer, was still alive when I interviewed him.

Literary Epitaphs

In December 2021, I went through a pile of miscellaneous papers that were on top of the microwave oven. While doing so I found one paper on which I had written the epitaphs engraved on the headstones of two black gay writers I knew. Both of them died from AIDS.

Dave Frechette--"I Regret Nothing."

Donald Woods--"Forever In God's Loving Care."

Melvin Dixon: A Brief Elegy

The following is an excerpt (in slightly different form) from an elegy I wrote about the black gay poet and novelist Melvin Dixon (1950-1992). It was written for a forthcoming anthology called Art Mugs the Reaper, edited by Jeffrey Lilly, a San Francisco-based poet. The book celebrates the lives and work of gay artists who died of AIDS.


"I often think of Melvin Dixon when I walk down West 116th Street in Harlem, an area known as Little Dakar because of the large influx of African immigrants that reside and own shops there. Melvin had lived in France and the West African nation of Senegal, spoke fluent French, and taught at the University of Dakar. He would have enjoyed the sights and sounds of these newcomers. I can imagine him telling them, in French, about his travels to Senegal and inquiring about their lives there and in the United States. I'm certain they would have enjoyed knowing that he translated a volume of poetry by Leopold Senghor, the president of Senegal."