Jack Parlett is a writer, poet, and professor. He completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge University on gay cruising in New York poetry. His poems have appeared in Hotel, Blackbox Manifold, y el BFI Flare zine, and his essays and reviews have appeared in Poetry London, la Cambridge Humanities Review, on Literary Hub, and elsewhere. Fire Island, a thin strip of beach off New York’s 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. In Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise (Hanover Square Press), Parlett tells the story of this iconic destination – its history, meaning, and cultural significance – through the lens of the artists and creators who sought refuge there. Figures as divergent as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Patricia Highsmith, and Jeremy O. Harris relay a tale of a queer space in constant evolution. Fire Island is the definitive book on an iconic American destination and an essential contribution to queer history.