Fire Island

A scintillating, richly peopled, impeccably researched history of the New York coastal enclave that, over the last century, became an iconic site of queer liberation

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"A beautiful, beguiling journey to the ultimate queer utopia" - Olivia Laing

"Clued-up but insatiably thirsty, poignant, packed with literary intrigue, Fire Island is a beaming beach read" - Jeremy Atherton Lin

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Fire Island: a slim strip of land off the coast of New York, and a place of hedonism, reinvention, liberation.

Arriving on the island after a break-up back home in England, scholar and poet Jack Parlett was beguiled by what he found. Here were the halcyon scenes of Frank O'Hara's poetry; the bars where Patricia Highsmith got drunk; the infamous cruising sites; and the dazzling beaches where couples had fallen in and out of love, free for a sun-kissed moment to be themselves in the time before gay liberation.

Tracing Fire Island's rich history, Parlett leads the reader through the early days of the island's life as a discreet home for same-sex love, to the wild parties of the post-Stonewall disco era, to the residents' confrontation with the AIDS epidemic, and into a present where a host of new challenges threaten the island's future.

Lyrical and vivid, Fire Island is a hymn to an iconic destination, and to the men and women whose ardour and determination spread freedom across its shores.