Inexplicably, William S. Burroughs has not been embraced by the LGBTQI community as one of our own, even though his queerness was central to his life and work. Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs serves as an appreciation and reclamation project. We seek to bring Burroughs into the gay literary canon. Editors Brian Alessandro, co-author of Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story graphic novel, and Tom Cardamone, author of the Lambda Award-winning speculative fiction novel Green Thumb, have compiled interviews and essays featuring emerging and established writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, and critics, including Blondie founders and musicians Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, cultural critic and author Fran Lebowitz, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Tony Kushner (Angels in America), filmmaker David Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers, A History of Violence, Naked Lunch), multiple Hugo-Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany (The Mad Man, Nova, Babel-17), National Book Award-winner Edmund White, PUNK magazine founder and former SPIN and NERVE editor, Legs McNeil, Gregory Woods (A History of Gay Literature), Paul Russell (The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov), Charlie Vazquez (Dreaming Out Loud: Voices of Undocumented Writers), Rebel Satori publisher Sven Davisson and Burroughs's bibliographer and literary executor, James Grauerholz, among many others. Some offer critical assessments of Burroughs, while others share personal experiences.
Brian Alessandro is a writer, artist, and filmmaker. His work has appeared in Newsday, Interview Magazine, Bloom, PANK, Huffington Post, Turtle Point Press, Lambda Literary, Edmund White: By the Book, and (Re): An Ideas Journal. He has also written and directed the feature film, Afghan Hound, founded the literary journal, The New Engagement, and wrote the novel, The Unmentionable Mann. He recently co-adapted Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story into a graphic novel for Top Shelf Productions. He holds an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University and has taught the subject for twelve years.
Tom Cardamone is the editor of Crashing Cathedrals: Edmund White by the Book, and is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb as well as the erotic fantasy The Lurid Sea and other works of fiction, including two short story collections. Additionally, he has edited The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered.