Arctic Summer

by Kevin Killian

Highly acclaimed author Kevin Killian's latest novel traces a tangled path of secrets through the homes and haunts of American high society. Liam Reilly plunges head first into 1952 convinced that it will be a momentous year. He has, after all, everything a privileged young gay man of the time could want including, he thinks, love in the arms of the famous poet Ralph Isham. But the inevitable follies of youth intervene, and by year's end Liam's circle; guileless Tommy, needy, unfocused Diane, and the strangely oblivious Guy de Remours has been contorted and ultimately shattered by the victimizations of love and hate. In sensuous, metamorphic prose, Killian examines the ambiguous motivations and confused loyalties of the young, fashioning a coming of age novel quite unlike any other.

395 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

About the author

Kevin Killian was an American poet, author, and playwright of primarily LGBT literature. He is also a highly regarded editor. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009. His novel, Impossible Princess, won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award as the best gay erotic fiction work of 2009. Killian is also co-founder of the Poets Theater, an influential poetry, stage, and performance group based in San Francisco.

He is married to Dodie Bellamy.