Richard Bruce Nugent

Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987)— writer, painter, illustrator, and popular bohemian personality—lived at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Protégé of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for thirty years as the only African American writer willing clearly to indicate his homosexuality in print. His contribution to the landmark publication FIRE!!, the prose composition "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," was unprecedented in its celebration of same-sex desire. A resident of the notorious "Niggeratti Manor" in 1927-28, Nugent appeared on Broadway in Porgy (the 1927 play) and Run, Little Chillun (1933).




	Nugent in 1982

	Nugent's first novel, Gentleman Jigger, published in 2008 by Da Capo Press more than 70 years after it was written, is now available for purchase here. Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent was published by Duke University Press in 2002.Purchase here.

Further information about Nugent is available from his heir, Thomas H. Wirth, at tw@firepress.com