Fire Island Art: 100 Years

The first book to survey a century of art made on Fire Island, edited by historian John Dempsey: a richly illustrated account of the slender barrier island's outsized role as a haven and engine of queer artmaking from the 1930s to the present.

Published by Monacelli in 2026, the 304-page volume unfolds in fifteen chapters, each written by a leading art writer and centered on a group of friends and collaborators. Historic figures (Paul Cadmus, David Hockney, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul Thek, Andy Warhol) share the pages with the explosion of art-making on the island over the past fifteen years, represented by TM Davy, Nicole Eisenman, Lola Flash, K8 Hardy, Lyle Ashton Harris, Doron Langberg, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Salman Toor. Essays by Sam Ashby, AA Bronson, Michael Bullock, Andrew Durbin, Jarrett Earnest, Philip Gefter, Richard Meyer, Jack Parlett, Ksenia M. Soboleva, and others sit alongside interviews with Flash, Pamela Sneed, and Tillmans, drawing on archival materials, some never before published.

Dempsey, a technology executive and historian who serves as president of the Fire Island Pines Historical Society, built the book out of the Society's living archive in 2025 he also helped return the cult classic The Butch Manual to print. Kirkus awarded the book a starred review, calling it "a lush survey that makes a powerful case for Fire Island as a wellspring of queer art."