This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.

1. 1. Close To The Knives

   A Memoir of Disintegration

   

   This book is a raw and powerful memoir that delves into the life of an artist grappling with the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York City. It combines personal narrative, political commentary, and poetic reflection to explore themes of identity, marginalization, and resistance. The author vividly recounts his experiences as a gay man confronting societal indifference and hostility, while also celebrating the resilience and creativity of the queer community. Through its unflinching honesty and emotional intensity, the book serves as both a personal testament and a broader critique of social injustices.

   The 7190th Greatest Book of All Time

   Purchase from Bookshop.org or Amazon

2. 2. Memories That Smell Like Gasoline

   

   A raw, fiercely personal collection of essays and reflections that fuse autobiography, art criticism, and political outrage, tracing a life marked by poverty, abuse, queer identity, and the devastations of the AIDS crisis; vivid sensory memories and confrontational imagery are used to indict social indifference and document the struggles of survival, creativity, and resistance in the New York art world and beyond.

   Purchase from Bookshop.org

3. 3. In The Shadow Of The American Dream

   

   A raw, unapologetic collection of personal testimony and art that confronts the violence and neglect embedded in American life, drawing on experiences of poverty, marginalization, and the AIDS crisis to deliver a searing critique of consumerism, homophobia, and government indifference while insisting on the power of memory, anger, and creative expression as tools of resistance and witness.

   Purchase from Bookshop.org

4. 4. The Waterfront Journals

   
5. 5. Weight Of The Earth

   

   An unflinching, lyrical collection of essays, fragments and images that confront illness, mortality and social indifference, blending personal memoir, political polemic and poetic meditation. The pieces trace a queer artist’s experience of AIDS, grief and rage, using vivid, often confrontational imagery and raw language to expose institutional neglect and cultural hostility while insisting on the necessity of bearing witness and making art amid devastation.

6. 6. 7 Miles A Second

   

   A searing, visually inventive autobiographical graphic memoir that recounts a life shaped by poverty, abuse, addiction, and fierce creative impulse amid 1980s–90s New York and the AIDS crisis; through jagged, collage-like art and raw prose it follows the narrator’s coming-of-age, intense friendships and lovers (including the loss of a cherished companion to AIDS), the development of his art and activism, and the rage, grief, and urgency that drive his confrontations with homophobia, institutional neglect, and cultural indifference.