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“Jameson
Currier writes with venomous wit and a huge heart. The Wolf at the Door is the tale everyone should
be reading on the beach this year.” Lewis Whittingon, Edge
“I love, love, love this
book and I love New Orleans and I love Jameson Currier’s skill. Put that all together and you have one ‘helluva’
read.”
Amos Lassen, Eureka Pride
“It’s not easy to classify
Currier’s novel. The New Orleans setting leads naturally to spirited spookiness, with supernatural proceedings and ghostly
manifestations, including that of a gorgeous young man, the late partner of Mack, who is dying of HIV in an upstairs apartment
– adding a touch of realistic melancholy to the tale. And the story is also infused with erotic passages. So let’s
just classify the novel as really good – a masterful blend of genres that comes together like succulent literary gumbo.
Currier’s crew of querulous aging queens, offbeat beautiful boys and assorted oddball friends constitute an endearing
found family of queers, while the author’s historical flashbacks conjure the Big Easy’s atmospheric past.”
Richard Labonté, Bookmarks,
Cover painting by Bryan Cunningham “Lush
with surreal, sensual tones, the novel becomes a heady, pungent gumbo of spirits, sex, magic spells, voodoo, spirituality,
and lots and lots of bourbon. A writer who consistently surprises and delights, Currier's dynamism will surely carry his literary
career to higher heights.” Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter
Cover painting by Richard Taddei
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The Wolf at the Door Ghosts? Angels? Hallucinations?
When a death occurs at Le Petite Paradis, a guesthouse in the French
Quarter of New Orleans, the spirit world becomes unsettled, or so Avery Greene Dalyrymple III, the co-owner believes. The
son and grandson of Southern evangelists, Avery is also an overworked and overwrought middle-aged gay man, a cynical “big-time
drinker and sinner” fairly certain he can maintain a family of “other deviants and delinquents stumbling along
Bourbon Street” to keep him company.
But Avery is also the only person in contact with
the spirit world on his property—ghosts from the house’s origins during the 1820s—and he must use the history
left behind from another ghost—a gay man from the 1970s—to find a way to restore peace to his household and rejuvenate
his faith.
“Currier is one of the few writers who can
be equally literary, erotic, dramatic and damn funny, sometimes all in the same sentence.” Sean Meriwether, The Silent Hustler
"Marvelous!
Currier’s writing is up to his usually high standards, which means that
he can make you smile and scare the crap out of you in the same paragraph. And I believe his work here to be his richest,
most personal and heartfelt yet. More than being a good ghost story, The Wolf at the Door is one gay man’s
spiritual journey. Though he’s been looking mostly in the bottom of bourbon bottles, Avery’s search for spiritual
belonging – finding God in ghosts– is as universal as it gets, and Currier brings it to life with both wit and
wonderment. Blending philosophy with good old-fashioned scares, Currier makes the impossible look effortless. The ending,
which I won’t spoil for you, actually brought a catch to my throat and a tear to my eye.” Jerry Wheeler, Out in Print
“The Wolf at the Door
is a raunchy gay comedy set in the French Quarter in N’auwlins, ever ripe with the author’s elegant and muscular
prose. Currier spins Creole lore flush with characters living in the gay big easy erotically, exotically, and sometimes supernaturally.
Currier delivers campy chills with ghost sex, wolf specters, and voodoo diva dances, but the true horrors are uncovered in
the realities of Southern slavery. A journal from the 1820s reveals a parallel story of gay interracial master-slave love,
a tale full of portents, both real and symbolic. Currier writes with venomous wit and a huge heart. The Wolf at
the Door is the tale everyone should be reading on the beach this year.” Lewis Whittington, Edge
The Haunted Heart and Other Tales
ghost stories by Jameson Currier
In his newest collection of short stories, The Haunted Heart and Other Tales,
author Jameson Currier modernizes the traditional ghost story with gay lovers, loners, activists, and addicts, blending history
and contemporary issues of the gay community with the unexpected of the
supernatural. “Jameson
Currier’s The Haunted Heart and Other Tales expands upon the usual ghost story tropes by imbuing them with
deep metaphorical resonance to the queer experience. Infused with flawed, three-dimensional characters, this first-rate collection
strikes all the right chords in just the right places. Equal parts unnerving and heartrending, these chilling tales are testament
to Currier’s literary prowess and the profound humanity at the core of his writing. Gay, straight, twisted like a pretzel…his
writing is simply not to be missed by any reader with a taste for good fiction.” Vince Liaguno, Dark
Scribe Magazine
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Cover Photo by Matt Chapin
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Still
Dancing: New and Selected Stories by
Jameson Currier Still Dancing: New and Selected Stories by Jameson
Currier, published by Lethe Press, brings together 20 of the author's short stories about the impact of AIDS on the gay community
which have been written over the last three decades. Along with ten stories from Currier's debut collection Dancing
on the Moon (1993), praised by The Village Voice as "defiant and elegiac," are ten newly selected
stories written by one of our preeminent masters of the short narrative form. And for this new collection the author has also
chosen stories that revolve around gay New Yorkers-those lost, those surviving, those displaced, those undaunted, and those
who became expatriates. _________________ "In these stories, Currier fictionalizes queer life and times from three decades
of the AIDS era, capturing the years in his prose. It has the literary heft of Camus and the quiet urbanity of Cheever.... Currier
chronicles not only a defining era in gay America, but the private lives of the people who triumphed through what looked like
defeat. These lives are often so finely drawn, Currier never has to resort to cliché... Gritty, esoteric, funny and
passionate, Currier's courageous prose reminds us that we must never forget." Lewis Whittington,
EDGE "Currier has a remarkable knack for dialogue that is accessible,
as well as relatable, which makes his characters seems all the more human. Readers will likely find that several of these
individuals (and their situations) remind them of someone they know in real life. Those seeking a 'feel good' story collection
will be surprised but not disappointed with the author's efforts, because the result is as impressive as it is impressionable." Chris Verleger, Rainbow
Reviews "There is something for everyone in this volume and it is hard
to close the covers and remain untouched."
Amos Lassen, Eurkea Pride
"The breadth of Currier's personal experience
is evident in his writing, which is moving without resorting to melodrama, familiar without feeling clichéd. In the
new book's title story, for instance, he describes a man who has lost many friends to AIDS as feeling 'like a boy lost at
an amusement park who can't find his family and doesn't understand why they are not where they should be.' It's a characteristically
vivid yet unsentimental description of what it's like to wake up and find that your entire chosen family, your whole support
system, is suddenly gone-and many people who survived the worst years of the epidemic will likely find that Currier has, once
again, put into words the things that they've felt for years." Wayne Hoffman, Windy City Times
"Currier's latest collection of stories reveals a long, textured chronicle of gay
men, gay life, and the horrific AIDS epidemic that both threatens and empowers an entire population. His tales tell of the
initial shock and bewilderment in trying to come to grips with a deadly new menace to gay men's health in the 1980s, coupled
with an unending sense of grief and hopelessness. Be forewarned: these are not sunny stories, but they're as real as it gets.
Currier's fiction isn't the kind with the Hollywood happy ending secured with a pink ribbon. Currier is a bright, astute writer
and a survivor, having lived in New York City for 30 years and experienced much of the stark, heavy content reflected in his
stories. They are markers - intense reminders of our collective history." Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter
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