The best part of being an @nybookfair ambassador has been meeting Daylon Orr who runs @fugitivematerials , an archival processing and bookselling project that focuses on “radical, lesser-known, and alternative histories”. A huge amount of their collection is queer but their work is expansive covering labour movements, disability justice, Palestinian liberation and so much more.
On Saturday Daylon and I will be speaking with the amazing curator @drewmsawyer about queer archives, material histories and the roles these fairs can play.
The photos above are from my visit to Fugitive Materials and their stall at the fair (C29!). Please note not everything is for sale!
So grateful for @sundayrarebooks@andreyandmelissa for all of their help!
We're happy to welcome @adameli as a 2026 @nybookfair ambassador!!
Adam Eli is a writer, community organizer, and communications person based in NYC. His first book The New Queer Conscience was released by Penguin Workshop in June 2020.
We asked Adam: "What is the most remarkable or unusual item in your collection, and how did it come into your hands?"
He said: "I own a first edition of the English translation of Towards a Gay Communism: Elements of a Homosexual Critique by Mario Mieli. There is an incredible queer bookstore in Milan called Libreria Antigone and it was displayed high up on one of their bookshelves. As a fellow cross dressing Jew I’ve always been a fan of Mario Mieli and knew I had to have it!"
Read the rest of Adam's Q&A at the link in our bio and join us at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, April 30-May 3!
Photo by Ryan McGinley
“Lately I had felt, being trans, so othered in our current Draconian, dystopian society,” @richieshazam says about “I Was Never Meant to Survive This,” her debut solo art show.
“My lens has felt so foggy and marred. I finally felt this urgency to create a body of work that was about my feelings and my emotions—it just needed to go really deep within.”
At the link in bio, the boundary-breaking artist gets real with her long time collaborator @adameli about putting herself out there with a new self-documenting series of work.
Photos courtesy @shazam.studios , @mclennon_pen_co_@baptiste_zenko@billycolelanders@savedbyaustin
Twenty-eight years after his death, Peter Hujar experienced a mainstream resurgence whose arc can still be felt today.
A new book, ‘The Wonderful World That Almost Was,’ focuses on Hujar’s enmeshment with Paul Thek, whose haunting sculptural interventions made him an art-world legend. The pair met in their 20s, and they would continue to orbit around each other—as lovers, brothers, and bitter adversaries—until their deaths nine months apart from complications of AIDS.
For CULTURED, @adameli sat down with its author Andrew Durbin, who also curated “How Beautiful This Living Thing Is,” a group show on view at New York’s Ortuzar gallery starting April 23 that brings together work by eight of Hujar’s peers and friends, to discuss their elusive relationship, the competitive streak that undergirded it, and the women who witnessed it all. Link in bio to read their conversation.
This years Seder in the Streets was incredible. Thank you @jfrejnyc for creating meaningful and way to ritualize our politics and politicize our rituals ❤️
I have always loved this moment in Oscar’s history. I find it moving that these gay icons took to the stage, stood up for each other and then presented the first Oscar given to someone who died of AIDS. Howard Ashman, best known for writing the lyrics to Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and part of Aladdin had already won an Oscar for “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid (1989). Howard’s partner, Bill, accepted the award on his behalf and urged those watching to show people with AIDS the love, empathy and respect they deserve. It is 34 years today that Howard has died and I’ve watched with such joy as my niece discovers his work and music. What an extraordinary person, an extraordinary moment and extraordinary loss.
@adameli sat down with writer and critic @wayne.koestenbaum to talk about the origins of his new novel, ‘My Lover, the Rabbi.’ In the conversation, Koestenbaum reflects on writing the book by hand, the sentence that started it all, and why embarrassment can be a sign you’re doing something right.
The novel, his first in over two decades, follows an unnamed narrator’s obsessive relationship with an aging rabbi, unfolding through Koestenbaum’s signature mix of confessional prose, eroticism, and cultural critique.
Watch along, and head to link in bio to read Adam Eli’s full conversation with the author.
Today, Adam won the most prestigious prize in his field - the American National Design Award for Interior Design given by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum! At 36 years old he is the youngest ever recipient. An extraordinary Mazel Tov to team @ch_herrero@andreherrero@adamcharlaphyman
“I’ve always tried to write within the register of intellectual filth,” @wayne.koestenbaum tells @adameli in the Entertainers issue.
This March, Koestenbaum— a leading figure in New York’s queer and literary scenes since the ’80s, synonymous with confessional prose, dissonant poetry, and genre-straddling criticism—re-enters the fictional fray with his first novel in almost two decades. And what a novel it is. ‘My Lover, the Rabbi’ centers on an unnamed narrator’s psychosexual affair with an aging rabbi. Its 464 pages, like their author’s visual art practice, pull no punches in their depiction of sexual obsession.
Ahead of the novel’s release, Eli called Koestenbaum up talk intellectual filth, bad gays, and writing to embarrass.
Photography: Jan Rattia
