Robert W. Fieseler Archives

A conversation with Robert Fieseler on American Scare and the recovery of queer history long obscured by state censorship

“I kept wondering why it felt like we were all living in the United States of Florida,” says Robert W. Fieseler. In his new book, American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives (Penguin Random House, 2025), Fieseler examines the forces shaping the fastest-growing state in the ...

Feature

An Interview with Robert W. Fieseler

Christopher Gioia sits down with the author of, ‘Tinderbox: The Untold Story of The Up Stairs Lounge Fire and The Rise of Gay Liberation’

August 9, 2018 • by Christopher Gioia and Robert W. Fieseler

Christopher Gioia interviewed Robert W. Fieseler for Public Seminar about his newly minted book chronicling a heinous act of arson that resulted in the death of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at The Up Stairs Lounge -- a gay bar in New Orleans. By turns sedulous ...

Robert W. Fieseler

The Return of the Oppressed

A conversation with Robert Fieseler on American Scare and the recovery of queer history long obscured by state censorship

An Interview with Robert W. Fieseler

Christopher Gioia sits down with the author of, ‘Tinderbox: The Untold Story of The Up Stairs Lounge Fire and The Rise of Gay Liberation’

Newsletter

Connect With Us