Join us for a celebration of the poet Thom Gunn and Michael Nott’s new biography of Gunn, Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life. Michael Nott will be joined in conversation by writer Tom Sleigh. Thom Gunn was not a confessional poet, and he withheld much, but inseparable from his rigorous, formal poetry was a ravenous, acute experience of life and death.

Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life chronicles, for the first time, the largely undocumented life of this revolutionary poet. Nott writes with insight and intimacy about the great sweep of Gunn’s life: his traditional childhood in England; his mother’s suicide; the mind-opening education he received at Cambridge, reading Shakespeare and John Donne; his decades in San Francisco and with his life partner, Mike Kitay; and his visceral experience of sex, drugs, and loss.

To reserve a copy of Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, June 18, 2024, hardcover, $45), please email contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of Thom Gunn for June 22” in the subject line.

Location: Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Attendance: Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served. Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10. (via cash, card, or Venmo @BGSQD) All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.