Sam D’Allesandro (born Richard Anderson) (April 3, 1956 – February 3, 1988) was an American writer and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

. He studied at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

, graduating with honors in psychology in 1980 Moving to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in 1980, D'Allesandro became a central figure in the

New Narrative New Narrative is a movement and theory of experimental writing launched in San Francisco in the late 1970s by writers and novelists Robert Glück and Bruce Boone. New Narrative strove to represent subjective experience honestly without pretense ...

movement, which aimed to articulate narrative as a postmodern conceptual art and challenge conventional literary forms. His work broke new ground in

queer literature LGBTQ literature may refer to: * Lesbian literature * Gay literature * Bisexual literature * Transgender literature * Intersex literature * Or any other literature featuring the LGBTQ community The LGBTQ community (also known as the LGBT, ...

by combining experimental form with unflinching honesty about gay life, sexuality, and identity. D'Allesandro's writing explored themes through a direct, colloquial, and often transgressive voice. He explicitly stated, "I want to write about the body, about desire, about the way we live and die and love". His narratives provided crucial documentation of gay life during the early

AIDS epidemic The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2023, HIV/AIDS ...

, often without explicitly naming the disease, capturing the "surprise and pain of loss" during a period when its full horror was not yet comprehended. D'Allesandro published a book of elegant lyrics, '' Slippery Sins'', in 1984. His stories appeared in various literary magazines, and notably, "Nothing Ever Just Disappears" was reprinted in the influential anthology '' Men on Men''. Posthumously, his collected works include '' The Zombie Pit'' (1989) and '' The Wild Creatures'' (2005), and his unique literary correspondence with

Dodie Bellamy Dodie Bellamy (born 1951) is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist, educator and editor. Her book ''Cunt-Ups'' (2001) won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Her work is frequently associated with that of the New Narrative ...

was published as '' Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D'Allesandro'' (1994). His life was tragically cut short by

AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

complications at age 31, yet his defiance of censorship and authentic portrayal of queer experience has secured his place as an essential and potent figure for study, whose influence on literature and LGBTQ+ culture continues to grow.

Career

D'Allesandro was a member of the "

" movement, which included Robert Glück, Bruce Boone, Steve Abbott and others. He reached out to other like-minded writers and contacted

Dennis Cooper Dennis Cooper (born January 10, 1953) is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is best known for the ''George Miles Cycle'', a series of five semi-autobiographical novels published between 1989 and 2000 and describe ...

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, critic, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that deal ...

, Benjamin Weissman,

David Trinidad David Trinidad (born 1953 in Los Angeles, California) is an American poet. David Trinidad was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in the San Fernando Valley. He attended California State University, Northridge, where he studied poetry with ...

, and

. With Bellamy, he began an epistolary collaboration she was later to publish as ''Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D’Allesandro''. He is also the author of ''The Wild Creatures'', which was published posthumously in 2005, edited by Bellamy's husband

Kevin Killian Kevin Killian (December 24, 1952 – June 15, 2019) was an American poet, author, editor, and playwright, primarily of LGBT literature. ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, wo ...

. He is mentioned in ''Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father'', by Alysia Abbott.

Death

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...

man,. D'Allesandro died of

in 1988, aged 31, leaving behind a body of work that ranges across various genre identities, from stories of one paragraph to fully developed novellas.

References

External links

* Review of
The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories by Sam D'Allesandro
. * Kevin Killian reads D'Allesandro's story
Nothing Ever Just Disappears
. * "Bringing Back Sam," ''Bay Area Reporter'

1956 births 1988 deaths University of California, Santa Cruz alumni AIDS-related deaths in California American gay writers American LGBTQ poets 20th-century American poets American male poets 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American LGBTQ people Gay poets {{US-poet-1950s-stub