Melvin Dixon

Melvin Dixon (May 29, 1950 – October 26, 1992^[1]) was an American Professor of Literature, and an author, poet and translator. He wrote about black gay men.^[2]

Biography

Born in Stamford, Connecticut, he earned a BA from Wesleyan University in 1971 and a PhD from Brown University in 1975.^[3]

In 1989, Trouble the Water won the Charles H. and N. Mildred Nilon Excellence in Minority Fiction Award.^[4] Vanishing Rooms won a Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Literature in 1992.

He was a Professor of Literature at Queens College from 1980 until his death, at age 42. He died of complications from AIDS, which he had been battling since 1969, in his hometown, one year after his partner Richard Horovitz did.^[5]

Bibliography

Collection of poems

• Change of Territory (1983)
• Love's Instruments (1995, posthumous)

Textbooks

• Ride Out the Wilderness: Geography and Identity in Afro-American Literature

Novels

• Trouble the Water (1989)
• Vanishing Rooms (1990)

Collection of essays

• A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader (2010)

References

1. Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath (1999). Contemporary African American novelists: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 129–136. ISBN 0-313-30501-3.
2. A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader, ed. Justin A. Joyce, Dwight A. McBride, University Press of Mississippi, 2006
3. "Melvin Dixon, 42, Professor and Author". New York Times. 29 October 1992. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
4. Kennedy, Constance Decker (24 September 1989). "University Presses/In Short; Fiction". New York Times. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
5. "Richard Horovitz, 44, Foundation Executive". New York Times. 20 July 1991. Retrieved 1 February 2012.