Works by
Richard Bruce Nugent
(Illustrator, Painter, Writer)
(aka Bruce Nugent, Richard Bruce)
[1906 - 1987]

• Fire!! a Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists (1926)
  Collaborated on FIRE!! -- one of the most important publications of the Harlem Renaissance. It was created in 1926 by a young group of African American artists and writers.

See also:

• Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent (2002), Thomas H. Wirth, ed.
  Richard Bruce Nugent (1906–1987) was a writer, painter, illustrator, and popular bohemian personality who lived at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Protégé of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for many years as the only African-American writer willing to clearly pronounce his homosexuality in print. His contribution to the landmark publication FIRE!!, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," was unprecedented in its celebration of same-sex desire. A resident of the notorious "Niggeratti Manor," Nugent also appeared on Broadway in Porgy (the 1927 play) and Run, Little Chillun (1933) .
  
  Thomas H. Wirth, a close friend of Nugent’s during the last years of the artist’s life, has assembled a selection of Nugent’s most important writings, paintings, and drawings—works mostly unpublished or scattered in rare and obscure publications and collected here for the first time. Wirth has written an introduction providing biographical information about Nugent’s life and situating his art in relation to the visual and literary currents which influenced him. A foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. emphasizes the importance of Nugent for African American history and culture.

• Brother to Brother (2004)
  Critically-acclaimed drama that invokes the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance. As an elderly man, poet Bruce Nugent meets a young black gay artist struggling to find his voice and together they embark on a surreal narrative journey through his inspiring past.
  Buy the DVD (Directed by Rodney Evans with Anthony Mackie and Larry Gilliard Jr. )