Robert W. Fieseler
Robert W. Fieseler (2020) is the winner of the 2020 Columbia Journalism School First Decade Award and the 2019 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) Journalist of the Year. His debut book “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation” (Liveright 2018), a nonfiction account of a notoriously unsolved arson fire at a gay bar in 1973 New Orleans, won the 2019 Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime from the Mystery Writers of America and the 2020 Louisiana Literary Award from the Louisiana Library Association. It was also shortlisted for the 2020 Saroyan Prize in Non-Fiction from Stanford Libraries. In his essays and stories, Robert reports on marginalized groups and overlooked people who make the world better for themselves. Robert graduated as co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. He writes for The Daily Beast and other places and lives with his husband and dog in New Orleans.
As a Logan Nonfiction fellow, Robert will work on “American Scare: A Cold War in the Sunshine State” (forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin Random House in 2022), which investigates the State of Florida’s denial of a historic persecution led by a state senator in the late 1950s.