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American Scare
The Long-Awaited exposé
A vital exposé for both our history and our present day, American Scare tells the riveting saga of how the Florida government destroyed the lives of Black and queer citizens in the twentieth century.
The state of Florida would prefer that this history remain buried. But for nearly a decade, from 1956 to 1965, the Florida Legislature funded and supported the Johns Committee—an organization using the cover of communism to viciously attack members of the NAACP as well as queer students and educators.
A propulsive, human-centered drama, with fascinating insight into Florida politics, American Scare is a page-turning reckoning of our racist and homophobic past—and its chilling parallels to the current moment.
“An important, riveting book for those who value history—and the ways the past impacts the present.” -- Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker and recipient of the National Humanities Medal
“A fierce and chilling book, deeply reported and deftly written.” -- Jonathan Eig, author of the Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller King: A Life
“Fieseler exposes the deep roots of oppression that continue to shape today’s political landscape. Urgent and revelatory.” -- E. Patrick Johnson, author of the Stonewall Honor Book Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South
“With a historian’s rigor and a novelist’s mastery of story, Fieseler uncovers a harrowing, hidden chapter of American history. This book is historical nonfiction at its finest.” -- Eric Cervini, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestseller The Deviant’s War
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WORK
Books & Anthologies
AMERICAN SCARE: FLORIDA’s HIDDEN COLD WAR ON BLACK AND QUEER LIVES
Dutton, June 2025
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
Liveright, June 2018
(Winner of 2021 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, Winner of 2020 Louisiana Literary Award; winner of 2020 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Nonfiction Prose; shortlisted for 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing; winner of 2019 Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime; winner of 2019 Lambda Literary Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers; winner of 2019 NLGJA Excellence in Book Writing Award; winner of 2019 Nautilus Book Award (Silver) in Journalism & Investigative Reporting; finalist for 2019 Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction; finalist for 2019 Housatonic Book Award in Nonfiction; 2019 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book and Over the Rainbow selection; Best Book of 2018 Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Shelf Awareness; Notable Selection, Best True Crime of the Decade CrimeReads; Best Book by Emerging Writers Book Riot)
ESSAY
FireBrand
River Teeth, June 2024
still beloved
Commonweal, May 31, 2022
Top gun was my gay porn
Slate, May 27, 2022
My Marriage Was Broken. The Coronavirus Lockdown Saved It.
HuffPost, April 18, 2020
horned god
Tahoma Literary Review, June 2018
(Nominated for Pushcart Prize)
One Hostage in Play
Columbia Journal, March 14, 2017
Red Rabbit
Hippocampus, April 1, 2016
Men about Business
Concis, November 13, 2015
(Nominated Best of the Net)
New Miserable Experience
RKVRY Quarterly, October 2015
(Finalist, nonfiction 41st New Millennium Literary Awards)
JOURNALISM
King of Olympus
64 Parishes, March 1, 2025
Gay Geographer
NEH Humanities magazine, March 22, 2024
A Bar Called Charlene’s
64 Parishes, June 1, 2023
(Winner of 2024 Green Eyeshade Awards Best of Show; Recipient of 2024 Honorable Mention, General Feature Society for Features Journalism)
‘UNITED WE STAND’
Gambit, June 1, 2023
(Winner of 2024 Green Eyeshade Awards First Place, Serious Commentary)
The Fiery Life of Stewart Butler
Slate, June 25, 2022
The Formation of Reggie Adams
64 Parishes, December 1, 2021
(Winner of 2022 Green Eyeshade Award Best of Division: Magazine; winner of 2021 Sigma Delta Chi Award in Magazine Writing)
OPINION: Roy Reed was first to report the truth of the Up Stairs lounge
The Daily Beast, July 5, 2021
OPINION: HISTORY SHOWS US WHY THE FIGHT FOR LGBTQ EQUALITY IS FAR FROM OVER
ABC News / Good Morning America, June 24, 2020
(Winner of 2021 NLGJA Excellence in Opinion/Editorial Writing Award)
Inside The Metropolitan Community Church, Which Has Been Telling LGBTQ People God Loves Them For 50 Years
The Daily Beast, Sept 1, 2019
A SUICIDE ON ROHS STREET
Columbia Journalism Review, July 2, 2019
High Falls: A Human Chain
The Delacorte Review , June 28, 2019
The UpStairs Lounge Fire Killed 32 People. Its Legacy Still Haunts Black Gay New Orleans
The Daily Beast, May 11, 2019
This Mass Murder Of Gay People Sparked A Movement 43 Years Before Pulse
Buzzfeed, May 30, 2018
Up the Monkey River
Quartz, November 12, 2015
Ghost in the Machine
Narratively, March 25, 2015
Taste the Action (The superhero saga of Brooklyn's weirdest burger joint)
Narratively, October 7, 2014
Consider the Can
The Big Roundtable, June 9, 2014
(The Atlantic's "Roughly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism" 2014)
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ABOUT THE author
Fieseler in ironic Ayn Rand shirt as penance for his teenage beliefs
ROBERT W. FIESELER
Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist who investigates marginalized groups and an author who excavates forgotten histories. He’s also the public scholar who convinced the New Orleans City Council to pass an apology resolution for the city's apathetic response to the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge fire. He married his longtime partner at Walden Pond and proudly lives in the Crescent City.
Fieseler graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. He was the 2019 NLGJA (National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association) Journalist of the Year and won the Columbia Journalism School Alumni Association’s First Decade Award. To be honest, none of these accolades massage his existential dread or impress his husband.
As a little boy in flat flat Chicago, Fieseler’s favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz, and he thought he lived in Kansas. He loved the Wicked Witch and melted everywhere he could, including one time in the middle of Cook Country traffic court when his mother was disputing a ticket. As a grown-up, he wrote his debut book beside an opinionated Cairn Terrier – same breed as Toto – who accompanied him to the library. (Sadly, after a long happy life, that beautiful dog crossed over the rainbow in 2021.) Perhaps unsurprisingly to his mother, Fieseler grew to be a proud gay American.
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CONTACT
Say hello to Robert W. Fieseler and/or give him your email in the odd event that things get dicey and he decides to start a newsletter.