Robert's Story

Robert W. Fieseler is the author of the Award-winning book Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. He is currently at work on his next project, a book about the anti-queer and anti-black purge in Florida during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Fieseler is the winner of the 2020 Columbia Journalism School First Decade Award in 2019 NLGJA, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Journalist of the Year. He currently lives with his husband Ryan.

In New Orleans, Fieseler graduated as co-valedictorian from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lytton Fellowship in book writing. He's also currently pursuing a master's degree in English at Tulane University, in New Orleans. Essays of preacher stories have been nominated for the pushcart prize and recognized in roundups of best nonfiction by the Atlantic Magazine. He writes about marginalized groups and overlooked people who make the world better for themselves, as such as heroes tend to be exiles and outcast seeking their own strange forms of freedom.

On Tuesday November 22, 2022, Fieseler joined a ZOOM meeting with York University's Professor Rich Shivener and his students of WRIT 1004 A, Research for Professional Writers. Professor Shivner, along with some of his students, conducted an interview, asking Fieseler a series of questions pertaining to the publishment of his book, Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.