Product Description 
The hidden history of a vulnerable gay man whose life and death were turned into tabloid fodder. 
In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David's gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news. 
With a poet's eulogistic and psychological intensity, Steven Reigns recovers the life and death of this man who also stands in for so many lives destroyed not only by HIV, but a diseased society that used stigma against the most vulnerable. It's impossible not to make connections between this story and how the twenty-first century pandemic has also been defined by medical misinformation and cultural bias. 
Inspired by years of investigative research into the lives of David and those who denounced him, Reigns has stitched together a hauntingly poetic narrative that retraces an American history, questioning the fervor of his accusers, and recuperating a gay life previously shrouded in secrecy and shame. 
"Much too long, suffering has been part of our collective queer legacy. We weather the storm of insult to character and seemingly irreconcilable injustice in tandem with the hope that the arc of time will bend towards justice; our time is now. A Quilt for David is a posthumous journal of vindication."—Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends 
"A stunning homage to people with AIDS."—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 
"I found this an incredibly moving book. Reigns deals in hard truths, revisioning one man's life and death, and our collective queer history."—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals 
"A Quilt for David is amazing and so powerful, filled with anger and frustration . . . It's an unforgettable book."—Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY 
"Told in short, occasionally haiku-like entries, Reigns has done what literature should: put the reader into the mind, the suffering, of another human being."—Andrew Holleran, author of Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited 
"Steven Reigns lifts David Acer thirty years after his death to show the naked cost of violent, unexamined public opinion around the catastrophe of AIDS. This poetry masterfully documents the tangle of hatred and lies haunting a generation of survivors. I am often grateful for what poems give to me, most especially the ones in this book."—CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration 
"This writing is energetic, alive, and uncensored. Through poetry and prose we glean a deep understanding of a life misunderstood and mischaracterized. Reigns goes to the mat to find out what really happened, and with his expert pacing we're right there with him."—Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones 
"One of the most important roles a poet can assume is that of emotional historian. Reigns certainly understands that notion in this necessary and genre-bending book."—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love a Country 
 Review 
Praise for Steven Reigns's A Quilt for David 
“ . . . Steven Reigns uses poetry to excavate the universal truths present in a tragedy . . . We like to think that the truth comes out eventually, that given time, the moral arc of our universe bends towards justice, not away. It needs help, though, and books like this push us in a better direction. Read it and weep.”—Karina Wilson, LitReactor\n"Reigns’ book has made me see how often poetry has searched for some kind of ‘poetic justice’ as it interrogates and engages with history and injustice. Oscar Wilde finally del

A Quilt for David

Reigns, Steven

Biographies & Memoirs

City Lights Publishers

Your Dead Body Is My Welcome Mat

Burning Page Press

Poetry. LGBT Studies. The autobiographical poems of Steven Reigns's INHERITANCE introduce us to the gains and losses of a true American family and detail the bequests of the shadows that linger. Reigns glosses over nothing to reveal the secrets that turn suburbia into a coming-of-age battlefield. As Mark Doty says: "Steven Reigns's graceful, plainspoken lyrics describe the shape of one gay life at the beginning of this new century, a time of uncertainty, transformation, and hope. To read his book is to meet a man alert to his times and the textures of the lives around him, a community observed with tenderness, wit and pleasure."

Inheritance

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Sibling Rivalry Press

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Books by Reigns, Steven