For a wide swath of queer folks, gay writer Thomas Mallon will forever be associated with the acclaimed and award-winning streaming series, “Fellow Travelers,” adapted from his novel of the same name.

Starring out actors Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, the series had a profound effect on many viewers. Here’s an interesting fact: “Fellow Travelers” was Mallon’s seventh (!) novel and has since been followed by four more works of fiction. He’s also the author of eight books of non-fiction, including his latest, “The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1993-1994” (Knopf, 2025). While some readers might be shocked by Mallon’s conservative nature during that time, he captures the difficulties for the community during the period with sensitivity and raw emotion. Mallon was gracious enough to make time for an interview in advance of the Miami Book Fair, where he will be giving a presentation on Nov. 23, at 3:30 p.m. in room 3208-09 (bldg. 3, 2nd floor). 

Your book “A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries” was published in 1984. Do you think it was inevitable that, with a book such as that under your belt, you would eventually share some of your own diaries as you did with “The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994”?

To an extent, yes. Insofar as “A Book of One’s Own” had a thesis, it was that “no one ever kept a diary just for himself.”  I think diarists always hope, however vaguely, for some sort of eventual audience — perhaps only a single person who discovers the diary in an attic. I didn’t think about publishing my own diaries as I wrote them, but as my life went on and I became a writer with a regular publisher and connections to magazines, I suppose that publishing some of the diaries became inevitable. I thought for some time that I might just draw on them as background material for a memoir, but when I re-read them (or, I should say, read most of them for the first time), the immediacy and inconclusiveness of the diary entries themselves seemed a more interesting thing to present than an analytical memoir.

Was there ever a moment of hesitation or trepidation on your part, as you were reading through your diaries, which contain deeply personal details, in preparation for the book?

Plenty of such moments. What’s in “The Very Heart of It” represents perhaps a quarter of the material in the original handwritten diaries from those 11 years. I elected not to publish some things that would have been hurtful to others, but mostly I chose to leave out long stretches that would have bored the reader. I tried to pick the most interesting material. Once I decided what entries and passages to include, I did not change or polish any of them, however tempting that may have been.

Why was now the time for you to share “The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994” with readers?

I think the ‘80s are far enough away from us that they now have a certain exotic quality, something the more distant past always takes on. There’s an interest in that decade similar to the interest in the ‘60s that one saw 20 or 30 years ago. I also thought: what am I waiting for? I’m in my seventies now, and I might as well organize and publish some of this material while I’m still lucid enough to do the job.

I know from my own experience, as a young gay man during 1983-1994, that it was an extremely significant and traumatic period for the gay community. Would you say that your target audience is readers from your generation and those slightly younger, or is it your hope that Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z will also take an interest in this history?  

I hope that anyone of any age, sex, or orientation may be interested in the material. For younger people, some of it may be revelatory.  For older ones, it’s a matter of confirmation — of finding similarities to their own experience, and maybe a spark to their own memories.

In addition to being a writer of books, you are also an educator, as well as someone with experience in magazine editing. Of all these careers, is there one from which you derived the most personal satisfaction?

Well, magazine editing was the most fun, but I’m sure I’ve had the most satisfaction from writing all the books I managed to. Your mention of teaching is interesting to me right now. For all the years I did it at Vassar — a fancy job that I was lucky to have — I rather resented it. I worked hard at it, but I was always desperate to have more time to write. “The Very Heart of It” is extremely cranky about Vassar for that reason: I’m so eager to get out from under the grind of paper-grading and campus politics. But in the months since the book came out, I’ve had a number of emails from students I haven’t seen in years and years — it’s sobering to have former students who are now in their mid-sixties [laughs] — and their emails have been uniformly nice and really touching. These ex-students have been telling me that they learned a lot and have fond memories of the classes they took with me. They’ve made me put a higher value on all the teaching I did back then.  

An interview such as this would be incomplete if we didn’t talk about “Fellow Travelers,” your 2007 novel, which was adapted into an opera in 2016, as well as an acclaimed and popular 2023 Showtime series. Were you prepared for the reception that the Showtime series received, including the awards and nominations it received?

I was delighted by how well-made and intelligent the whole thing was. It diverges from the novel quite a bit and extends the characters forward in time, but I think it was an excellent adaptation. I stayed out of everyone’s hair while they made it — never asked to see a script or go up to the set — but I met everyone a few times after it began to air. I liked them all. Matt Bomer is as nice a guy as you will find.

Are there plans for screen or stage adaptations of any of your other novels?

None that I know of! But to this day, I’m amazed that no one has made a film from “Henry and Clara,” my 1994 novel about the couple who shared the balcony at Ford’s Theatre with the Lincolns.

Have you started working on or thinking about your next book project?

Actually, I’m almost finished with it. I’ve gone back to the Civil War for the first time since “Henry and Clara,” and I’m revising a completed draft of a novel called “The Late Unpleasantness,” set between 1861 and 1865

In November 2025, you will be at the Miami Book Fair. What can the readers expect from your appearance there?

I’m going to talk about the various aspects of my life that are recorded in “The Very Heart of It” — living and working in New York City in the shadow of AIDS; how I came to keep the diaries and why I decided to publish them. I’m looking forward to meeting the audience. I’m a pretty informal and approachable person, and I hope that lots of people will come up and say hello.