As the author of “The Book Nook,” a syndicated column I wrote from 1977 to 2006, I met many interesting writers. One of them was Jay Quinn, who passed away without fanfare (except for an obituary in the Walker’s Funeral Home website) on July 28, 2025.
In the early years of this century, Quinn lived in Plantation, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, where I still live. Quinn contacted me and we met for coffee at a nearby Starbucks, where we discussed gay literature, life in the Florida suburbs, our respective partners (Jeff Auchter and Michael Greenspan, both since deceased) and other matters. This was a great time for gay lit, a time when publishers like Alyson, Kensington and Harrington Park published a record number of books, many distributed by the Insight Out Book Club (an LGBT subsidiary of the Book of the Month Club). Quinn at the time was an editor for Harrington Park’s Southern Tier line of gay male books and was starting a new career as a writer of queer fiction and nonfiction.
Quinn was born Harold Brian Parks in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Though he soon changed his name to Jay Quinn, he retained his Southern accent, style, and manners. A self-described “polymath,” Quinn was an accomplished actor and painter as well as an author. He was one of OUT magazine’s “OUT 100” honorees in 2005. Quinn’s five novels, to quote the Walker obituary, “plumbed the depths of gay life and culture and the challenges of mental illness,” all told from a distinctive gay, Southern point of view.
Quinn’s first book for Harrington Park, “The Mentor: A Memoir of Friendship and Gay Identity” (2000), was his love letter to Joseph Riddick, his longtime friend and confidante. Quinn also wrote his first novel, “Metes and Bounds” (2001) for Harrington, and edited two volumes of “Rebel Yell: Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Authors” (2001).
In 2005, Quinn acquired a new publisher, Alyson Books, for which he wrote his greatest novel, “Back Where He Started” (2005). OUT magazine, honoring Quinn, wrote that, in “Back Where He Started,” the author “effectively knocks down literary walls, challenging notions that queer life loses its bite after age 40. The critically acclaimed novel explores one man’s life in the Outer Banks of North Carolina after his partner of 22 years leaves him for a woman. The book deftly details its protagonist’s struggles with faith, fatherhood and starting over at midlife.” Quinn followed “Back Where He Started” with the novels “The Good Neighbor” (2006), “The Beloved Son” (2007) and “The Boomerang Kid,” (2008) also published by Alyson.
Though raised a Southern Baptist, Quinn later converted to Catholicism and his religion is as much a part of his books as his sexual orientation or his Southern heritage. In later years he returned to North Carolina where, though suffering with progressive lung disease, he retained his love of books and continued to host lively social events, even in hospice. “Those who knew him best recall his sharp, mischievous wit and infectious laughter; his infinite love and kindness; and his empathy for those on society’s margins who face misunderstanding and rejection.”
Though Quinn is gone, and his books are out of print, he and they deserve to be remembered, if only for the example they give us who follow in his footsteps, in life and in literature.
