Michael Rumaker

Michael Rumaker is an American author (born March 5, 1932 in Philadelphia, PA), to Michael Joseph and Winifred Marvel Rumaker. He is a graduate of Black Mountain College (1955) and Columbia University (1970).

Most of Rumaker's fiction concerns his life as a gay man. His first book, The Butterfly, is a fictionalized memoir of his brief affair with a young Yoko Ono, published before Ono became famous. His short stories, Gringos and other stories, appeared in 1967. A revised and expanded version appeared in 1991. He began to write directly about his life as a gay man in the volumes A Day and a Night at the Baths (1979) and My First Satyrnalia (1981). The novel Pagan Days (1991) is told from the perspective of an eight-year old boy struggling to understand his gay self. Black Mountain Days, a memoir of his time at Black Mountain College, has a strong autobiographical element In addition, there are portraits of many students, faculty, and visitors (especially the poets Robert Creeley and Charles Olson) during its last years, 1952-1956.

In 2005, Circumstantial Productions published Rumaker's first book of poems, Pizza.

Works

His books include:

• The Butterfly
• Gringos and Other Stories
• Exit 3 and other stories
• A Day and a Night at the Baths (about the Everard Baths)
• My First Satyrnalia
• To Kill a Cardinal
• Pagan Days
• Black Mountain Days
• An Immodest Proposal
• Pizza: Selected Poems.
• The Fairies Are Dancing All Over the World

External links

• Leverette T. Smith's review of Rumaker's Pagan Days
• Jeffery Beam review of Rumaker's Pagan Days
• Jeffery Beam review of Rumaker's Black Mountain Days
• Boston Tea Party (January 1998)
• For Jeffrey Dahmer (January 1998)
• Pagan Days (January 1999)

Persondata
Name	Rumaker, Michael
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 5, 1932
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death