John Fox (May 26, 1952 – August 14, 1990) was an American novelist and

short-story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

writer. Fox was born in the Pelham Bay area of

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

and graduated from

Cardinal Hayes High School Cardinal Hayes High School is an American Catholic high school for boys in the Concourse Village neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City, New York. The school serves the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. It is a member of the Catholic H ...

and

Lehman College Lehman College is a public college in the Bronx borough of New York City. Founded in 1931 as the Bronx campus of Hunter College, the school became an independent college within CUNY in September 1967. The college is named after Herbert H. Lehma ...

. Fox's only novel became famous and influential. '' The Boys on the Rock'', detailed the

coming out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

and falling in love of a gay teenage swimmer by the name of Billy Connors. The novel is set in the heady political atmosphere of 1968. The author Edmund White described the book as “Some of the brightest, funniest, most touching writing about adolescence...And if ever a book will give straight readers an exact sense of what it's like to grow up gay, surely ''The Boys on the Rock'' will". According to his

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in ''

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'', Fox died of

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in his

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home in 1990, aged 38. He was survived by his parents, John Sr. and Joan, also of the Bronx; a brother, James, of

Danbury Danbury is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located approximately northeast of New York City. Danbury's population as of 2022 was 87,642. It is the seventh largest city in Connecticut. Danbury is nicknamed the "Hat City ...

, Connecticut; and a sister, Dorothy Schmidt of

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, Pennsylvania.

References

* ''

''. "John Fox; Writer, 38." August 22, 1990: D23. 20th-century American novelists American male novelists AIDS-related deaths in New York (state) 1952 births 1990 deaths American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American male writers People from Pelham Bay, Bronx Novelists from New York City Writers from the Bronx {{US-story-writer-stub