When he was an undergrad at Harvard, author and historian Eric Cervini’s first encounter with queer history surprisingly did not come from a book. “I watched the film Milk about Harvey Milk, and I was shocked that I knew nothing about this story,” Cervini says. “That’s where my interest in queer history began.”
Cervini earned his Ph.D. in history at Cambridge, and before he was 30, he wrote what is the first in-depth book about Frank Kameny, a rising and talented astronomer at the U.S. Defense Department who was fired for being gay. Cervini’s book was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in history and a best seller.
