Richard Bruce Nugent

Richard Bruce Nugent born 2 July 1906 (d. 1987)

Richard Bruce Nugent (also known as Richard Bruce and Bruce Nugent) was a gay writer and painter in the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Washington, DC to a prominent African American family. Spending a large part of his life in New York City, he died in Hoboken, New Jersey.

During the summer of 1926, Nugent was a part of a group of black artists, led by Wallace Thurman, who envisioned a literary periodical to break with the black literary establishment. This quarterly was known as Fire!!. His creative involvement included two brush and ink drawings and a short story, Smoke, Lilies, and Jade. This short story was the first literary work on a purely homosexual theme that had been published by an African American writer.

He was a contemporary of and close friends with Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman.

In 1952, Nugent married Grace Elizabeth Marr. He admitted without any hesitation that the love he had for her was not a physical love or lust. They were married for seventeen years. Grace died of ovarian cancer in 1969 and Nugent of congestive heart failure seventeen years later in 1987.

He is a principal character in the 2004 film Brother to Brother.

In 2002 Duke University Press released Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent which included examples of his writing and artwork.