“...a subtle and diverse collection...Cohen’s images are acute, and his insights on people’s behaviors—their cruelties, their yearning, their play acting—are sharp. Before Stonewall is a precise, evocative short story collection that centers the lives of queer men who were otherwise relegated to the shadows.”

—Foreword Reviews

“Once off the stage and out of the footlights, Cohen’s gay characters are at risk, exposed in the light of day as they try simply to move through life. These stories can seem easy, but that, too, is gentle deception... [Cohen] reminds us that history is, ultimately, personal. Every queer life begins before Stonewall, even those coming after it.”

—Gertrude Press

“‘I write out of memory,’ begins Before Stonewall, ‘and want to apologize for that—mainly because the facts are so vague, they defy logic.’ The stories that comprise Edward M. Cohen’s masterwork defy more than logic; they defy genre, the landscape of the sentence, and the boundaries between artist and reader. Cohen invites us into the worlds and bodies of this prose like an old friend, sharing his most intimate knowledges. Every word is a secret to unpack. You’ll emerge from these pages hopeful, delirious with wonder, missing the characters within, and, most of all, changed. Cohen’s work is essential.”

—T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

“Nobody wants to return to the days of oppression and discrimination, but there is pleasure in reading about it in these pages: the coded language, the veiled seductions, the youthful crushes reconsidered decades later. In one story the protagonist—or maybe the author himself— sings ‘Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries’ but in a carefully-calculated tragic tone... because the combination of sweet and bitter has an inescapable power.”

—Bob Morris, NY Times contributor and author of Assisted Loving and Bobby Wonderful

“Ed Cohen’s collection of short fiction, Before Stonewall, opens a door into a past infused with longing and theatre. Whether his characters are a novice rehearsing a Tennessee Williams play or a middle-aged queen cruising a park in upstate New York, each has an unforgettable urgency and authenticity. This collection fills in what political volumes can’t tell you about being gay in the time before Stonewall.”

—Jewelle Gomez, author The Gilda Stories