Tim Dlugos (1950 – 1990) was born in Springfield, MA and grew up in Arlington, VA. From 1968 to 1971, he was a member of the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order. When he could no longer reconcile his political activism or the fact of his gay identity with his religious commitment, he quit the order and moved to DC, where he became involved with the Mass Transit poets and published his first book of poems, High There, with Some Of Us Press. He worked in DC for Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen until his move to New York City in the late 1970s.
In New York, Dlugos edited and contributed to such journals as Christopher Street, New York Native, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. After his HIV positive diagnosis, Dlugos decided to return to train for the Episcopalian priesthood. He studied at Yale School of Divinity, but was unable to complete his degree, dying of AIDS-related complications at age 40.
Dlugos published five books of poems in his lifetime; three books of his have been published posthumously. His books include: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos, edited by David Trinidad (Nightboat Books, 2011), Entre Nous (Little Caesar Press, 1982), Je Suis Ein Americano (Little Caesar, 1979), and For Years (Jawbone Press, 1977).
