Edgar Gomez Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Edgar Gomez is a literary fiction author with Puerto Rican and Nicaraguan roots who was born in Florida. He went to the Riverside MFA program of the University of California and it was after graduation that he decided to pen his debut work.
He made his debut with the publishing of a memoir that he titled “High-Risk Homosexual,” which came out in 2022. The memoir has become a popular work that has been critically acclaimed from just about every quarter.

Rich in emotion, intelligence, and detail, the work is a vital addition to coming-of-age works and a literary joy too. Gomez never shies away from the many challenges of growing up gay and Latinx in a culture that can often be unaccepting and cruel.
With humor and grace, the author writes a poignant, inspiring, and remarkable book that should be in every college and high school reading list and every library.

Over the years, his words have been published in a range of prestigious publications including Plus Magazine, Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, Narratively, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, and Catapult, in addition to many other places online and in print.

Just like many novelists, Edgar Gomez loved reading when he was a child. A particular obsession was “The Royal Diaries” series of works, which his 5th-grade teacher used to have on the classroom bookshelf.

These were fictional diaries penned by real female royal figures from history such as Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, and Anastasia. To some extent, these were among the first memoirs he ever read.

Since the narrators were very close in age to him, he used to feel very close to them and it was like he was hearing stories told by friends. Moreover, he got a chance to look into how the other side lived given that his family was very poor.
Even as an adult, he still remembered hearing from his teacher or reading from Anastasia things that seemed out of this world.

He read of how her mother sewed crown jewels into her corset and then how the family was killed by a firing squad with bullets ricocheting off the diamonds and how Anastasia managed to survive.
Since he was 10 at the time, he believed it had all happened and found it the most glamorous and saddest thing he ever heard.

Given that he was exposed to memoir-like writing very early on, it was not surprising that he decided to pen his first work in the same format.

When Edgar Gomez began writing as a child, he was very much all about fiction. He used to sit down and begin inventing all manner of things. For some unexplained reason, he used to write about rich, white straight characters all through college.
It just never occurred to him that his characters could be anything other than what he used to write them as and not anything like who he was.

The characters he wrote were what he grew up reading about and hence that is what he felt comfortable writing about.

Nonetheless, while he never realized it at the time, he used to write in the tradition of marginalized and queer folk that could never speak openly and had to resort to more palatable characters to put across their stories.
It was not until he was doing an MFA that his college professors advised him to take a different direction.

His professors told him that he could be good with nonfiction and this was the time that he began including people who spoke and looked like him and came from the same places in his works.

During his time in graduate school, one of Edgar Gomez’s professors had told him that if he wanted writing to be a career, he needed to start treating it like a job.
But when he graduated from college, he initially could not find any traction and worked all manner of odd jobs just to make ends meet.

During this time, he used to do much of his writing at cafes and Starbucks while living with his mother even though he preferred louder environments which for some reason he found more peaceful.

Ever since he found some success with the memoir, he has decided to take his writing more seriously. He now has an office complete with everything from a desk and computer where he writes whenever and wherever he can.
He typically begins writing at about noon and writes for about five hours just about every single day.

His process is all about getting things from his memory which he then turns into a story. Once he gets out the notes app or word doc opens, the details usually just flow and he can then just piece together the puzzle and come up with a story.

“High Risk Homosexual” by Edgar Gomez is a witty memoir tracing the often hilarious and touching spiral path toward embracing a Latinx, gay identity in a culture that is all about machismo.
The work is set in all manner of places from cities across the United States to a Nicaraguan cockfighting ring, from the night clubs to the bathhouses, and drag queens that help redefine pride.
In this debut memoir, Edgar Gomez showcases his journey as he comes to age as a Latinx, gay man. The work opens in what has to be the ultimate anti-gay space.

Edgar is a thirteen-year-old boy who is sent to a Nicaraguan cockfighting ring that is owned by his uncle.

His father believes that by sending him to the cockfighting ring, he would work with and interact with men and become a man himself.

We follow him as he then leaves Nicaragua and heads to the US where he traverses queer spaces and learns to love being Latinx and gay.

Some of these places include the Orland Pulse Nightclub, a Los Angeles drag queen convention, and a doctor’s office where he is told he is a high-risk homosexual.

With humor, vulnerability, and quick-witted insights into professional, racial, familial, and sexual power dynamics, he shows how he goes on a path in which he learns to be proud of the parts of himself he had been taught he needed to hide.