Robert will give a reading and sign copies of his book, published by W.W. Norton this summer. An essential work of American civil rights history, “Tinderbox” mesmerizingly chronicles the June 24, 1973 fire at the Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans. It claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman, and devastated that city’s subterranean gay community.  It was the largest mass murder of gays until the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. Buried for decades, the tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement.