John R Gordon lives and works in London, England. He is a screenwriter, playwright and the author of nine novels, Black Butterflies, (GMP 1993), for which he won a New London Writers' Award; Skin Deep, (GMP 1997) and Warriors & Outlaws (Millivres 2001), both of which have been taught on graduate and post-graduate courses on Race & Sexuality in Literature in the USA; Faggamuffin (Team Angelica 2012); Colour Scheme (Team Angelica 2013); Souljah (Team Angelica 2015). His historical epic of same-sex love in slavery times, Drapetomania (Team Angelica 2018) won the prestigious Ferro-Grumley Award for Best LGBTQ Fiction. His eighth novel was the Young Adult interracial romance Hark. John script-edits, executive produces and writes for the world's first Black gay television show, Patrik-Ian Polk's Noah's Arc (Logo/Viacom, 2005-6 and ongoingly). In 2007 he wrote the autobiography of America's most famous Black gay pornstar from taped interviews he conducted, My Life in Porn: the Bobby Blake Story (Perseus 2008). In 2008 he co-wrote the screenplay for the Noah's Arc feature-film, Jumping the Broom (Logo/Viacom) for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination; the film won the GLAAD Best (Limited Release) Feature Award. That same year his short film Souljah (directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair) won the Soho Rushes Award for Best Film, among others. He is also the creator of the Yemi & Femi comic for adult readers, and their theatrical spin-offs. As well as mentoring, dramaturging and otherwise encouraging young LGBTQ+ and racially-diverse writers, John paints, cartoons and does film and theatre design. His website is www. johnrgordon. com.
