Photo: Eric Luc | "The Vast Fields of Ordinary" by Nick Burd
HN caught up with Nick Burd this week about making the OUT 100 List and meeting poetry legend Mark Doty.
How did you react when you found out you’d made the list this summer?
I was very excited to find out I was part of the OUT 100. As they say, it’s for people who have “made an impact on queer culture in the past year.” It’s quite bizarre to think that a story that had been rattling around my head eventually made an “impact” of any sort. Bizarre, but also very cool.
Tell us about the photo shoot. What was it like meeting New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award winner, Mark Doty?
We shot the photo up at Columbia on an insanely hot day in August. I always knew that Mark Doty had a reputation for being an extremely kind person, and he more than lived up to that. They gave us these random books to hold for the shoot, and he kept opening his and reading inadvertently hilarious lines from them. It was an honor to be photographed with him.
You look so dapper. What are you wearing in the shot?
It was a black suit from the J Crew Men’s Store, a purple and white checked Steven Alan shirt, and a black tie.
