In an interview Peck stated that he believed this was a "defining time" in his father's life. "It wasn't so much when he became who he was," Peck explained, but rather "when he felt a lot of choices got closed off. There were a lot of people my father might have been in that year, and it was the last time in his life that would ever be the case."

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In addition to his novels, Peck has written a number of short stories. His "The Law of Diminishing Returns" appeared in Granta (Spring 1999), and several of his shorter fictions have been published in Conjunctions, including "Thirteen Ecstasies of the Soul" (Spring 1998), "Fever Dreams: A Geography of the Mind" (Spring 2000), and "Fruit Salad" (Spring 2001). The stories "Making Book" and "Bliss" were published in Zoetrope (Spring 1999); "Bliss" won an O. Henry Award and was reprinted in Prize Stories 2001: The O. Henry Awards (2001).

Peck's article "Making History" appeared in Over the Rainbow: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America Since Stonewall (1995), edited by David Deitcher; and he wrote the "Foreword" to Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade (1998), edited by Clifford Chase.

Peck is also an occasional literary critic, and his reviews have appeared in such publications as Artforum, The London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, Out, and The Village Voice.

In 2002, Peck created what he has referred to as a "ruckus in the publishing world," due to an annihilating review he wrote in the July 1 issue of The New Republic of a book by the novelist Rick Moody. In the now notorious opening line of that review Peck wrote, "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation." Because of this and other equally eviscerating reviews, Peck has become the self-described "most hated man in literature."

Peck republished the Moody review, along with 11 others, in Hatchet Jobs: Cutting Through Contemporary Literature (2004). The collection features mostly negative, though often well-argued, essay-reviews on a range of novelists both established--such as Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, and Julian Barnes--and relative newcomers, such as David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. Two omnibus essays are also included, one on novels about African-American women, and the other, on "gay-niche" fiction, titled "Stop Thinking: The (D)evolution of Gay Literature," of which Peck is mostly disparaging.

"If as a novelist, exposing homophobia is your mission," Peck remarks in the essay on Ethan Mordden's How Long Has This Been Going On? (1995), "then it seems worthwhile to point out that there's only so much one can learn about by looking at gay people; eventually you have to examine the homophobes, and that means looking at straight people."

Peck currently teaches creative writing at the New School University in New York and lives in Manhattan.

In the twenty years since its first appearance in the West, AIDS has been the subject of a large body of literature, most of it written by gay men and much of it designed to expose readers as closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic and the suffering of affected individuals.

After Stonewall, gay male literature became focused as a movement, aided by the development of gay newspapers, magazines, and quarterlies and the founding of serious gay and lesbian bookstores.

Canadian director John Greyson is internationally recognized as an avant-garde filmmaker and video artist whose work confronts issues related to homosexuality, gay rights, and AIDS activism.

Best known for his critically acclaimed debut novel Mysterious Skin (1995), Scott Heim has resisted the label "gay writer," but avows his interest in "the psychology behind the darker human impulses."

Best known for his four volumes of short fiction comprising a series of interconnected stories about gay life in New York City, Ethan Mordden is also the author of novels and over twenty works of nonfiction on opera, film, and musical theater.