The Emphatically Queer Career of Perkins Harnly is the story of a Nebraska-born artist (1901-1986) who over the course of his long-life crossed paths with a staggering array of famous and infamous personalities. The story follows Harnly's steps from remote farmlands of Nebraska through silent-era Hollywood, post-revolutionary Mexico, Depression-era New York, wartime Tinsel Town, queer Los Angeles during the repressive 1950s, and in the 1970s. Sarah Burns uses archives of letters and interviews to bring the lives of Harnly and his circle of creative friends whose antics rival the infamous 'bright young things' of England.