In Memoriam: James W. Sapp (Jameson Currier)

It is with great sadness that I inform you of the passing of longtime ATPAM Press Agent, James W. Sapp. James came into membership in December 1982. I have been asked to share this obituary with you all. May his memory be a blessing.

JAMES W. SAPP (aka JAMESON CURRIER)   70 years old

Theatrical Press Agent, award-wining Author (Jameson Currier), Independent Publisher devoted to gay literature and later an Artist, died on Sunday, July 13^th of a sudden heart attack at his home in in Chatham Center, New York.

His career began in 1981 as a member of ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers. He worked for many years as a theatrical/entertainment publicist, representing Broadway, off-Broadway, and national touring productions: Torch Song Trilogy, Crimes of the Heart, 'Night, Mother, Grease, Vanities, Love Letters, Rags, Precious Sons, and Pump Boys and Dinettes.  After the publication of his first book of short stories (aka Jameson Currier), he continued to freelance, on such shows as Love Letters, Sunset Boulevard, Jekyll & Hyde, Time & Again, The Lion King, and Steel Pier.

James W. Sapp, born on October 16, 1955, in Marietta, Georgia, was valedictorian of Wheeler High School in 1973.  He attended Emory University, receiving a B.A. in English, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude.  

After his theatrical employment and the continuation of his true love writing, in 1993 he began working as a temporary employee in the legal department of The New York Times Company, eventually becoming a full-time employee in 1999 and a Senior Corporate Paralegal of the Company, retiring in 2020.  

A prolific writer, Jameson Currier was the author of the novel about the AIDS epidemic, Where The Rainbow Ends, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction and he was awarded a fiction grant from The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation. He was also the author of seven additional novels, The Wolf at the Door; The Third Buddha; What Comes Around; The Forever Marathon; A Gathering Storm and Based on a True Story; and We Are Made of Stars, about the early decade of the AIDS epidemi; five collections of short fiction, Dancing on the Moon: Short Stories about AIDS; Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex; Still Dancing: New and Selected Stories; The Haunted Heart and Other Tales; and Why Didn’t Someone Warn You About Prince Charming?; three illustrated tales, Paul’s Cat, The Candlelight Ghost, and The Man That Got Away; and a memoir of intimate writings, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in the category of Gay Memoir/Biography. 

He also wrote the documentary film, Living Proof: HIV and the Pursuit of Happiness (1993/1994), which depicted HIV-positive individuals who were part of a project for the photographer Carolyn Jones, and in 2018 narrated, animated, and directed a film version of his short story, Mr. Darcy’s Pride. In 2005, supervised a French translation of Dancing on the Moon which was published as Les Fantômes, and in 2021 his novel, The Third Buddha, was translated into French by Étienne Gomez and published as Le Troisième Bouddha by Perspective cavalière and awarded the Prix du Roman Gay.  

Mr. Currier's writings about AIDS and the gay community appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Art & Understanding magazine, Lambda Book Report, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, The International Herald Tribune, The San Francisco Examiner, The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Bergen Record, Ten Percent Magazine, The Washington Blade, The New York Native,Buffalo Spree, Southern Voice, Metrosource, Dallas Voice, Out, and The Body Positive Magazine, as well as non-bylined book reviews during 1994 and 1995 for the trade publication Publishers Weekly.  

His short fiction appeared in many literary magazines and Web sites, including Velvet Mafia, Blithe House Quarterly, Absinthe Literary Review, Rainbow Curve, Christopher Street, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Mad Scientist Journal, The Flexible Persona, and the anthologies Men on Men 5, Best American Gay Fiction 3, Certain Voices, Boyfriends from Hell, Men Seeking Me, Mammoth Book of Gay Erotica, Best Gay Erotica (1996-1999, 2003, 2004 editions), Best American Erotica 2004 (Simon & Schuster), Circa 2000, Rebel Yell, I Do/I Don't, Best Gay Stories(2009-2011, 2013, and 2015), Wilde Stories (2009-2011), Best Gay Romance (2011, 2013 and 2014), Making Literature Matter 2000), ImageOutWrite (2016), and Off the Rocks (2016).  

In 2003, Mr. Currier was the recipient of a fellowship from the New York State Foundation for the Arts in nonfiction.  He was a member of the National Book Critics Circle from 1994-1999. He was a judge for: the annual Lambda Literary Awards 1994-2005 and 2012-2016; the Project QueerLit 2003 and 2005; for the Publishing Triangle Awards (2021-2023), and a member of the Board of Directors of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation from 1998 to 2018.  From July 1998 to July 1999 he was the assistant editor of The New York Blade News, a weekly gay newspaper in Manhattan where he wrote a front page article on the Stonewall Inn being named to the National Register of Historic Places.  In 2001, he began to contribute a regular column on the GLBT publishing industry for Lambda Book Report, which he posted on his own blog, QueerType.

In 2010 he founded Chelsea Station Editions, an independent press devoted to gay literature.  Among the authors the press published were the debut of 9 writers, and veterans such as Charles Silverstein, Jerry Douglas, Arch Brown, James Magruder, Jon Marans and many others.  Among the honors these works received was a Lambda Literary award for Debut Fiction for Bob the Book by David Pratt, a Ferro-Grumley award nomination for The Troubleseeker, a novel by Alan Lessik, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award from the American Library Association for trade editions of two plays by Jon Marans, The Temperamentals and A Strange and Separate People. The press also became the home for all of his work, re-issuing his out-of-print novels and stories and publishing his new and unpublished manuscripts, including A Gathering Storm, written in the wake of the murder of Matthew Shepard and which subsequently became a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Mystery in 2015.  

In 2011, he launched Chelsea Station, a new literary magazine of gay-themed writing and served as both editor and designer, and which became an online magazine in 2014. The magazine published the works of more than two hundred LGBT writers.

In 2018, he purchased a “farmless farmhouse” in Chatham Center, New York, where he drew inspiration for new works of art and became a member of the Guild of Berkshire Artists and the Spencertown Academy. A self-taught artist, illustrator, and graphic designer, his designs and art were often tagged as “Peachboy” or signed “Jimmy.”

He was preceded in death by his mother Joyce Currier Sapp and sister Deborah Ann Smith.  He is survived by his father Robert Sapp of Marietta, Georgia, and his sister Roberta Sue Moore of Burlington, NC and his brother - Charles Raymond Sapp of Rockmart, Georgia.

A CELEBRATION OF LIFE will be held for Jameson Currier (Jimmy Sapp) on SATURDAY, JULY 25, AT 11 A.M., at the RAYMOND E. BOND FUNERAL HOME, RT. 9, VALATIE, N.Y. 

Family and friends are warmly invited to continue celebrating Jimmy's life, immediately following the service at his countryside home, 1510 County Route 28, Valatie, N.Y.