Daniel Nester

Daniel Nester is the author most recently of the memoir Shader: 99 Notes on Car Washes, Making Out in Church, Grief, and Other Unlearnable Subjects. His previous books include How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction, and The Incredible Sestina Anthology, which he edited. His first two books, God Save My Queen: A Tribute and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go On, are collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third, The History of My World Tonight, is a book of poems.

As a journalist and essayist, his work has appeared in a variety of places, such as Salon, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and The Atlantic. The former editor of the online journals Unpleasant Event Schedule and La Petite Zine as well as Painted Bride Quarterly and the sestinas section of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, he currently edits Pine Hills Review, the literary journal of The College of Saint Rose, where is also an associate professor of English.

Books

God Save My Queen II

The Show Must Go On

God Save My Queen: The Show Must Go On by Daniel Nester continues the theme from his first book--how his personality and aesthetic was shaped by Freddie Mercury and the British rock band Queen. World famous in the 1970s for such songs as "We Will Rock You," "We Are The Champions," "Another One Bites The Dust," and the mock-opera epic "Bohemian Rhapsody," the band ended its run in 1991 with the death of its flamboyant lead singer, Freddie Mercury, from AIDS. But it is a source of a deeper and more personal obsession for the author, poet and journalist Daniel Nester. As for the first volume, a short essay, or riff, accompanies, in order of album and track, of Queen's last five studio albums The "plot points" covered here would be the band's retreat from the United States -- timed almost exactly when the author proclaims Queen his "favorite band" -- as well as Queen's triumphant performance at Live Aid, European tours, and the band's retreat into secrecy as Freddie Mercury deals with HIV/AIDS, the decline of Mercury's health and his eventual death. Not quite memoir, neither prose poetry nor rock book, it will, it will nonetheless, rock you.

God Save My Queen

God Save My Queen is a collection of lyrical essays drawing on a very unliterary source: the British rock band Queen. World famous in the 1970s for such songs as "We Will Rock You," "We Are The Champions," "Another One Bites The Dust," and "Bohemian Rhapsody," Queen's music is embedded in our public consciousness, in our sports stadiums, in TV commercials, and Wayne's World.
But it is a source of a deeper obsession for the author, poet and journalist Daniel Nester--in God Save My Queen, a short essay or riff accompanies, in order of album and track, every song recorded by the band, in chronological order, until its flopped "disco" album, 1982's Hot Space. Part memoir, part prose poetry part rock book, Nester draws connections betwen everyone from Liza Minelli, Leni Riefenstahl, Billie Jean King, Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury sharing a kiss in 1981, even a rant on Courtney Love's giggling over Kurt Cobain's mention of Freddie Mercury in his suicide note. The entries for the songs add up to a love letter to a band, and a time when all that mattered was a record player and a pair of headphones.

How to Be Inappropriate

Dry, offbeat, and mostly profane, this debut collection of humorous nonfiction glorifies all things inappropriate and TMI. A compendia of probing essays, lists, profiles, barstool rants, queries, pedantic footnotes, play scripts, commonplace miscellany, and overly revealing memoir, How to Be Inappropriate adds up to the portrait of an artist who bumbles through life obsessed with one thing: extreme impropriety.

In How to Be Inappropriate, Daniel Nester determines the boundary of acceptable behavior by completely disregarding it. As a twenty-something hipster, he looks for love with a Williamsburg abstract painter who has had her feet licked for money. As a teacher, he tries out curse words with Chinese students in ESL classes. Along the way, Nester provides a short cultural history on mooning and attempts to cast a spell on a neighbor who fails to curb his dog. He befriends exiled video game king Todd Rogers, re-imagines a conversation with NPR’s Terry Gross, and invents a robot version of Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.

No matter which misadventure catches their eye in this eclectic series of essays, How to Be Inappropriate makes readers appreciate that someone else has experienced these embarrassing sides of life, so that they won’t have to.