Alfred Chester (1928-1971) was an American author and critic known for his experimental writings and bright orange wig that he wore to cover baldness from a childhood illness. He attended New York University and Columbia University and lived as an openly gay man in France throughout the 1950s. Chester was a successful writer, known for his novels Jamie Is My Heart’s Desire and The Exquisite Corpse, and the short story collections Behold Goliath and Here Be Dragons. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957 and, starting in 1959, his short fiction was published in The New Yorker, Esquire, and Transatlantic Review. Chester moved to Morocco in 1963. His drug use led to increasingly erratic behavior over the next decade, until he died at the age of 42 in Jerusalem.
Alfred Chester
Studios
Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)
Alfred Chester worked in the Van Zorn (formerly Kirby) studio.
Constructed thanks to a bequest from Sarah L. Kirby, Kirby Studio was the last new building to be erected during Mrs. MacDowell’s leadership (1907-1951). The load-bearing masonry walls were laid by local mason Augustus Beaulieu atop a fieldstone foundation. A 1995 renovation preserved the brick fireplace with wooden mantel and…