In Michigan, a Queer Retreat With Dancing in the Woods

Entertaining With shows how a party came together, with expert advice on everything from menus to music.

The independent gay magazine Hello Mr. released just ten issues, between 2013 and 2018. But neat stacks of the publication still feature prominently on plenty of queer people’s coffee tables. Founded by the artist and editor Ryan Fitzgibbon and intended, according to its slogan, “for men who date men,” Hello Mr. highlighted the work of both established creatives and relative unknowns, many of whom have since gone on to wider fame. There were interviews with the musicians Perfume Genius and Olly Alexander; poems and essays by the writers Ocean Vuong, Ryan O’Connell and Bryan Washington; and conversations withthe comedian John Early and the curator Antwaun Sargent.

Fitzgibbon founded and edited the independent gay magazine Hello Mr., which was published between 2013 and 2018.Credit…Jenn Ackerman

In 2022, Fitzgibbon decided to gather some of the magazine’s best pieces, as well as some new ones, into a single volume, and this past May, he released “A Great Gay Book: Stories of Growth, Belonging & Other Queer Possibilities” (Harry N. Abrams). Last month, to celebrate the book’s launch, Fitzgibbon hosted a few of its contributors for a long weekend at the Ox-Bow Artists’ Residency in his home state of Michigan. The residency holds special significance for Fitzgibbon, 37: Saugatuck, the woodsy Lake Michigan town in which it’s located, has long been a queer vacation destination, and when Fitzgibbon was in college, one of his professors, a visiting artist at Ox-Bow, took him, along with a group of other students, to visit the studios. Last summer, he stayed at Ox-Bow to finish work on the book.

He planned the get-together with Ox-Bow’s executive and deputy directors, the artists Shannon Stratton and Claire Arctander, coordinating what Fitzgibbon calls “essentially a sleepover in the woods,” bookended by a Thursday night bonfire and a Sunday goodbye breakfast, with nature walks, beach trips, workshops and ample time for socializing in between.