2022 Reprint of the 1926 Edition. Illustrated Edition. Facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Fire!! was an African-American literary magazine published in New York City in 1926 during the Harlem Renaissance. The publication was started by Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Grandison Alexander, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. After it published one issue, its quarters burned down, and the magazine ended. This issue is the only one published by the journal. Fire!! was conceived to express the African-American experience during the Harlem Renaissance in a modern and realistic fashion, using literature as a vehicle of enlightenment. The magazine's founders wanted to express the changing attitudes of younger African Americans. In Fire!! they explored controversial issues in the Black community, such as homosexuality, bisexuality, interracial relationships, promiscuity, prostitution, and color prejudice.
Langston Hughes wrote that the name was intended to symbolize their goal "to burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past ... into a realization of the existence of the younger Negro writers and artists, and provide us with an outlet for publication not available in the limited pages of the small Negro magazines then existing." The magazine's headquarters burned to the ground shortly after it published its first issue, ending its operations.
Contents: Cover designs / Aaron Douglas -- Foreword -- Drawing / Richard Bruce -- Cordelia the crude, a Harlem sketch / Wallace Thurman -- Color struck, a play in four scenes / Zora Neale Hurston -- Flame from the dark tower -- a section of poetry. From the dark tower / Countée Cullen ; A Southern road / Helene Johnson ; Jungle taste ; Finality / Edward Silvera ; The death bed / Waring Cuney ; Elevator boy ; Railroad avenue / Langston Hughes ; Length of moon / Arna Bontemps ; Little Cinderella ; Streets / Lewis Alexander -- Drawing / Richard Bruce -- Wedding day, a story / Gwendolyn Bennett -- Three drawings / Aaron Douglas -- Smoke, lilies and jade, a novel, part I / Richard Bruce -- Sweet, a story / Zora Neale Hurston -- Intelligentsia, an essay / Arthur Huff Fauset -- Fire burns, editorial comments / Wallace Thurman -- Incidental art decorations / Aaron Douglas.