Dale Corvino found his confessional voice at the queer underground literary salon “Dean Johnson’s Reading for Filth,” recounting his youth as an object of longing. Under his worker name, he blogged advice for rentboy.com (shuttered by the Feds in 2015), appeared in/ on Dan Savage’s column/ podcast, contributed to several issues of Prose & Lore, the literary journal of the Red Umbrella Project, a peer-led sex worker advocacy organization, and the anthology Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks from Soft Skull Press.
In 2013, he self-produced the chapbook Dominick Reading for Filth. A collection of transcripts from the storied salon, it is illustrated by art from Alice O’Malley, Scott Hug, Carlo Quispe, Brett Lindell, Miguel Libarnes, and Paul Gellman, with cover art by Gio Black Peter.
The same year, the first publication under his government name was a personal essay about his grandmother’s brief but intense friendship with Marilyn Monroe—centered on a 25¢ photo of the star and his mother (as a young girl) which hung in his childhood home—for Salon. It was followed by an appreciation of Blondie for ImageOutWrite. He received the 2015 Christopher Hewitt Award for “Drowned River,” a short story about the bond between a trans woman and a gay man. The same year, the Rumpus published his essay on kink and the impact of technology on the ecosystem of desire, which enjoys ongoing popularity with the Grindr crowd. His short stories have appeared in the journals Jonathan and Chelsea Station, and the anthology Off the Rocks (#21). He’s blogged about the Rentboy Raid for Tits & Sass, participated in live storytelling for RISK! (podcast), and was a finalist in the 2017 Saints & Sinners Short Fiction contest.
In 2018, he won the Gertrude Press Fiction contest, judged by Whiting Award recipient Brontez Purnell. The resultant chapbook, Worker Names—a trio of short stories with sex worker protagonists—was published in 2019. Other publications include an essay on LGBTQ+ representation in pop music for Daily Xtra (Toronto), a reflection on one of New York City’s earliest AIDS diagnoses in A&U Magazine, and an Interview with writer Bruce Benderson for RFD commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
Recent publications include a feature reflecting on his visit to Santiago during the massive resistance movement ¡Chile Desperto! and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review, and a dissection of his work life and the art/finance divide for Catapult. His contributing essay “You’ve Got Male,” about queer desire and growing online constraints, appears in the Matt Keegan project 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press (2020). “Swarthy,” a reflection on the colorism experienced by his Sicilian grandfather, appears in Via: Voices in Italian Americana from Bordighera Press. He contributed a chapter on sex worker representations to The Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work (UK).
Dale was selected by Lambda Literary as an Emerging Fellow; the nonfiction cohort mentor was Saeed Jones. He reviewed Sasha Geffen’s Glitter Up the Dark for the organization’s web site. “Spit and Glitter” was selected for Issue 9 of Crooked Fagazine. His interview with writer Alex Cheves and his review of I Could Not Believe It: The 1979 Diaries of Sean DeLear from Semitext(e) also appear on Lambda Literary.
BONDS AND BOUNDARIES, his debut collection of short stories, was released October 2023 from Rebel Satori Press. The stories explore those titular themes, conflicts between chosen and biological families, sex work interactions, and the afterlives queer people must often build over displacement and loss.
His memoir, AFTERLIFE OF A KEPT BOY, was selected by C&R Press as its 2023 Nonfiction Prize winner and was released on May 15th, 2025 to heaps of advance praise. The late Felice Picano called it “a sensational read, immediate, engrossing, frank and at times way out there.” In The Whitney Review of New Writing, Journey Streams writes, “His writing is as sumptuous as his story is steeped in turmoil, examining the acrid underbelly of his keeper’s psyche, the ornate contours of that romantic fixation.”
Dale lives in Hell’s Kitchen with his super understanding husband.
insta: @dalecorvino
bluesky: @dalecorvino.bsky.social
threads: @dalecorvino