Originally from Savannah, Georgia, Perry grew up, in the fifties and sixties, in equal parts Southern, Jewish, economically impoverished, and very much gay. To escape the South's violent homophobia, he hitchhiked at 17 from Savannah to San Francisco - an adventure, he recalls, that was "like Mark Twain with drag queens." He's published 12 books and been a finalist five times in 3 categories (poetry; gay science fiction and fantasy; spirituality and religion) for Lambda Literary Awards. His novel Warlock, A Novel of Possesion, won an "Ippy" Award from the Independent Pulblishers Association for best gay and lesbian book in 2002.

He has been involved in the gay movement since 1969, when he co-edited Come Out!, the world's first gay liberation newspaper. Later, in 1972, with two friends he started the Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, still surviving as New York's Callen-Lourde Clinic. In 1984, his play Night Chills, one of the first plays to deal with the AIDS crisis, won a Jane Chambers International Gay Playwriting Award.

Although his work has been little recognized by academics and the science fiction establishment, the plotlines of his novels have been innovative and prescient. His "science-politico" novel, The Harvest, from 1997, presaged the macabre market in human body parts that was later uncovered in China and parts of Southeast Asia. His novel Albert, or the Book of Man, from 1995, predicted a right-wing take-over of the United States under the guise of "Christian" ethics; and Warlock, from 2001, dissected the vile machinations of slippery multinational Enron-type corporations which are basically money-sucking pools that disappear one moment to reappear the next in another country, and which will do anything for even more money.

Brass's novels combine high action plots, spirituality, political awareness, eroticism, and humor. They are therefore hard to pigeon hole. He is first of all a storyteller, in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson or the Jewish writer I.B Singer, as well as in the renegade tradition of William S. Burroughs. All of these writers have used fantasy and speculative fiction to reveal insights about human behavior. Brass does this, but as an openly gay writer.

Brass's books are available at bookstores, online at Amazon.com, InsightOut Bookclub, the Open Book Ltd., or through his website, www.perrybrass.com. He's an accomplished reader and teacher on gender subjects, gay relationships, and the history and literature of the movement towards glbt equality. He lives in the Riverdale section of "da Bronx" with his partner of 23 years, but can cross bridges to other parts of the country without a passport.