Queen’s music is embedded in the popular consciousness — from sports stadiums and TV commercials to endless radio replay and Wayne’s World. For Daniel Nester, it is also an enduring personal obsession. God Save My Queen explores the parallel lives of author and band through riffs, trivia, lyrics, sexual awakenings, close readings of albums, and scholarly footnoted thoughts. It draws connections to everyone from Liza Minnelli to Leni Riefenstahl, including such moments as Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury’s sharing a kiss in 1981. Part memoir, part prose poetry, part rock book, God Save My Queen occupies the singular place where a fan’s life and a fan’s fixation collide. This collection of lyrical, loopy riffs celebrating the rock band Queen includes a short take on every song recorded by the band.
Daniel Nester is a journalist, essayist, poet, editor, and teacher. His latest book, How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction, was published by Soft Skull Press in Fall 2009.
His first two books, God Save My Queen (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II (2004), are collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third book, The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX, 2006), is a collection of poems.
As a journalist and essayist, his work has appeared in a variety of places, such as Poets & Writers, The Morning News, The Daily Beast, Time Out New York, The Bloomsbury Review, and Bookslut.
He is the former editor of the online journal Unpleasant Event Schedule and Assistant Web Editor for Sestinas for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He currently co-edits The Bloomsbury Review's Out-of-Bounds Essay "imaginary nonfictions "feature.
His work has been anthologized in such collections as The Best American Poetry 2003, The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1, and Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, Isn't It Romantic? 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets, and Gamers: Writers, Artists, and Programmers on the Pleasure of the Pixels.
His poems have appeared in Coconut, Shampoo, Taint, Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, jubilat, Crazyhorse, Open City, Slope, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other places.
He is an assistant professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.
