Guest post written by Seven Summer Weekends author Jane L. Rosen
Jane L. Rosen is an author and screenwriter whose critically acclaimed first novel, Nine Women, One Dress, has been translated into ten languages. She lives in New York City and on Fire Island with her husband and three daughters.
About Seven Summer Weekends: A woman inherits a beach house, along with a series of weekend guests, while butting heads with the irritable (and irritatingly handsome) man next door, in this sparkling new escape from Jane L. Rosen.
From the Surf Hotel, built in 1855 in the town now known as Kismet, to the present day, Fire Island has been a haven for artists, writers, and actors. While the list of prominent visitors drawn to its surf, sun, nightlife, and serenity is substantial, today I am homing in on a dozen or so and their connections to the various towns and villages on the thirty-two-mile spit of sand off the coast of New York’s Long Island. It is quite a list!
1. Oscar Wilde
The flamboyant Irish poet, novelist, playwright, (The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest) visited the town of Cherry Grove in 1882 on his tour of America long before it became part of the east end’s fabulous gay enclave.
2. Truman Capote
It is believed that Capote wrote parts of the beloved classic, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, during the summer of 1957 in one of the first homes constructed in Cherry Grove, the iconic Carrington House.
3. Tennessee Williams
Legend has it that celebrated American playwright and queer icon Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie on a stolen typewriter in a pier shack on the eastern end of the island.
4. Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller, renowned American playwright, (Death of a Salesman, The Crucible) who was famously married to Marilyn Monroe for five years, often visited the island at the Seaview home of Marilyn’s acting coach, Paula Strasberg (Lee Strasberg’s second wife).
5. Frank O’Hara
Frank O’Hara, A writer and MOMA curator whose poems include “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island”, famously died there at just forty years old. O’Hara was hit by a beach buggy on a dark night in 1966 — a shocking event in the history of a mostly car-free island.
6. Abby Hoffman
The American social and political activist, known for his role in the 1960s counterculture movement, authored several significant books. Hoffman spent time on Fire Island in the 1970s, where he and his crew organized a defense fund for the Black Panthers out of their summer rental in Seaview.
7. Joseph Heller
“In 1962 I was sitting on the deck of a house on Fire Island….” wrote Heller in The Paris Review, going on to explain how fifteen years after he published Catch-22, inspiration finally hit. The title of his long awaited second novel, Something Happened, was aptly inspired from its Fire Island beginnings.
8. Herman Wouk
The Pulitzer-prize-winning author (The Caine Mutiny, 1951) raised his family in Seaview and held a Minyan on his back deck until becoming a founding member of the island’s first synagogue.
9. Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner
About fifteen years ago, over pastrami at the Carnegie Deli, actor Tony Roberts (Serpico, Annie Hall) told me his account of the inception of the duo’s most famous collaboration—The 2000-Year-Old Man. Roberts reported escorting a date back to her Ocean Beach home to find the two pals improvising the legendary schtick in her living room. The life-long friends went on to become two of the most famous comedy sketch writers in history. (Just ask my next entrants!)
10. Elle Key & Keegan-Michael Key
The married writing and producing comedy partners co-authored much of their 2023 best-selling book, The History of Sketch Comedy, on their Fire Island deck. Fun fact: Elle’s grandfather, Tony Pugliese, built a house on the island in the 1930’s and her father, Paul, was once the mayor of Ocean Beach!
11. Tina Fey
“You can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at.”—Tina Fey
Whether reading her 2011 memoir, Bossy Pants, or watching Mean Girls, one of the most quoted movies of all time, there is no doubt that Tina Fey crafted many a funny line from her Fair Harbor home.
12. Jane L. Rosen
It may be true that the only way I would be included in a list with these luminaries is if I had written that list myself, none the less, here I am! Jane L. Rosen, author of five novels including three set on the island, On Fire Island (2023), Seven Summer Weekends (2024) and Songs of Summer (2025). These three stand-alone novels brimming with kooky characters, a love of place, and just love itself, are all inspired by having spent thirty-something years on my beloved Fire Island.
