All the Rage

A CBC Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of 20212022 Audie Award Finalist“Brad Fraser’s new release … manages to make an intensely personal story bigger than merely the reflections of the famously bad-boy playwright from Edmonton who went on to success as a writer in cities from New York to Los Angeles. Framed through the lens of the AIDS crisis, All the Rage gives context to the lives of gay men in Canada in the 1980s and ‘90s. At the same time, Fraser … charts an inspiring path for people who wonder how they will ever make their way in a world that doesn’t want them.” —Edmonton Journal“Playwright Brad Fraser’s new memoir fans the flames of his provocative legacy.” —Quill & Quire“Brad Fraser tells his own story with all the honesty, integrity and unwillingness to compromise that we know and love from his plays.” —Kelly Oxford, director, screenwriter, bestselling author  “Brad Fraser’s All the Rage displays all of the outrageous passion, raunchy sex, wit, political insight, sorrow and anger that are the hallmarks of his wonderful plays. His travels through a Canadian Dickensian landscape makes you devour this memoir in one addictive gulp.” —Charles Busch, author of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Die Mommie Die and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife“Being immune to self-pity doesn’t, happily, make Fraser immune to anger. All the Rage is full of artful skewerings of obtuse theatre administrators, know-it-all critics and hateful homophobes of all kinds. It’s a pleasure to see how little time has mellowed Fraser. His memoir is a hymn of support for fearless, risky Canadian theatre, for the queer community and for all marginalized people.” —Alberta Views

Brad Fraser is one of Canada’s best known playwrights. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1959, Brad won his first playwriting competition at the age of seventeen, and has been writing ever since. Brad’s international hit play Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love premiered at the Alberta Theatre Projects’ PlayRites Festival in 1989. It has since been produced worldwide, in many languages, with highly successful runs in Toronto, New York, Chicago, Milan, Sydney and London. Poor Super Man, developed by Canadian Stage, was first produced by the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati in 1994 and has enjoyed successful runs in many cities, including Toronto, London, Sydney, Edinburgh and Denver. It was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and adapted into a feature film, Leaving Metropolis, written and directed by Brad. Poor Super Man, like Unidentified Human Remains, was listed by Time magazine as one of the top ten plays of its year. Many other plays have followed in successful productions. Brad has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers, including The Globe and Mail and the National Post, and for three seasons was a writer and producer on Showtime’s Queer As Folk.