Martin Padgett

Martin Padgett is the author of The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick (2025), which tells the full story of the Supreme Court’s disastrous 1986 sodomy decision, and A Night at the Sweet Gum Head (2021), which details the emergence of queer rights at a famed Atlanta drag club. Martin has written for Bitter Southerner, Oxford American, The Paris Review, Gravy, Washington Post, and Time on topics ranging from single mothers in pursuit of sole custody to the prison labor that trains wild horses for adoption, the novel legal defenses of Atlanta strip clubs, the best dive bars in the French Quarter (RIP Flanagan’s), and the economic effects of self-driving cars. He earned his MFA in narrative nonfiction writing from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. He was named a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow. He earned a PhD in History at Georgia State University in 2023. His next book chronicles the HIV/AIDS epidemic as it was portrayed on TV news. Rutgers University Press will publish this work in 2026.