World AIDS Day: Book Readings + Author Talk (SF)

AIDS has killed at least 35 million people around the globe and World AIDS Day has been held every year since 1988 to raise awareness about the disease and to commemorate those we’ve lost to it. Two renowned authors and activists join us to mark the day.

A self-described “nice gay Jewish theater queen turned AIDS activist,” Ron Goldberg is author of Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York. He chaired committees, planned protests, led teach-ins, and participated in over a hundred zaps and demonstrations, becoming ACT UP’s unofficial “Chant Queen,” as the group confronted politicians, scientists, drug companies, religious leaders, the media, and an often-uncaring public to successfully change the course of the AIDS epidemic.

K.M. Soehnlein is a Lambda Award-winning author of several books including The World of Normal Boys and Army of Lovers, his long-awaited fourth novel, which draws from his time in New York City at the height of the AIDS epidemic with a riveting portrait of the activist groups ACT UP and Queer Nation. He says is was important to write this book “because I lived through something historic: the queer community saving itself from extermination.”