WORLD AIDS DAY
Writers Lost to AIDS Remembered
NYC AIDS Memorial to host hour-long reading
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
This year’s World AIDS
Day observance at the
New York City AIDS Memorial
(West 12th Street
at Greenwich Avenue) will begin at 5
p.m., with an hour of readings from
the works of authors, poets, and fi lmmakers
who died from AIDS-related
causes. The program will include selections
from the following artists:
Tory Dent (1958-2005) was a
poet, art critic, and writer about
AIDS. Among her body of work
was the 1999 poetry collection
“HIV, Mon Amour,” which won the
Academy of American Poets’ James
Laughlin Award — which recognizes
excellence in second books
of poetry — and was a fi nalist for
the National Book Critics Circle
Award. Dent’s work will be read by
Tim Murphy, the event’s curator
who is a novelist, journalist, and
teacher who has been living with
HIV since 2000.
Essex Hemphill (1957-1995)
was a poet and activist with a
strong focus on African-American
gay life. His poetry collections included
“Earth Life” and “Conditions.”
With Black fi lmmaker Marlon
Riggs, Hemphill worked on two
documentaries, “Tongues Untied,”
which explored the intersection
of Black and gay identities, and
“Black Is… Black Ain’t,” which examined
what exactly “blackness”
means. Jay W. Walker, a longtime
HIV survivor who co-founded the
Reclaim Pride Coalition, will read
from Hemphill’s work.
Michael Slocum (1956-1995)
was an artist, writer, cartoonist,
Filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill collaborated on the groundbreaking documentary
about Black gay sexuality “Tongues Untied.”
and activist who was editor
of Newsline, a monthly magazine
published by the People with AIDS
Coalition of New York. To tell the
stories of his life as a Black gay man
with AIDS, Slocum created the cartoon
character Zander Alexander,
PWA, whose experiences were painful,
funny, and poignant. Slocum’s
friend Kevin Hertzog, who has lived
with HIV since 1994 and was a cofounder
of Gays Against Guns, will
read from Slocum’s work.
Iris de la Cruz (1954-1991) was
an activist, educator, speaker, and
outreach worker who was a pioneer
in founding support groups
for sex workers, drug users, and
other marginalized individuals
living with HIV. De la Cruz wrote
a regular column for the People
with AIDS Coalition of New York’s
Newsline magazine. The HIV housing
and supportive services group
Iris House is named in her honor.
Activist, educator, and outreach
TONGUES UNTIED
worker Patricia Shelton, diagnosed
with HIV in 1991, will read from de
la Cruz’s writings.
Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) was
a fi lmmaker, poet, educator, and
activist. His documentaries —
“Tongues Untied” and “Black Is…
Black Ain’t” (both done with poet
Essex Hemphill) and “Ethnic Notions”
and “Color Adjustment”
— explored representations of race
and sexuality, especially the Black
gay experience, in American culture.
“Tongues Untied,” which received
funding from the National
Endowment for the Arts and aired
on public television, was among
the works that fueled North Carolina
Senator Jesse Helms’ vituperative
attacks on the NEA and PBS.
John Grauwiler, a teacher and cofounder
of Gays Against Guns who
was diagnosed with HIV in 2005,
will read from Riggs’ work.
Paul Monette (1945-1995) was
a writer, poet, and activist whose
best known book was “Borrowed
Time: An AIDS Memoir,” in which
he recounted his lover Roger Horwitz’s
19-month battle against
AIDS, starting with “the day we
began to live on the moon.” In “Becoming
a Man: Half a Life Story,”
which won the 1992 National Book
Award for Nonfi ction, Monette tells
his own story of living in the closet
before he met Horwitz in 1974. Ed
Barron, a New Jersey-based activist
diagnosed with HIV in 1986,
will read from Horwitz’s work.
Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990)
was a Cuban-born poet, novelist,
and playwright whose imprisonment
during the Castro regime
after conviction for “ideological deviation”
led him to join the 1980
Mariel Boatlift to the US. His
gripping memoir about his time
in Cuba and after, “Before Night
Falls,” became, after his death, a
movie that starred Javier Bardem.
Lillibeth Gonzalez, a community
health educator at GMHC who was
diagnosed with HIV in 1992, will
read from Arenas’ work.
Mary Bowman (1988-2019) was
a poet born with HIV who used
both poetry and music to address
issues around HIV. During the
2015 AIDSWatch annual lobbying
effort in Washington, Bowman was
recognized with a Positive Leadership
Award. Bowman’s work will be
read by Kineen MaFa, an artivist,
spiritual guide, and speaker who
was diagnosed with HIV in 2003.
David Feinberg (1956-1994)
was a member of ACT UP, a contributor
to numerous mainstream
and LGBTQ publications, and the
author of several novels and books
of essays. The protagonist of his
novels “Eighty-Sized” — which won
the Lambda Literary Award for Gay
Men’s Fiction and the American Library
Association’s Gay/ Lesbian
Award for Fiction — and “Spontaneous
Combustion” was a young
gay man modeled very much, by
Feinberg’s admission, on himself.
His fi nal book was a collection
of essays, “Queer and Loathing:
Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS
Clone.” Writer, actor, HIV advocate,
and teacher Bruce Ward, who has
been living with HIV since 1984,
will read from Feinberg’s work.
B.Michael Hunter (1958-2001),
an educator and cultural activist,
was a member of Other Countries,
a New York collective of Black gay
writers, for which he was the editor
of “Sojourner: Black Gay Voices
in the Age of AIDS,” which won the
Lambda Literary Small Press Book
Award. Hunter’s work will be read
by Ivy Kwan Arce, a mother, artist,
designer, and activist who was diagnosed
with HIV in 1990.
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