LGBTQ activist and author Sarah Schulman in virtual conversation during Pride month

The Second Tuesday Series is thrilled to present Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, in conversation with activist Steven Thrasher on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, at 6:30 pm at the virtual LGBT Center in NYC.

Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history of ACT UP and American AIDS activism ever collected. Schulman will talk about this significant and fabulously reviewed book with AIDS- and political-activist Steven Thrasher.

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In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable attack on the institutions (including the NY Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry) and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. 

Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members, Let the Record Show is a revelatory and long-overdue reassessment of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.

Sarah Schulman is an NYC-born novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, AIDS historian, journalist, and active participant citizen. She is a co-founder of MIX: The NY LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, the co-director of the ACT UP Oral History Project, and the US Coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine. 

Her novels include Rat Bohemia, The Cosmopolitans, and Maggie Terry. Her earlier non-fiction works include Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, The Gentrification of the Mind, and Conflict is Not Abuse. 

She has won a Guggenheim for playwriting, a Fulbright for Judaic Studies, the Kessler Prize for Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies, and the Stonewall Award for Improving the Lives of Gays and Lesbians in the United States. She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the College of Staten Island (CSI) and a Fellow at the NY Institute for the Humanities.

Steven Thrasher is the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting (with an emphasis on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community) and an assistant professor of journalism. He has worked as writer-at-large at the Guardian, staff writer at the Village Voice, and facilitator for the NPR StoryCorps project. 

His articles are regularly published in the New York Times, BuzzFeed News, Esquire, the Nation, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Daily Beast. He’s also a former researcher for Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”

Register for the conversation at https://gaycenter.org/schulman-thrasher/registration/. The LGBT Community Center will send meeting info and the Zoom link to join the conversation only to people who register at the above site prior to the event.

About The Second Tuesday Series

At 35 years, the Second Tuesday Series is the longest running program at The LGBT Center. Since 1985, more than 400 speakers have made presentations in the arts, academia, and politics. Speakers representing every major cultural award, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Grammy Award, the Academy Award (The Oscars), Broadway’s Tony Awards, the Lambda Literary Award, and the National Book Award, as well as the UK Booker Literary Award, have made presentations. Through this program, Larry Kramer spoke about the plight of the AIDS Crisis in March 1987, thus beginning ACT-UP, the largest direct action AIDS organization in the world.

For more about this program, see http://www.secondtuesday.org/Next.htm.

About the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center

Established in 1983, the LGBT Community Center is at the heart of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in New York City, providing quality health and wellness programs in a welcoming space that fosters connections and celebrates our cultural contributions. The Center serves the community with a full-service approach to programming, from hosting arts and entertainment events and advocacy groups to offering youth and overall wellness programs. 

Each year, the Center welcomes more than 300,000 visits to their building in the West Village. The Center has a long history as a cultural hub, with ongoing presentations that showcase the work of both emerging and established artists. 

To learn more, visit www.GayCenter.org.
The LGBT Center link: https://www.gaycenter.org