OutWrite: The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture

Praise for OutWrite

Oh, please, please, powers that be, have the smarts and curiosity to bring OutWrite back into our lives. This collection reveals the dialogic community in negotiation/inspiration from all its corners: where the most rewarded meet the most marginalized, the grass roots meets the corporate, the dying meet the future—and they all sit on the same panels; eat and drink together; make friends and lovers, business deals and friendships; share aesthetics, politics; and argue and thereby influence the creation of literature.

—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993

The OutWrite conferences of the 1990s marked a critical turning point in the history of LGBTQ literary life and culture. This collection restores to historical memory the anger, the militancy, and the vibrant cultural voices that confronted directly the pain of the AIDS epidemic as well as the racial and gender divisions within the community. The editors have given us a wonderfully moving and inspiring gift by bringing into print these powerfully insightful speeches from the past.

—John D’Emilio, author of Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago’s LGBTQ Archives

"OutWrite: The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture is an incredible collection that taps into the heart of the queer literary community in the 1990s—the struggles, the successes, the visions, and the revisions. Reading it, I was struck by our loss of an entire parallel culture of LGBTQ businesses, conferences, and infrastructure that existed before the wide spread of the internet—but I was also struck by the continuity of hope, the clarity with which these authors fought for a freer future against incredible odds. OutWrite is a history that feels searingly present."

—Hugh Ryan, author of When Brooklyn Was Queer

"The incredible importance of queer culture to American culture is usually ignored by heterosexuals and often underestimated by LGBTQ people. OutWrite: The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture, edited by Julie R. Enszer and Elena Gross, is a magnificent testimony—and, until now, undocumented archive—of the expanse and the depth of LGBTQ literary and political culture that was the legacy of decades of struggle. Every piece here brilliantly embodies the insights, intellectual bravery, political acumen, and sheer courage that went into building a fiercely independent literary and political culture that redefined American culture and still illuminates how we live today. This is an invaluable contribution to LGBTQ literature, queer studies, and the everyday reader of queer literature."

—Michael Bronski, professor of the practice in activism and media studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University

What a fabulous and fascinating collection of speeches from leading figures in queer arts and letters in the 1990s! For everyone who wishes that they had attended the OutWrite conferences, for those who will enjoy reexperiencing them, and for all who are interested in cultural activism, this valuable anthology will inspire with words, wit, and wisdom.

—Marc Stein, author of The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History and Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism

"The vital, urgent need to tell our stories, to share, to write within and for a community is an inspiring part of any gathering of writers and publishers, but it’s especially evident in the speeches collected in OutWrite: The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture. This anthology documents the pivotal role the OutWrite conferences played in shaping and inspiring a generation of LGBTQ writers. The diversity of speakers gathered here and the explicit links they make among silenced and marginalized sexual communities and other oppressed communities amid the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic and the 1990s culture wars are especially valuable. This collection honors the memory of our forebearers—many of whom fired my own passion for critical queer writing—and is sure to bolster today’s artists and activists working against a global pandemic, climate crises, and the continued ascendency of white supremacy and conservative politics."

—Dwight A. McBride, PhD, president and university professor at the New School

OutWrite

OutWrite

The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture

Edited by

Julie R. Enszer and Elena Gross

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW BRUNSWICK, CAMDEN, AND NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: OutWrite (Conference) | Enszer, Julie R., 1970– editor. | Gross, Elena, editor.

Title: Outwrite : the speeches that shaped LGBTQ literary culture / edited by Julie R. Enszer and Elena Gross.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021025110 | ISBN 9781978828032 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978828049 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978828056 (epub) | ISBN 9781978828063 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978828070 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Speeches, addresses, etc., American—Congresses. | Sexual minorities’ writings, American—Congresses.

Classification: LCC PN6122 .O98 2022 | DDC 815/.540992066—dc23/eng/20211129

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025110

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

This collection copyright © 2022 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Individual chapters copyright © 2022 in the names of their authors.

For copyrights to previously published selections please see the Permissions section.

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

To everyone who worked on OutWrite conferences as volunteers and paid organizers, named and unnamed in the archives, and everyone who attended the OutWrite conferences between 1990 and 1999, with hope for continued passion, vision, and dancing in our literary and political lives

Contents

Introduction

JULIE R. ENSZER AND ELENA GROSS

Your First Audience Is Your People

JUDY GRAHN

American Glasnost and Reconstruction

ALLEN GINSBERG

AIDS and the Responsibility of the Writer

SARAH SCHULMAN

Does Your Mama Know about Me?

ESSEX HEMPHILL

The Effects of Ecological Disaster

SUSAN GRIFFIN

More Fuel to Run On

PAT CALIFIA

AIDS Writing

JOHN PRESTON

Lesbians and Gays of African Descent Take Issue

The Color of My Narrative

MARIANA ROMO-CARMONA

Survival Is the Least of My Desires

DOROTHY ALLISON

Speaking a World into Existence

JANICE GOULD

I’ll Be Somewhere Listening for My Name

MELVIN DIXON

What Fiction Means

ALLAN GURGANUS

The Gift of Open Sky to Carry You Safely on Your Journey as Writers

CHRYSTOS

An Exceptional Child

JOHN PRESTON

Aversion/Perversion/Diversion: An Excerpt

SAMUEL R. DELANY

Less Than a Mile from Here

JEWELLE GOMEZ

Two Poems: The Bridge Poem and A Pacifist Becomes Militant and Declares War

KATE RUSHIN

We Have to Fight for Our Political Lives

LINDA VILLAROSA

On Pretentiousness

TONY KUSHNER

Heroes and Saints from Downtown

LUIS ALFARO

Remembrances of a Gay Old Time

EDMUND WHITE

Imagination and the Mockingbird

MINNIE BRUCE PRATT

A House of Difference: Audre Lorde’s Legacy to Lesbian and Gay Writers

CHERYL CLARKE

Keeping Our Queer Souls

NANCY K. BEREANO

Making a Fresh Start: The Challenge of Queer Writers

CRAIG LUCAS

A Menopausal Gentleman: An Excerpt

PEGGY SHAW

Voices from OutWrite

Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Permissions

Index

JULIE R. ENSZER AND ELENA GROSS

Introduction

Between 1990 and 1999, eight national OutWrite conferences convened, first in San Francisco, then in Boston. Initially, OUT/LOOK, the glossy, national gay and lesbian magazine that published from 1988 until 1992, organized these gatherings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer writers, editors, readers, and activists; then when OUT/LOOK ceased, activists from the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation, better known for its leftist journal Gay Community News (GCN), organized OutWrite. OutWrite played a crucial role in defining, expanding, and amplifying LGBTQ literary culture by bringing together many important LGBTQ writers of the 1990s in raucous events highlighted by keynote addresses, plenary sessions, and workshops coupled with late nights of drinking, dancing, hookups, and other forms of literary revelry. The OutWrite conferences helped define a new, queer literary canon and a movement of queer literary production. The speeches, arguments, and ideas from these conferences shaped and continue to shape indelibly the work of LGBTQ writers, and this history provides a touchstone for contemporary LGBTQ writers and activists imagining what the future might hold for our creative, literary, and artistic work.

The first OutWrite conference was at San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill Hotel on March 3 and 4, 1990, less than five months after the 1989 earthquake. Originally, OutWrite was a project of OUT/LOOK magazine. Founded by Jeffrey Escoffier, Kim Klausner, Peter Babcock, Michael Sexton, and Debra Chasnoff, OUT/LOOK was a co-gender publishing project with a commitment to racial diversity; OUT/LOOK editors and activists wanted to bring ideas about LGBTQ life into broader public discussions. The OUT/LOOK editorial board members quickly realized that to fulfill their vision, they needed to meet more writers; Escoffier advocated the idea of a writers’ conference to achieve that goal.¹ A San Francisco–based planning committee with over twenty participants organized the first event. Organizers included Escoffier; writer, editor, and book reviewer Richard Labonté; publishing professional Amy Scholder; and authors both emerging and established, such as Dorothy Allison, Roberto Bedoya, Matias Viegener, Nisa Donnelly, and Alex Chee. Lisa Kahaleole Hall, then a graduate student at the University of California–Berkeley, worked as the conference coordinator. In the program, the planning committee captured the excitement of the moment, noting that the number of books, newspapers and magazines published by and for lesbians and gay men is growing at a furious rate.² Emerging threats tempered optimism, including an increase of attacks on the basis of sexuality, race, and gender.³ Judy Grahn and Allen Ginsberg both addressed these challenges in their plenary speeches. Grahn opened with the provocation If there is a gay or lesbian writer who has never done any organizing, that person is taking a free ride, demanding that gay and lesbian writers organize around issues essential to their lives. From the stage during his address, thirty-five years after the publication of Howl, Ginsberg recited addresses for people to call and object to a proposed Federal Communications Commission regulation limiting speech on the radio based on concerns that children might be listening. At the beginning of a decade that ushered in broad transformations in the United States for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, OutWrite gathered queer creatives for thinking, strategizing, and celebrating.

The 1990s offered significant challenges and threats to LGBTQ people in the United States. Increases in HIV infections and AIDS deaths at the beginning of the decade continued to devastate a community already awash with grief. As of the end of 1989, 69,233 people had died from AIDS, and there were 117,781 reported cases, according to the CDC; over 70,000 of these cases were gay and bisexual men.⁴ Vibrant actions by ACT UP and the Treatment Action Group advocated for effective treatments, reliable vaccines, and optimistically, a cure, but treatments offered only brief glimmers of hope.⁵ As weeks and months wore on, debilitating illnesses continued, and death, with its attendant rituals, engulfed urban queer communities. In addition to the crisis of AIDS, attacks on LGBTQ communities from conservative leaders like U.S. senator Jesse Helms, who also viciously opposed abortion and civil rights, presented dangers to the lesbian and gay community’s freedom of expression, as the 1990 OutWrite program book noted. Existential threats to the community loomed, such as the Supreme Court’s 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision that affirmed state criminalization of sodomy, including oral and anal sex, between consenting adults in private.⁶

Facing these challenges, gay and lesbian activists increased their visibility, clout, and organizing canny. The 1987 March on Washington proved a galvanizing moment, prompting the creation of an array of new community-based projects, organizing initiatives, and actions: gay and lesbian community centers, state-wide political organizations, and community newspapers and magazines, but this work initially yielded few political successes or meaningful allies.⁷ In 1990, the futures and outcomes for the gay and lesbian movement were, at best, uncertain. Even as the decade unfolded, advances like presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s recognition of gay and lesbian people were offset by challenges and compromises like the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue military policy and the sense of betrayal from the Defense of Marriage Act.

In this environment, the first OutWrite conference was an extraordinary success, attracting, according to the New York Native, over 1,200 participants.⁸ In addition to the two keynote addresses, OutWrite 90 featured two plenary sessions, one titled AIDS & the Responsibility of the Writer, moderated by Roberto Bedoya with Essex Hemphill, Pat Califia, Susan Griffin, John Preston, and Sarah Schulman, and the other Lesbian & Gay Literature in the Marketplace, moderated by Amy Scholder and featuring Sasha Alyson, Samuel R. Delany, Barbara Grier, Barbara Wilson, SDiane Bogus, and Michael Denneny. Workshops were packed and included topics such as uncovering histories, science fiction, censorship, magazine publishing, scholarly work, book reviewing, and curating writing groups and classes. During the three days leading up to the conference, Small Press Traffic, A Different Light bookstore, and the Poetry Center of San Francisco organized readings.

Bolstered by the success of the first conference, organizers booked San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill Hotel again for a second conference in 1991, the weekend of March 1–3. Participation jumped to more than 1,900 gay and lesbian writers, editors, publishers, and their readers, according to the Advocate.⁹ Conference attendees had more panels to attend; organizers reported in the program that the sessions almost doubled to fifty-five panels with two hundred and sixty-three panelists, and they highlighted the cultural and racial diversity of the authors and topics represented, including panels on Chicano/a, Native American, Mexican, Jewish and Latin American writing, as well as writing by sexual minorities and bisexuals.¹⁰ In addition to the Persian Gulf War, censorship again was an important theme, particularly reactions to the National Endowment for the Arts restrictions in the wake of the defunding of grants to four performance artists, all with queer content in the work, in June 1990.¹¹

During and after the conference, outrage brewed over one keynote speech. Friday night welcomed conference attendees with four keynote addresses by Edward Albee, Kate Millett, John Rechy, and Paula Gunn Allen. With nearly two thousand attendees, the excitement in the grand ballroom must have been brimming: people abuzz with seeing old friends and whispering with excitement at sightings of queer community celebrities. Unfortunately, we were unable to find audiotapes of this event; these speeches live only in our imaginations and the memories of participants. Reports of Albee’s speech, however, abound. In it, Albee parses the difference between being a writer who is gay and a gay writer, opting for himself to not limit what I write to gay themes. Eschewing the label gay writer upset many in the audience; Albee’s suggestions that white people are a minority and that his identities as a man and as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant also mark him as a minority enraged even more.¹² According to the Advocate, this speech only added luster to an event that symbolizes the rapid growth and increasing excellence of gay and lesbian literature.¹³ OUT/LOOK 14 featured reflections on the event and its controversy by conference coordinator Lisa Kahaleole Hall and OUT/LOOK publisher Jeffrey Escoffier.¹⁴

In 1992, the conference moved from the West Coast to the East Coast and was a shared production between OUT/LOOK and GCN. This partnership increased the volunteer infrastructure, with planning committees in both Boston and San Francisco; Sue Hyde was the program coordinator in 1992. The success of the previous two conferences helped OutWrite grow. The Boston planning committee framed the conference with the 1992 observance of 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance and focused on creating time and space for writers of color.¹⁵ Mariana Romo-Carmona and Dorothy Allison opened the third OutWrite conference with speeches on Friday night, March 20; Melvin Dixon and Allan Gurganus closed the conference on Sunday, March 22. Organizers also noted in the conference program the continued devastation of AIDS: By the time our brochures were printed, two writers we had hoped to invite had died of AIDS, and others were too ill to plan a trip to Boston.¹⁶ In 1992, the organizing committee initiated two new elements of the conference. Book publicist Michele Karlsberg organized the OUTSPOKEN Literary Series, reading sessions by writers, that happened throughout the weekend. This OUTSPOKEN Literary Series continued through the end of the decade. The organizing committee also added public conversations to the program, where two noted authors will spend 90 minutes talking with each other.¹⁷ Public conversations held throughout the conference in 1992 included Melvin Dixon and John Preston, Richard Howard and Michael Cunningham, Kate Clinton and Jewelle Gomez, and Larry Kramer and Sarah Schulman. Over the next five years, these conversations became both cherished spaces at the conferences and some of their most memorable moments.

While it appears that there was an exhibit hall at the second conference in San Francisco, attention to the exhibit hall at the third conference grew, signaling both the increase in the size of the conference and also the increase in marketing to gay and lesbian readers.¹⁸ In 1992, the exhibit hall at the host hotel, the Park Plaza in Boston, featured a number of gay and lesbian organizations, including the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and National Writers Union, Boston Local, Gay/Lesbian Caucus; publications like RFD, Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, and the Women’s Review of Books; and a handful of mainstream presses, including Penguin USA, Temple University Press, and Routledge, Chapman & Hall. In an article for the Nation, Jan Clausen and Andrea Freud Loewenstein provide a rich portrait of OutWrite 92, including its significance to contemporary writers. A series of snapshots from the conference, printed in italics, capture Melvin Dixon’s keynote speech, a panel on humor, and the roll call of names of people who had died from AIDS, among other poignant moments. Clausen and Loewenstein note that for the gay and lesbian community, knowledge of the facts of historical erasure and all-too-current censorship battles is palpable and leaves writers knowing that the integrity of words on the page must be backed by heroic efforts to insure their place in the world. For conference attendees, OutWrite was a space about the survival of the institutions that support writers and writing.¹⁹

OutWrite 92 was not without controversy. Activists objected to an award named after the iconic Black gay writer Joseph Beam, who died in 1988 from complications of AIDS. Writing for the Black gay journal BLK, L. Lloyd Jordan explains that Sasha Alyson’s idea was to give an award for the book of 1991 which most successfully broke new ground or reflected a fresh approach to lesbian or gay subject matter. The objective was to encourage new talent or to prod old talent into new daring, even at the risk of being too raw to secure more conventional awards for aesthetic excellence.²⁰ The award was for $1,000, funded by Alyson, then the owner of one of the largest gay and lesbian book publishers. Alyson approached Beam’s mother for permission to name the award after him, but she denied the request—partly, according to Kevin Mumford, because of strained relations with the press.²¹ Alyson then asked the OUT/LOOK Foundation to administer the award, which it did, and the award proceeded using Beam’s name. A committee, including one African American judge, selected finalists for the award on a short timeline in advance of OutWrite. Ultimately, when the finalists were announced, none were African American; one was Chicana. With the leadership of Jacquie Bishop of Mama Doesn’t Know Productions and poet Essex Hemphill, Black writers and their allies met during the conference to discuss concerns about the award.²² Clausen and Loewenstein report, It quickly became clear that the awards ceremony would not take place, and the course shifted from what Bishop characterized as a too-familiar if inevitable ‘reactive mode’ to energetic plans for a new award under black community control.²³ Ultimately, over 250 Black lesbian and gay writers and activists signed a statement objecting to the award, according to Thom Bean in the magazine NYQ.²⁴ Assotto Saint summarizes the incident succinctly: "Sasha Alyson and OUT/LOOK are free to do whatever they wish with their money. Except when it comes to misappropriating a Black gay icon to establish an award under the guise of pretending to do multicultural work."²⁵

Jacquie Bishop and Essex Hemphill at OutWrite 92 (Photo credit: Courtesy of the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation records at the Northeastern University Library’s Archives and Special Collections.)

Clausen and Loewenstein also describe a quieter controversy about the absence of panels dealing with specifically Jewish concerns, the lack of identified Jewish presence in ‘multicultural’ panels and the omission of anti-Semitism as part of the antiracist commitment. They conclude, reflecting on these controversies and Albee’s 1991 speech in concert with the continuing deaths from AIDS, that we are writing with urgency, in whatever time is left to us and that gay and lesbian writers finally understand the stakes, we are writing as though it matters.²⁶ Twenty-five years later, this assessment resonates.

Gay critics from the Right also took aim at OutWrite. In Christopher Street, Bob Satuloff, who did not attend the conference himself, criticized OutWrite as the furthest outpost of self-righteous political correctness in the socio-political-semiotic wilderness that is present-day gay publishing, a jab that must have delighted the organizers at GCN.²⁷

In 1993, OutWrite moved from the spring to the fall and was held on October 8–10, again at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. The previous year, 1992, was a hard one for gay and lesbian publications and for the community more broadly despite the growing clout of organized, vocal, and increasingly political gay and lesbian activists and the ultimate win of presidential candidate Bill Clinton in November 1992, who, though he did not embrace the queer community, acknowledged it with more compassion and humanity than the community had witnessed in the past twelve years of Republican rule. Increasing conservatism throughout the United States, the continued devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and a growing neoliberal economic order in the United States and around the world created a challenging environment for gay and lesbian publications. GCN suspended weekly publication in June 1992; it returned with a special edition for the National March on Washington in June 1993 and planned to use OutWrite and a new issue celebrating the conference to jump-start its regular monthly publication in January 1994. OUT/LOOK ceased publishing in September 1992; thus the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation became the exclusive organizer of OutWrite 93. Community commitment to both publishing and activism, combined with additional financial support from individuals and a growing gay and lesbian philanthropic community, kept the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation solvent through the 1990s.

OutWrite 93 saw additional growth in the size and scope of the conference. The letter from the organizing committee in the program book notes the gay book boom;²⁸ during 1993 and 1994, mainstream publishing houses released a number of influential gay and lesbian books. Writers and queer activists greeted attention to queer writing from mainstream institutions with both appreciation and skepticism. The organizers of OutWrite ask in the program book, Is this the beginning of a new trend, or a bleep in marketing strategy?²⁹ They also note a gender disparity: many of the independent feminist presses were still operating, but independent gay male presses were not, though there was an emergence of a small and self-published press movement led by African-American men, such as Other Countries and Galiens Press.³⁰ The organizers end their note by asking, Why is this happening now, and what does it mean for lesbian and gay culture?³¹ With an eye toward cultural organizing, Michael Bronski, program coordinator, and the planning committee for OutWrite instituted a new event, the Audre Lorde Memorial Lecture. Lorde died on November 17, 1992. This new lecture, delivered for the first time by Kate Rushin and funded by the Legacy Fund for Lesbian Enrichment, allowed the community to honor Lorde’s work and legacy. As the conference continued to grow and thrive, with new exhibitors and a vibrant array of offerings, the organizers addressed questions of access for the first time in 1993. They designated seating in the plenary sessions and workshops for people with disabilities, announced the availability of interpreting services, and created a Chill Out Room for people who needed a quiet space. At the next conference, in 1995, they provided childcare for participants free of charge.

No conference was held in 1994. Instead, the fifth OutWrite conference happened the weekend of March 3, 1995, at the Park Plaza Hotel, Boston, returning the conference to a spring cycle. Michael Bronski and Judith Katz were programmers for the event. Keynote speeches by Linda Villarosa and Tony Kushner greeted participants of OutWrite 95, as did public conversations between Scott O’Hara and Susie Bright, Dorothy Allison and Bertha Harris, Norman Wong and Kitty Tsui, and Alison Bechdel and Howard Cruse. OutWrite 95 was a vibrant gathering with new program developments, including a special track of programs for young people and a more robust sponsorship program. The magazine wilde, edited by John Fall, from PDA Press, celebrated its debut by cosponsoring OutWrite 95, and demonstrating gay and lesbian print culture’s commitment to activism, Fall invited conference participants to sign a postcard to the Queen of England to be delivered as a part of wilde’s campaign to pardon Oscar Wilde. OutWrite 95 also featured the first poetry slam, underwritten by a new bookstore in Boston, We Think the World of You. Having bookstores and new queer-focused magazines to underwrite elements of the conference was an exciting development. While activists decried the increasing commercialization of queer life, with good reason, businesses seeking gay and lesbian consumers made events like OutWrite possible.³² OutWrite 95 also included a preview of the exhibit Love Makes a Family: Living in Lesbian and Gay Families by writers Peggy Gillespie and Pam Brown and photographer Gigi Kaeser. The exhibit opened in Boston in June 1995 and then toured nationwide; in 1999, the University of Massachusetts Press published a book by the same name. Panels, readings, and workshops continued to proliferate at the conference. The exhibit room bustled with activity. The only glitch was the cancellation of Cherríe Moraga due to illness; she was scheduled to give the Audre Lorde Memorial Lecture. The time slot was filled with a showing of Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson’s film A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde. This film coupled well with the special showing of Marlon Riggs’s final film, Black Is . . . Black Ain’t, as a part of the conference program. OutWrite 95 concluded with a performance by artist Luis Alfaro.³³

OutWrite 96, the sixth national conference, convened on February 23–25 again at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. Michael Bronski and Kanani Kauka were the programmers. The planning committee described OutWrite as fulfilling four functions: first, as a community-based conference with a strong commitment to a progressive, grass-roots political vision; second, as a vital site for queers in the publishing industry to meet, deal, network and do business; third, as an event that creates space where established authors are celebrated and where new authors are discovered; and finally, as a forum for political discussion and a venue for the mainstream publishing marketplace.³⁴ Featuring keynote addresses by Minnie Bruce Pratt and Edmund White, an Audre Lorde Memorial Lecture by Cheryl Clarke, and a closing performance by Craig Hickman, OutWrite 96 continued with the same energy and verve as in previous years. Public conversations in this conference included Michelangelo Signorile and Gabriel Rotello; Christopher Bram and Randall Kenan; Mark Doty and Sarah Van Arsdale; Craig Lucas, Holly Hughes, and Jon Robin Baitz; and Robyn Ochs and Marjorie Garber. An array of readings, panels, and film screenings happened at the conference. PlanetQ, a new online business that was helping to create a new queer cyber-community, sponsored the technology sessions of the conference.³⁵ OutWrite 96 also featured an exhibition—the archival project Public Faces / Private Lives, a project of the Our Boston Heritage Educational Foundation, displayed artifacts from the history of Boston’s lesbian and gay community.³⁶ This exhibition also became a book, Improper Bostonians, published by Beacon Press in 1998. The concatenation of a community-based history project with the OutWrite conference and book publishing opens one window into the many ways OutWrite cultivated and honored LGBTQ history.

Reading at OutWrite 98 (Photo credit: Courtesy of the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation records at the Northeastern University Library’s Archives and Special Collections.)

In 1997, energies and finances at the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation waned. Limited resources and an absence of volunteers made a 1997 conference impossible, but a daylong conference, dubbed OutWrite Lite 97, filled the space. Billed as a day of writing, exploring and challenging our ideas of literature, queerness, and artistry, the conference was held on September 13, 1997, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The conference included nine panels and six workshops and a performance by John Kuntz from his play Freaks. OutWrite Lite announced the next OutWrite conference for February 1998.³⁷

Audience members at OutWrite 98 (Photo credit: Courtesy of the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation records at the Northeastern University Library’s Archives and Special Collections.)

As announced, OutWrite 98 convened at the Boston Sheraton at Copley Place on February 20–22, 1998, with the theme of writing that expresses the full dimension of our experiences. Keynote addresses were scheduled to be given by Pratibha Parmar and Craig Lucas; Parmar could not attend, so conference programmers Lawrence Schimel and Cecilia Tan tapped Nancy Bereano to speak in her place. Jewelle Gomez delivered the Audre Lorde Memorial Lecture, and Peggy Shaw provided the final performance. The usual panoply of workshops, film screenings, and a large dance party filled the weekend schedule.³⁸ The 1998 program reserved rooms for Jewish writers, transgender writers, sex panic, media queers (TV, film, and radio), the queer Left, librarians, writers of color, queer writers under thirty, women and smut, and Massachusetts Orgasmic Bitches.

Recognizing the significance of OutWrite, the Lambda Book Report published a lively debate after the 1998 conference between Phil Willkie, the publisher of the James White Review, and Michael Bronski, a key OutWrite organizer. Willkie decried the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation for using OutWrite to "prop up their long-deceased Gay Community News and described the conference instead as community property, calling for the conference to move out of Boston to find new blood and a new location, both of which will revive us." Bronski disagreed with Willkie, noting that many community institutions are privately owned, including bars, newspapers, and magazines; he argued for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between community and institutions, including exploring the idea