Author Talk with Les K. Wright

Children of Lazarus focuses on the vast, sprawling, still largely unchartered territory of AIDS survivorship. With probing honesty, intelligence and sensitivity, and from vantage points rarely considered with such particularity and nuance, this singular collection canvasses the often tragic yet simultaneously luminous stories of those living with HIV/AIDS. It surveys those with HIV/AIDS themselves, including Wright, their caregivers (those who are poz and those who are not), with an unblinking eye on their experience of social, political and legal bias and indifference, and especially of health care insufficiency and malfeasance. It's a saga of humanity and courage, of surviving and sometimes thriving, though often not, for which the Biblical metaphor of Lazarus could not be more apt. At the same time, it's a singular guide and handbook for understanding and navigating one of history's greatest pandemics. A must for historians, clinicians, sociologists, psychologists, health care providers, writers, readers, and everyone else, it will honor any bookshelf, library or backpack with the heart and humanity to bear it.

WRIGHT, LES K. is a queer historian, writer, photographer, literary scholar, and gay activist. He is a retired professor of English and German. He is a founding member of the GLBT Historical Society San Francisco, founder of the Bear History Project (1994-2005) and the Bear History Project International (2021--). He is co-author and editor of The Bear Book (1997) and The Bear Book II (2000) and author of Resilience: A Polemical Memoir of AIDS, Bears, and F•cking (2023). His writing has appeared in the Gay and Lesbian Review, Drummer, RFD, Bay Area Reporter, Voice Male, Culture Vulture, White Crane Review, Frontiers, The Good Men Project and A Bear’s Life. Bear World Magazine published his bimonthly column “Bear Tracks” (2023-2024). He is currently working on two anthologies: Bear Book III: The Emergence of an International Gay Identity, Community, and Culture and Intimations of Gay Bohemia and Other Essays.