Released: November 5, 2021
6-7:30 p.m. Dec. 1: A book launch and discussion of
Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis
12:15 to 3:30 p.m. Dec. 2: Showing of film United in Anger: A History of Act Up, followed by and discussion with queer author, activist and film co-creator Sarah Schulman
Participants need to pre-register for either event at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AIDS2021
Santa Fe Community College will offer two events that are open to the public via Zoom in recognition of World AIDS Day. The first event is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1 when several contributors to Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis read from the newly released book, followed by a Q&A with the book’s editor and contributing authors. The second event will happen from 12:15 to 3:30 p.m. Dec.2 when there will be the showing of the film: United in Anger: A History of Act Up (2012) followed by Q & A with queer author and scholar Sarah Schulman. Participants need to pre-register at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AIDS2021.
SFCC’s Creative Writing program, SFCC Library, SFCC Foundation, with support from the President’s Diversity Advisory Committee (for the book launch), will present the events to celebrate and learn about HIV/AIDS, and to highlight SFCC scholarships. Through the support of SFCC Foundation and Arsenal Press, the first ten students to submit new scholarship applications on or after World Aids Day will receive a free copy of the book, Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. For questions or assistance, email financialaid@sfcc.edu from your SFCC student email account (include student A number) or call 505-428-1268. The books that are being given away will be housed at the SFCC Library for pickup.
Organizer Emily Stern, Creative Writing faculty member, said, “Both events explore organizing, pandemic living, and make critical and relevant comparisons between COVID-19, HIV, and justice.” For more information about the events, please contact Emily Stern at emily.stern@sfcc.edu or call 505-428-1467.
More about the events:
Event 1: Book Launch: Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis
6 -7:30 p.m., December 1
Zoom, Pre-register at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AIDS2021
Several contributors to Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis read from the newly released book, followed by a Q&A with the authors.
Information on the anthology: Every queer person lives with the trauma of AIDS, and this plays out intergenerationally. Usually, we hear about two generations—the first, coming of age in the era of gay liberation, and then watching entire circles of friends die of a mysterious illness as the government did nothing to intervene. And now we hear about younger people growing up with effective treatment and prevention available, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the loss. But there is another generation between these two, one that came of age in the midst of the epidemic with the belief that desire intrinsically led to death and internalized this trauma as part of becoming queer.
Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis offers crucial stories from this missing generation in AIDS literature and cultural politics. This wide-ranging collection includes 36 personal essays on the ongoing and persistent impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis in queer lives. Here you will find an expansive range of perspectives on a specific generational story—essays that explore and explode conventional wisdom, while also providing a necessary bridge between generations. These essays respond, with eloquence and incisiveness, to the question: How do we reckon with the trauma that continues to this day, and imagine a way out?
The anthology is already being used as a textbook on some campuses. For more information about Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, see recent press about the book.
Contributors who will be reading on December 1:
DAN CULLINANE is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in many anthologies and publications. He worked in LGBTQ publishing for many years before relocating to Northeast Tennessee to work for a wilderness therapy program.
LIAM OCTOBER O’BRIEN grew up on a small island. His writing has appeared in A & U Magazine, the Denver Quarterly, the Boiler, bæst, the Bennington Review, and the New Delta Review. He received his MFA at the Iowa Writer’ Workshop and is one of the founding editors of Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry & Poetics. He lives in Brooklyn.
C.L. SEVERSON is a transfemme poet and sex worker wandering around the country giving lectures on herbalism and astrology. She is the director of Queer Astrology Club (QAC) and loves providing free coursework on all things ancient and magical to queer people of color. Her current obsession is the contemplative art of tattooing.
ANDREW R. SPIELDENNER, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Departments of Communication and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University San Marcos. Dr. Spieldenner’s writing is at the intersection of health and culture, particularly looking at HIV and the LGBTQ community. A longtime HIV activist, Dr. Spieldenner serves as vice-chair of the US People Living with HIV Caucus and North American delegate to UNAIDS.
EMILY STERN is the author of This Is What It Sounds Like, a memoir about her childhood and her mother’s death in 1993 from complications of HIV/AIDS, and the manuscript “The Shape of What Spilled,” about her experience and ongoing recovery from a mild traumatic head injury. She founded Intersectional Consulting and uses original educational tools, including El Corazón Deck, designed to inspire intersectional critical thinking. Emily is full-time faculty at Santa Fe Community College and holds an MFA in creative nonfiction with a critical emphasis on women and AIDS in literature from Goddard College. Find more at emilystern.com.
MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE (mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is the author, most recently, of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Her previous non-fiction title, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her novel Sketchtasy was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018. Sycamore is the author of two non-fiction titles and three novels, as well as the editor of five previous non-fiction anthologies, including Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. She lives in Seattle, and her next book, Touching the Art, will be published by Soft Skull in 2023. Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis is her sixth anthology.
Event 2: Film: United in Anger: A History of Act Up (2012) with Q&A with queer author and scholar Sarah Schulman
12:15 PM-3:30 PM, Dec. 2: Film starts promptly at 12:30 with Q&A to follow
Zoom, Pre-register at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AIDS2021
Community members are invited to a screening United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012), a film by Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman. At 2:30 p.m., following the film, co-creator Sarah Schulman will join us for a Q & A, moderated by Full-Time Creative Writing Faculty Emily Stern.
Speaker bio: Sarah Schulman is the Co-Director of the ACT UP Oral History project and the author of Let the Record Show: The Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1983. She lives in New York, where she is Distinguished Professor of English at City University of New York (College of Staten Island) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.
United In Anger: A History of ACT UP is available for streaming on Kanopy, (https://www.kanopy.com). The study guide to United in Anger: A History of ACT UP is available at https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=si_oers.
The SFCC Library has created an HIV/AIDS Library Guide, with various written, audio, and visual resources available to the public at https://libraryhelp.sfcc.edu/aids.
For more information about the SFCC World AIDS Day events, please contact SFCC World AIDS Day organizer Emily Stern at emily.stern@sfcc.edu or call 505-428-1467.
Santa Fe Community College celebrates its 40th Anniversary as the pathway to success for individuals and the community. SFCC provides affordable, high-quality programs that serve the academic, cultural, and economic needs of the community. The college welcomes over 10,000 students per year in credit, noncredit, workforce training, personal enrichment, and adult programs.
A “Best for Vets” and a “Military Friendly” school.
Visit sfcc.edu or call 505-428-1000.
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