Join David Grundy, the author of Never By Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, for a virtual talk in conversation with Michael Bronski and Julie Enszer.

Please note this event has been rescheduled from 5/16 to 5/23 at 6PM. RSVP on Eventbrite.

—

Providing an unprecedented exploration of key moments in queer literary history, Never By Itself Alone changes our sense of both the American literary and political landscapes from the late 1940s through the 21st century. Grundy presents the first comprehensive history of post-war queer writing in Boston and San Francisco, intertwining analysis of lesbian, gay, and queer writing, and insisting on the link between activism and literature.

The book centers a host of underrepresented writers, especially writers of color and those with gender non-conforming identities, and challenges the Stonewall exceptionalism of queer historiography. Starting with Robert Duncan's 1944 essay, 'The Homosexual in Society', one of the first significant public defenses of homosexuality in the US, Grundy takes the reader through pioneering works by queer voices of the era, including Adrian Stanford's Black and Queer, the first published book by an out, Black gay poet in the US; the Boston collective Fag Rag and their radical reconsideration of family, private property and the State; the Combahee River Collective, whose Black Feminist analysis drew together race, class, and sexuality; the anthology This Bridge Called My Back, in which women of color spoke truth to power, together; and New Narrative writing, which audaciously mixed Marxism, porn and gossip while uniting against the New Right. Linking these works to the context which produced them, Grundy uncovers the communities formed around activism and small press publishing during this era and elevates neglected voices to narrate a history that before now has never been told in its entirety.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Never By Itself Alone is a rigorous and unmatched work of both literary criticism and queer scholarship which underscores the vital importance of radical accounts of race, class, and gender in any queer studies worthy of the name.

—

David Grundy is the author of Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944—Present; A Black Arts Poetry Machine: Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets (Bloomsbury, 2019); and co-editor with Lauri Scheyer of Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton (Wesleyan University Press, 2023). Formerly a Teaching Associate at the University of Cambridge and a British Academy Fellow at the University of Warwick, he is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin.

—

This event is free and open to the public. 

RSVP on Eventbrite, link to the Zoom will be sent out the day of the event. Email info@historyproject.org with any questions. For security purposes, Zoom meetings require an authenticated Zoom account, so please be sure to register with Zoom prior to the event.

Any donations made support The History Project's mission to document, preserve, and share LGBTQ history. Thank you for your support!