Jeremy Atherton Lin presents a talk on his award-winning book Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history.

RSVP on Eventbrite, and a 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.

This event is free and open to the public, any donations made support The History Project's mission to document, preserve, and share LGBTQ history. Thank you for your support!

About Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

Strobing lights and dark rooms, drag queens on counters, first kisses, last call; the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression. Now they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: Could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?

Gay Bar time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the wake of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. Jeremy charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the link between place and identity, inviting us to go beyond Stonewall and enter the underground. Elegiac, randy and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember. Purchase the paperback from East End Books in Provincetown (scroll down!).

Gay Bar is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of 2021's best books by the New York Times, NPR, Vogue, and Artforum.

Jeremy Atherton Lin is an Asian-American essayist based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England.