“The Political is Personal: In Conversation with Mark S. King” is set for Tuesday, July 25th, 7:30 to 9:30 pm at Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse (30 West North Avenue, Baltimore). Veteran writer-activists Mark S. King and Anne-christine d’Adesky will talk and take questions. The event is co-sponsored by Red Emma’s and the University of Wisconsin Press.

Mark S. King is an award-winning blogger, author, and HIV/AIDS advocate who has been involved in HIV causes since testing positive in 1985. His writing appears in Baltimore OUTloud and at MyFabulousDisease.com.

Anne-christine d’Adesky is an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker and author of The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris. She was an early member of ACT UP and cofounder of the Lesbian Avengers. Learn more about her at Thepoxlover.com.

“The event will be a dynamic public conversation exploring the history and the current state of the AIDS and LGBTQ movements in the US and globally, including the role and voices of lesbians in the history of AIDS,” say organizers. “The conversation will offer reflection on the resurgence of far-right fascism and challenges for US LGBTQ activists and progressives in this era of Trump, and the role and impact of media and literature as creative resistance.”

“I cannot wait to have this conversation with Anne-christine about her personal, fascinating history, and the largely ignored role of lesbians on the front lines of the AIDS crisis,” said King. The fact that her book, The Pox Lover, is gorgeous and illuminating is all the better. Come join us!”

The Pox Lover is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris by AIDS journalist, lesbian activist, and daughter of French-Haitian elites. Say the publishers, “In an account that is by turns searing, hectic, and funny, Anne-christine d’Adesky remembers ‘the poxed generation’ of AIDS – their lives, battles, and their determination to find love and make art in the heartbreaking years before lifesaving protease drugs arrived.

“D’Adesky takes us through a fast-changing East Village: squatter protests and civil disobedience lead to all-night drag and art-dance parties, the fun-loving Lesbian Avengers organize dyke marches, and the protest group ACT UP stages public funerals. Traveling as a journalist to Paris, an insomniac d’Adesky trolls the Seine, encountering waves of exiles fleeing violence in the Balkans, Haiti, and Rwanda. As the last of the French Nazis stand trial and the new National Front rises in the polls, d’Adesky digs into her aristocratic family’s roots in Vichy France and colonial Haiti. This is a testament with a message for every generation: grab at life and love, connect with others, fight for justice, keep despair at bay, and remember.”

For more info on the event visit Bit.ly/2tu89j1.

Be sure to read King’s Interview with d’Aesky in My Fabulous Disease this issue of Baltimore OUTloud.