We're Here, We're Queer

by Owen Keehnen

We’re Here We’re Queer contains over 100 interviews with activists, artists, writers, and others who helped lay the groundwork for the current LGBTQ world. Primarily conducted in the 1990s these chats with some of the defining members of the community provide an excellent window onto the world during this tumultuous and pivotal stage of our history. Included in this collection are conversations with Quentin Crisp, Edmund White, Samuel Steward, The Daughters of Bilitis, Harry Hay, Dorothy Allison, Dick Sargent, David Wojnarowicz, E. Lynn Harris, Tommy Tune, Joan Nestle, Holly Woodlawn, RuPaul, Sarah Schulman, Paul Monette, Chuck Renslow, Jerry Herman, Sapphire, Susie Bright, Michael Cunningham, Dennis Cooper, Janis Ian, Pam Tent, Jewelle Gomez, Michelangelo Signorile, George Chauncey, Camille Paglia, Scott Heim, Scott O’Hara, and many more.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer

486 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 2011

About the author

Writer and historian Owen Keehnen has had his fiction, essays, erotica, reviews, columns and interviews appear in dozens of magazines and anthologies worldwide. Keehnen is the author of the humorous gay novel Young Digby Swank (Wilde City Press, 2013), the gay novel The Sand Bar (Lethe Press, 2012) and the horror novel Doorway Unto Darkness (Dancing Moon Press, 2010). He also recently released the reference book The LGBT Book of Days (Wilde City Press, 2013). Along with Tracy Baim, he co-authored Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011) as well as Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). Over 100 of his interviews with various LGBT authors and activists from the 1990s have been collected in the book We’re Here, We’re Queer (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). He recently finished editing For My Brothers, the Mark Abramson memoir about life and love in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He co-edited Nothing Personal: Chronicles of Chicago’s LGBTQ Community 1977–1997 (Firetrap Press, 2009), was a contributor to Gay Press, Gay Power (Prairie Avenue Publications, 2012) and wrote ten biographical essays for the coffee table history book Out and Proud in Chicago (Surrey/Agate, 2008). Keehnen was on the founding committee and executive board of The Legacy Project and is currently a contributing biographer for the LGBT history-education-arts program focused on pride, acceptance, and bringing proper recognition to the courageous lives and contributions in LGBT history. He was the author of the Starz books, a four-volume series of interviews with gay porn stars. He has had two queer monologues adapted for the stage and served as co-editor of the Windy City Times Pride Literary Supplement for several years, was a co-founder of the horror film website RacksAndRazors.com, and a featured poet in Wilde City’s 2013 collection Falling Awake. He lives in Chicago with his partner, Carl, and his two ridiculously spoiled dogs, Flannery and Fitzgerald. He was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2012.