OUTSpoken is a project that was originally named “OUTLoud: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers.” Launched in 2013 through Kickstarter, it has the simple but important purpose of “telling our stories” and “saving our history.”
Hilary Sloin, the winner of the 2014 Barbara Gittings Literature Award from the ALA, was recently interviewed for the site. She describes growing up a tom boy despite a mother who was determined that she look “feminine,” and knowing that was always gay but being amazed to get to college and discover that lesbians were “regular-looking.” She details her years as an activist, for Clinic Defense and during the early years of AIDS, the disease that took her best friend. And she also talks about her novel Art on Fire, and reads an extract from it.
Watch the entire interview, a half-hour long, here.
