 Good evening. I'd like to thank you for coming to the author talk with a award-winning author Rebecca Mackay and While we're at it. Let's also give her a warm congratulations for recently being named a finalist with the Vermont Book Award We are so thrilled to host Rebecca here tonight to talk about her fabulous novel The Great Believers Which is currently on our bestseller table and has been a staff pick Here at the bear pond books by multiple staff members and the book has won multiple awards Including a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction winner of the Stonewall Book Award and Shortlisted for the National Book Award and as I mentioned now the finalists for the Vermont Book Award That's the only one that matters This is an important novel Not only because of its pioneering subject matter healthcare prejudices bias and homophobia The AIDS epidemic art and prestige and cults But because there is much to admire in the style of writing and masterful storytelling Rebecca employs to deliver such complicated and tragic themes You will be instantly transported into this tale into both Chicago and Paris and the threads that pull these two cities and the two main characters together if You haven't read this book already. I urge you to pick up a copy tonight They're at the front counter. It's perfect for a beach read and Rebecca will sign books after the talk The talk will be about an hour beginning with Kelly Arbor from Vermont Cares Then Rebecca will speak and read an excerpt from the great believers Then we will have audience Q&A. You're welcome to ask questions of our author and our speaker Kelly Then we'll do book signing and snacks. We have cookies seltzer and water. I Like to thank Orca media for filming tonight's event And I'd like to let you know that you can sign up for our newsletter to learn about our upcoming events We have Susan Ritz's book launch Hi Susan For a dream to die for This happy book birthday to this book today. It just came out today and the event is next Tuesday Congratulations Susan So we hope to see you all back here in one week for Susan's book launch And then the next week everybody has to come back for Makaya Bay gulfs book launch What kind of full of authors for you tonight Rebecca I don't know how that happens in our amazing little town Rebecca Makai is the author of the borrower the hundred year house Which won the novel of the year award from the Chicago Writers Association and music for wartime Her work has appeared in the best American short stories Harpers and tin house among others. I think one of her biggest fans is Mario here if everybody Mario She lives outside Chicago and in Vermont with her husband and two daughters Kelly Arbor is the testing and education manager at Vermont cares the largest AIDS service organization in the state Vermont cares provides a variety of harm reduction services throughout Vermont including case management for HIV positive people free HIV and hep C testing syringe support services and community and school prevention education Kelly is also a queer and trans person living with HIV and loves bringing the peer-to-peer Elements of change artistry to the work. Please help me welcome Kelly Arbor Hey, everybody. Thanks for being here. It's incredible to see a turnout like this I love bear pond books and it's just awesome to see when art and activism come together When I started reading Rebecca's book, I immediately was like, oh my gosh, I love these people I'm already connected to these characters and for me as somebody who's HIV positive and also an AIDS survivor I was dying of AIDS in 2010 and We know treatments gotten better like treatments gotten way better since 1985 But with that visibility has gone way down and we've stopped talking about HIV and for me that's a real like danger sign and Rebecca's book gives us something to take forward because we're also losing this generation of elders and We've already lost so many of this generation of elders and it's really The trauma and sadness and pain that that generation experienced is still prolifically in our communities and for young people Not to access our elders now and I'm 42. I'm not that young but Seeing that connection and having Story that brings that on I feel like is such an act and a gift of activism by Rebecca to our community And I really really really appreciate Just your voice and the bit the writing was incredible And for me as a as a worker what I see still is the stigma is still there and it's still Dominating all of the transcape. It's keeping people from getting tested It's keeping people from accessing syringe services So they have to reuse needles or share syringes and it's just keeping people at risk and in the dark about really accessing their own risk factors so Books like this are so valuable and cares We do a lot of different stuff through the state and part of what we do is give out thousands and thousands and thousands of barriers So for our lots of condoms, thank you bear pond for letting me do that And Also some brochures and stuff on our services and we we love to serve the community in whatever way that we can and Something that we're constantly doing now is giving out in our can which is an overdose reversal spray So even if you're not currently using we are all in community with people that are using and it's a really great thing Just to have on hand just in case so I just want to note that and thank you so much Actually, I think I'm gonna try to stand up here just so I can see more of you and see the dog because that's very important to me But I'm hoping that Kelly can join our conversation at the end a little bit as well as we do Q&A. It would be really lovely I'm so glad to be here. I've I've been coming to bear pond for years So I live part of the year in Chicago and part of the year in Vermont I live in Leicester, which I've discovered is a town that like 10% of Vermonters know where it is If you've ever driven down Route 7 and passed the giant gorilla That's holding a Volkswagen Beetle on its hand. That's Leicester. It's the one landmark in Leicester So that's where we live part of the year including right now. So I'm so thrilled to be here I'm gonna read a couple of different sections from this book and Then I'm really mostly excited to talk to you and also to pet the dog, but I did that a little bit already Wait a little bit longer So what I'm gonna do I'm gonna read to you from the end of the very first chapter of this book And then I'm gonna read to you from way later in the book But without including a lot of spoilers be very careful about that so The the Great Believer starts in 1985 There is my main character is a guy named Yael Tishman who is a development director for an art gallery outside of Chicago And we're starting at the funeral or actually the memorial service of his first close friend to die of AIDS So the fall of 85 it's November of 85 Just to situate you historically if it's not fresh in your memory the Test for what we now know as HIV had just become available, but was not available everywhere and Some of the biggest health care providers in Chicago were still debating whether they wanted to offer that or not for many reasons, you know, do You find out your negative. Does that cause you to have risk behavior? You found out you're positive do you become suicidal? Do you trust the test? Could the test results be subpoenaed and used against you by a government that did not have your best interest at stake So that's happening Tens of thousands of people died in the US from AIDS and Ronald Reagan still has not said the word AIDS in public And that's basically where we are So Yael's friend who has passed away as Nico This is a memorial service because his lover and friends have not been invited to the actual funeral And they're at the house of a wealthy friend of theirs named Richard and right when this starts we are There's about to be a slide show of Nico's life Yael couldn't bear to join and although he wouldn't be the only one crying. He didn't think he could stay here He backed out of the crowd and took a few steps up Richard stairs watching the heads from above Everyone stared at the slides riveted Nico in running shorts a number pinned to his chest Nico and Terrence leaning against a tree both giving the finger Nico in profile with his orange scarf and black coat a cigarette between his lips There was Yael himself tucked in the crook of Charlie's arm Nico on the other side the year-end paper last December the year-end party last December for Charlie's paper Nico and Nico laughing at Julian and Teddy the Halloween they had dressed as sunny and share Nico opening a present Nico holding a bowl of chocolate ice cream Nico up close teeth shining the last time Yael saw Nico He'd been unconscious with foam some kind of awful white foam oozing suddenly from his mouth and nostrils Terrence had screamed into the hallway for the nurses Had run into a cleaning cart and hurt his knee and the fucking nurses were more concerned about whether Terrence had shed blood Then about what was happening to Nico and Here on the slide was Nico's full beautiful face and it was too much Yael dashed up the rest of the stairs The first bedroom was empty. He closed the door and sat on the bed It was dark out now the sparse street lights of Belden just barely illuminating the walls and floor He put his glass down and lay back to stare at the ceiling and do the slow breathing trick Charlie had taught him All fall he'd been memorizing the list of the gallery's regular donors Tuning out the downstairs noise. He did what he often did at home when he couldn't sleep He named donors starting with a one starting with B Recently he'd found the lists disconcerting had felt a dull gray uneasiness around them He remembered being eight and asking his father who else in the neighborhood was Jewish are the Rothmans Jewish are the Endersen's And his father rubbing his chin saying let's not do that, buddy Historically bad things happen when we make lists of Jews It wasn't till years later that you'll realize this was a hang-up unique to his father his brand of self-loathing But yell had been young and impressionable and maybe that's why the reciting of names chafed Or no, maybe it was this Lately he'd had two parallel mental lists going the donor list and the sick list The people who might donate art or money and the friends who might get sick The big donors the ones whose names you'd never forget and the friends he'd already lost But they weren't close friends the lost ones until tonight They've been acquaintances Friends of friends like Nico's old roommate Jonathan a couple of gallery owners one bartender the bookstore guy There were what six? Six people he knew of people he'd say hi to at a bar people whose middle names He couldn't tell you and maybe not even their last names He'd been to three memorials, but now a new list one close friend Yell and Charlie had gone to an informational meeting last year with a speaker from San Francisco He'd said I know guys who've lost no one groups that haven't been touched But I also know people who've lost 20 friends entire apartment buildings devastated and Yale stupidly desperately had thought maybe he'd fall into that first category It didn't help that through Charlie. He knew practically everyone in Boys Town It didn't help that his friends were all over achievers and that they seemed to be over achieving in this terrible new way as well How would yell forgotten he hated rum they were drinking Cuba Libre is at the party because Nico's park you it always made him moody Dehydrated hot his stomach a mess He found a closet-sized bathroom off this room and sat on the cool toilet head between his knees Okay, he thinks for a while there about a lot of stuff that is important to the book But not to this particular reading so I'm gonna skip it all right And then there was the list of acquaintances already sick Hiding the lesions on their arms, but not their faces coughing horribly growing thin waiting to get worse or Lying in the hospital or flown home to die near their parents to be written up in their local papers was having died of pneumonia Just a few right now, but there was room on that list When Yell finally moved again, it was to cup water from the sink splashed over his face He looked frightful in the mirror rings under his eyes skin gone pale olive His heart felt funny, but then his heart always felt funny The slideshow must be over and if he could look down on the crowd He'd be able to spot Charlie. They could make their escape. They could get a cab even and he could lean on the window He opened the door to the hall and heard a collective silence as if they were all holding their breath listening to someone make a speech Only he couldn't quite hear the speech He looked down, but there was no one in the living room. They'd moved somewhere He came downstairs slowly not wanting to be startled a sudden noise would make him vomit But down in the living room was just the horror of the record spinning past the last song the needle arm retired to the side Beer bottles and kuba libre glasses still half full covered the tables and couch arms The trays of canapes have been left on the dining table Yell thought of a raid some kind of police raid But this was a private residence and they were all adults and nothing much illegal had happened Probably someone had some pot, but come on How long had he been upstairs? Maybe 20 minutes maybe 30 he wondered if he could have fallen asleep on the bed if it was 2 a.m. Now But no not unless his watch had stopped. It was only 545 He was being ridiculous, and they were out in the backyard Places like this head backyards He walked through the empty kitchen through a book lined down There was the door, but it was dead bolted He kept his hand to the glass a striped canopy a heap of dead leaves the moon. No people Yell turned and started shouting hello Richard guys. Hello He went to the front door also bizarrely dead bolted and fumbled till it opened. There was no one on the dark street The foggy ridiculous idea came to him that the world had ended That some apocalypse had swept through and forgotten only him He laughed at himself, but at the same time he saw no bobbing heads in neighbors windows There were lights in the houses opposite, but then the lights were on here, too He hoped for a siren a horn a dog an airplane across the night sky nothing He went back inside and closed the door. He yelled again you guys And he felt now that a trick was being played they might jump out and laugh But this was some memorial wasn't it? It wasn't the 10th grade people weren't always looking for ways to hurt him He found his own reflection in Richard's TV. He was still here still visible on The back of a chair was a blue windbreaker. He recognized as ash or glasses the pockets empty He should leave, but where would he even go? He walked through every room on the ground floor opening every door Pantry coat closet vacuum closet until he was greeted with a wall of cold air and descending cement steps He found the light switch and made his way down Laundry machines boxes to rusty bikes He climbed back up and then all the way to the third floor a study a little weight room some storage And then down to the second again and opened everything We're Nate mahogany bureaus canopy beds a master bedroom all white and green a Diane Arbus print on the wall the one of the boy with the hand grenade a Telephone set next to Richard's bed and yell grabbed it with relief He listened to the tone reassuring and slowly dialed his own number. No answer He needed to hear a voice any human voice and so he got the dial tone back and called information Name and city, please the woman said Hello He wanted to make sure she wasn't a recording This is information, do you know the name of the person you wish to call? Yes, it's Marcus Nico Marcus on North Clark in Chicago He spelled the names. I have an N Marcus on North Clark. Would you like me to connect you? No, no, thank you Stay on the line for the number Y'all hung up He circled the house one more time and went finally to the front door He called to no one. I'm leaving. I'm going and stepped out into the dark Okay, so the world has not ended because there are 300 more pages I Read this once At a writers conference and a very young writer and the audience came up to me afterwards Tremendously excited because she thought I was writing sci-fi and she thought they had all been spirited away by aliens or something else It was very sad to disappoint her Okay, I'm going to read one more medium section in a very short section So I when I was on tour for the hardcover I wasn't reading this section and then most of my paperback tour was this June Which as I hope you know was the 50th anniversary of the original pride of the original Stonewall riot And I have a chapter here about the 1986 Chicago Pride Parade And so I started reading this when I was on the road for the paperback And I really enjoyed reading it. Um The one spoiler in this chapter is that Yale has broken up with his boyfriend Charlie Which if you read 20 pages in will not shock you because Charlie is a piece of work So that's what's happening and I'll fill you in on anything else as we go that you need to know Oh, I know the one thing um He's kind of as a result of his breakup had a falling out with a number of his friends Don't worry about the details, but that's been happening and then In 1986 Harold Washington was the mayor of Chicago. He was the first African-American mayor of a major American city And was actually really sympathetic to LGBTQ causes A lot of people in Chicago would tell you that's because he himself was gay And and closeted and he was really had one of the best mayoral responses To the epidemic and then he died quite suddenly a year later of a heart attack in office And we got Richard daily the second Who eventually came around but needed to be brought around by activism and by specifically the Chicago chapter of act up So there was some rough going for a while There have been some clan activity in the park. I can't remember what even comes up in your oh Asher Glass whose jacket you'll find in the first chapter He just has a burning crush on him that he's never gonna act on and he's mentioned in here. All right So this is the 1986 pride parade By the time he got to Clark the route was packed and the first few floats had gone by He found his way behind people looking for someone he recognized After two blocks he spotted katsu tatami across the street and when a few people ran across behind the anhyzer bush float He crossed here He didn't know the guys katsu was standing with but katsu was always good for a hug an enthusiastic greeting He had to shout in Yale's ear So far so good. You want my soda? He thrust a McDonald's cup at Yale and a thought about germs flashed across Yale's mind But he willfully ignored it. He took a sip and then wished he hadn't warm a flat sugar water a Bunch of Harleys rolled past followed by a lesbian dojo Women kicking and chopping their way down the street dressed in white Miss Gay, Wisconsin Ernest middle-aged women with p-flag signs a huge brass bed pulled by a convertible and occupied by two men making out with tremendous gusto their torso's bare above a thin white sheet My research on the 1986 Chicago pride parade was YouTube-based and it was fabulous You'll ask katsu how he was and katsu said I'm becoming a legal expert He explained shouted that he'd gotten new insurance two years ago in January he was feeling terrible and finally got tested and he had it did y'all know Yeah, son of a bitch He hadn't even told his mom and his goddamn insurance was trying to claim that the virus was a pre-existing condition So they wouldn't have to cover it Even though I got the insurance before the fucking test came out But they're claiming I should have known because three years ago I was treated for thrush one time and that's enough for them to turn me down He needed pentamidine treatments and he need hospital care that wasn't at fucking county where he'd been a couple of times and was yellow Where would it smelled like in there? There was a reason it was free So Asher was helping him apply for social security He had to have before he could get Medicaid because apparently that was how things worked in this stupid country And do you know what I have to prove? Okay, this is insane. We have to prove I'm disabled which I am now because I could work maybe four days a week But the fifth day I get the runs so bad and glued to the bathroom floor This was tenable for his part ten gig at Howard Brown But not for the administrative assistant work that used to pay the bills and supply the useless insurance But the runs aren't a disability category, I guess so Asher's finding me this junior litigator And here's what he has to prove at his hearing he has to show that I can't do any Unskilled sedentary labor in the national economy like the entire nation and the examples they use you want to hear the examples Yale was exhausted just listening to cats you but sure he wanted to hear a Drag queen passed on stilts in an elaborate statue of Liberty costume all green sparkles and gauze. I Shit you not nut sorter. That's not a euphemism by the way bowling ball Polisher also not a euphemism Silverware rapper like sitting there rapping silverware in napkins Everyone wants their spoons handled by a guy with the AIDS runs, right? reefer topper. I don't even know what that means The last one for real is fish hook inspector in Alaska They don't care that I can't get to Alaska and I could never get this job They care that it's a job in the national economy So yeah, my survival now depends on my proving. I can't top weifers Here came a bunch of guys in leather a poster that read bound up with pride Some kind of garden club followed But I'm gonna get in on whatever clinical trials I can and Asher's helping Yale said yeah, Azure. He can sort my nuts whenever he wants. Am I right? Yale felt his face catch fire. Oh, come on. You let him polish your bowling balls Yale attempted a non-committal laugh and here Ridiculously before he could properly recover was Asher's a fc float here was Asher waving like a politician Yale wave, but he didn't catch at your catch Asher's eye Three guys on unicycles came next cutoffs and done in vests a series of alderman and some state senators in Convertibles most looking pained Okay, so I'm gonna skip a little bit. He's hanging out with his friend Teddy a different friend Teddy is a kind of a Little bit tiresome philosophy PhD candidate and they are hanging out in the park afterwards There was no point trying to move till the parade was over and when it finally wise They followed the crowd to the park for the rally Katsu took off and Yale found him alone with Teddy in an endless line for food Well, you'll found himself alone with Teddy in an endless line for food. Yeah, I said, I hope we're still friends. I Was mad at you. Teddy said it was temporary. I was judging you for being judgmental ironic, right? The line lurched and you'll check to make sure the guys behind them were strangers He said I feel like we're caught up in some huge cycle of judgment. We spend our whole lives on learning it and here we are The thing is Teddy said this disease itself feels like a judgment We've all got a little Jesse Helms on our shoulder, right? If you got it from sleeping with a thousand guys, then it's a judgment on your promiscuity If you got it from sleeping with one guy once that's almost worse It's like a judgment on all of us like the act itself is the problem and not the number of times you did it And if you got it because you thought you couldn't it's a judgment on your hubris And if you got it because you knew you could and you didn't care It's a judgment on how much you hate yourself Isn't that why the world loves Ryan White? How could God have it out for some poor kid with a blood disorder, but then people are still being terrible They're judging him just for being sick not even the way he got it Y'all tended to find Teddy mentally draining but this time he was right Way over at the bandstand Mayor Washington had begun to speak as a black man who has suffered discrimination he was saying as part of a race of people who have suffered and Teddy said he's a good one. Yeah, we lucked out Okay, so the very last thing I will read you so if you don't know the book every other chapter And they're much shorter chapters. It's a much finer thread going through the novel is 2015 Paris and Nico whose memorial that was at the beginning his little sister Fiona is in Paris in 2015 You don't need to worry for this reading about why she's there, but she's there And she's staying with that same friend whose house it was in Chicago at the beginning is very Richard He's a photographer and when she first got there. He was trying to show her some photos Of her brother and his friends back in the day, but she wasn't ready to look at them She's alone in the apartment now and she thinks she's ready And the one thing you need to know about Fiona for this is that in her adult life Her job is that she manages a resale shop that benefits aides housing loosely based on a place in Chicago called the Brown Elephant but fictionalized There were probably 20 albums on the shelf a fact Fiona hadn't absorbed that first day rows of black leather brown leather colored canvas When she pulled a thick red album off the shelf that a paper slipped out and landed on the floor Fiona attempted to clutch the album closed before anything else fell, but she dropped the whole thing and now there were papers everywhere Cream colored sheets folded in half Small cards a lavender page with a grainy photo of a man They were funeral bulletins and prayer cards She got on her knees and started stacking them This wasn't a photo album at all She saw when she opened it to an old clipping from out loud Chicago an Obituary of someone who danced with the Alvin Ailey theater Jesus She opened the album at the beginning and tried to slide the papers back into the empty spots a man named Oscar No, and she remembered had died in 1984 a Clipping about katsu tatami from 1986 Here was the bulletin for Terence Robinson. He grows Terence Jonathan Byrd Dwight Sumner there were so impossibly many In her current life, it happened at least once a week that someone would wander into the store And then when they discovered its mission say something like oh I remember that time Fiona had learned to check her temper to push her toes into the floor so her face didn't change I knew someone whose cousin had it. They continue Did you ever see Philadelphia and they'd shake their heads in dismay and how could she answer? They meant well all of them How could she explain that this city was a graveyard that they were walking every day through streets where there had been a Holocaust a mass murder of neglect and Antipathy that when they stepped through a pocket of cold air didn't they understand it was a ghost It was a boy the world had spat out Here in her hand a stack of ghosts All right, I'm gonna stop reading there and I'm gonna go Think of questions to ask I'm gonna tell you something really quickly about the last passage. I read which is that That was inspired in a very kind of lateral way by Most of the research that I did for this book was in-person interviews and archival research I went into and I went into this thinking that I could go to the big Library downtown in Chicago and find the three or four big nonfiction books about AIDS in America's third largest city That might have been you know doctoral dissertations turned into books. I knew they would be boring They did not exist At all there is you There is since I was writing it There's been one graphic memoir like a memoir in comics put up by an AIDS nurse in Chicago about the early 90s That is the only other book about AIDS in Chicago right now So that's problematic Because I've written fiction I've not written on fiction and we really need the nonfiction but So that pushed me really quickly into archival research The Harold Washington Library in Chicago has back issues of the Windy City Times, which is our actual gay weekly I've made up fictional ones for this Starting in 1985, so I read every back issue from 1985 to 1992, which was really interesting And then I did it. I did one-on-one interviews. I talked to doctors nurses lawyers historians archivists activists journalists Survivors everyone I could talk to and at one point I sat down and I was talking to this guy named Bill McMillan He had been really big an act up in Chicago in the 80s in the early 90s Those of you who've read the book or who happen to know Chicago AIDS history for some reason I Was writing late in the book about this major protest that took place in 1990 Against the American Medical Association and the insurance companies had courted in Chicago and At a certain point in this protest there are five guys who get out on this ledge of the county building it's kind of Infiltrated and they get out there and they unfurl this banner that says we demand equal health care now and they're dragged in very violently one by one and One of those guys actually two of those five guys have survived and one of them was the sky bill McMillan who sat down to talk to me and I felt like I was talking to Paul Revere You know, I've been studying this guy and seeing pictures of him and then he's here Just sitting there talking to me in this booth in a restaurant and he brought photo albums Which was amazing because first of all we're talking about a time when not every human has a camera on their body at all moments So photos are kind of a precious thing, but also you don't take a camera into a gay bar in 1987, right? so photos were especially precious to me in this research process and we looked through one photo album and then he opened another and When he opened it, he did not realize this was what it was But it was actually a scrapbook and these funeral bulletins kind of fell out all over the table And then I helped him reorganize them The reason he had so many bulletins crammed in there unorganized is that Although he lived in Chicago Bill was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin And Milwaukee has this uniquely devastating It's story which when I was reading in Milwaukee. I told them and like only two people in the crowd knew Which is that in 1993 I believe there was an outbreak in the water of cryptospority on this horrible bacteria And there are about 68 people who died in Milwaukee in the course of a week And what the news reported was that it was the elderly and those with compromised immunity What it actually was was almost every single one of those people was someone living with HIV the City of Milwaukee lost basically its entire HIV community within the span of a week And he had driven up there for funeral after funeral Got these funeral bulletins and crammed them in and that hadn't really had much cause to open this album since then Because then this were on the upswit by Part of what's been fascinating to me as I have toured and gone to different cities has been The completely different stories and the different responses of different states different cities We don't hear the stories of New York and San Francisco enough but what we do here tends to be New York and San Francisco and You know those those are certain responses I'm sure Vermont has its own, you know specific story Dubuque, Iowa. I was on tour and the last guy in the line She's older guy and he came up. He was like, yeah, I was the infectious diseases specialist here at one of the two hospitals And he treated, you know, if you're a young gay man in the 80s in Dubuque You probably leave and go to Chicago or Minneapolis, but when you get sick you go home And so he treated dozens of men in a vacuum So I've been so interested in those responses of different places and my soap one of one of my many soapboxes as a tour It has been that those stories need to be told while people are still around to can tell those stories So I have rambled for long enough that surely you've thought of questions by now Yeah, thank you It always just takes someone to ask the first question and you can ask it of Kelly or I could ask a question of Kelly. Should we do that? Let's start with that What do you know? I you know, I'm my research for Chicago base. I don't know much about the history of AIDS in Vermont Do you know some things that you could share with us about the response here? Does someone else know that you're pointing at? Yeah In terms of how we've responded as a state to HIV And that's because Vermont is unique and rural and we take care of each other We're one of the few states in the nation that can even consider a future with no HIV infections So we've been sort of working with all the community partners we can think of To expand HIV prevention increase access to free testing and really sort of focus prevention efforts So that we can take the very few cases that we have and we should be proud of that And really drive that toward no new infections when we thought about it. Our vision was wait We don't actually want any new infections And then on top of that Vermont really takes care of people with HIV and everyone in this room should be proud of that, too We have an amazing medication program across the state that helps low-income people and even moderate-income people Access those life-saving new medications. Callie was talking about and it's really impressive Can you speak much to what was going on in the 80s or the early 90s? It was Incredibly grass roots in the beginning. Yeah, and I think we try to sort of cling to that Model because it was so beautiful and caring the stories told to me from the 80s HIV Response here Was just groups of friends and loved ones volunteering in three-hour shifts by the bedside of folks who were dying and And no no paid staff. No no infrastructure. Just sort of a sign-up sheet and taking that time with each other Yeah, and I think that's so beautiful and moving and what I want for everyone. Yeah And actually, you know when it even in Chicago that's basically what was happening, right like the The AIDS unit that I write about a lot is Illinois said Illinois Sonic which was one of the earliest models for an AIDS care unit in the world and it was grass roots is these two doctors who started it I found a hospital, but you know sympathetic and then Local barbers would come in and do haircuts and people who give massages and restaurants that would give food and an Art therapist who would volunteer and these yeah It was that was the way it was happening Even in a major city Dr. Chang is that based on a real person? Okay, yeah, so I Yeah, basically a consolidation. Thank you for asking. I Think it might be my favorite character. There's this very minor characters. It's Dr. Dr. Chang that I have at Illinois Masonic I specifically, you know, I was in conversation with the doctors who started that unit Their nurses the art therapist all these people who've been through that unit and I wanted to find a character who could not be you know Clearly linked to any of them But the the two things that I used to model his character one was that The art therapist told me this he said the thing that always got to him was Watching the contrast between This chaplain who he really didn't like I'm sure there were good chaplains out there He didn't like this one chaplain who apparently would Be walking down the hall looking just fine and then compose herself to look sad before she walked into a room and The doctors and these are the two doctors that I knew that he was talking about who would be Walking around looking devastated and bereft and hopeless But would collect themselves and kind of put their shoulders back and put a smile on before they walked into the room And that was who I wanted Dr. Chin to be and the other stories and this is off the record We're being recorded right? Okay, well then in that case I will say That the incident with the oxygen tank that is near the end of the novel Might or might not be based on something that a real doctor might or might not have done So But that was that was it and I also I found I kind of chose a name for him And then I went to the doctors, you know, Dr. David Moore and Dr. David Blatt who are now married their partners at the time And I said, you know, was there anyone in Dr. Cheng or Cheng or anything close to no I was like, was there any Chinese American doctor like no And I was like, you know, I kind of was sure that it couldn't be, you know, linked to anyone and that became my doctor Thank you for asking. Yes You know only 20 So one question is how long did it take you to write this book the other thing I want to mention is I read the bar or after this one Which I thought was awesome. I love that book and it also seemed it had another character in there. It seemed like you were tying Yeah Yeah, so okay, so um, you know, I'm not 20 41 but I This book took me about four years all told It's hard to figure out, you know, what do you count as writing time for me There's a lot of kind of stewing on a subject before I start to write and then at the end There's this weird period where it's out of your hands, but then you get edits But then it's out of your hands and then you get copy edits Then it's out of your hands and then you get the proofs and then it's out of your hands Are you writing that year is that count is writing? I don't know but about four years Which was simultaneous writing and research. I was really I didn't do the research and then write or the other way around It was they were kind of simultaneous And then yeah, no, this is my fourth book My first book a novel called the borrower has some sort of similar themes vaguely not about AIDS, but about A young boy has been put into anti-gay therapy by his very religious parents And all that dog is so sweet And Yeah, there's super much stuff in there totally yeah, yeah, and the next novel is set in New Hampshire Which I don't know how I feel about that I Just read across the border But yes, that was the Vermont was already a big part of my life at that point So it was natural to put that into the book. Thank you Yeah Yeah Okay, so I have this theory and this has been as I've Toured, you know, if you guys heard the question, you know, why why what me personally about this this subject Honestly in terms of this book, it started off somewhere else those of you who've read it. It started off with Nora This woman has an artist's model in 1920s Paris I wanted her looking back from the end of her life, which put her in the 80s She's in the art world. So I had the art world in the 80s and I felt like that was an opportunity To write about the AIDS epidemic, which is something I've been interested in for a long time There's my previous book is a short story collection and there's a short story in there about the New York art world in the AIDS epidemic as well I Really feel the more like I talked to other people So I was born in 1978 for those of you who don't do instance attraction and There's something I think about the Period in which I was born the narrow period Where we were and you're it sounds like you're close to my age, right? It was the backdrop to my childhood In the way that the Vietnam War might have been the backdrop to the childhood of some people in the audience it was Everything in the news wasn't enough in the news but for the kids who were paying attention You know, you stay home sick from school and you watch Donahue and that's what's on You know and I Was watching those things and I think we're an adult would have an adults learned sense of dismissal But that's happening to those people over there crises come and go It doesn't affect me and where our teenagers might have been too absorbed in their own lives Younger kids were too young. There's this window where we were just Porous and this was coming at us at a time when you know, however we identified whether we related to these guys Just thought they were great dad. No connection to them at all. It just felt important for me Um, I didn't have a huge connection in my own life My parents lost one colleague my parents were university professors and my mom was very shaken I remember in my childhood by having gone on a road trip to a conference with a close friend who was a colleague and he was feeling a little under the weather and They drove across the country. They drove back and then four days later. She gets a call that he's died and That was I think that you know, she just told me it wasn't you know I didn't know him but I think that was enough for me to kind of go Oh, this is something I need to pay attention to and then you know, I had a child's kind of poor a sense of empathy and So also being our age if you went to a really if you went to a responsible high school He got to high school in the early 90s and all of sex ed was HIV AIDS And You know and all the assemblies and all that you know everything It's me it's one of the lenses through which I have always seen the world and I don't think I'm alone in that generationally It's been really interesting to me being on the road and hearing you know getting Depends where I am because I'll get you know women who are maybe in their 60s coming up and saying I worked in theater in San Francisco I lost all these friends. That's one story I'll get women in their 60s coming up to me saying I was raising my kids in the suburbs and I had no idea And I'll get younger people younger gay men Coming up saying I didn't know when then my older friends told me to read this book and watch this documentary and I'm trying to learn about it But I do think there's something generationally specific. Okay, so you're 42. Do you feel it? Do you want to talk about this a little bit? Do you have any I want to hear what you have to say? Yeah, totally. I mean, I they brought the 8th school to my high school I grew up in rural Maine Runford, Mexico and I remember the 8th school coming to my high school and Ryan White's mother toured through Maine. I mean being in a room with her speaking like Changes who you are but it didn't change my ability to protect myself and Because of the lack of queerness and all of the sex ed Because of the stigma targeted at who we assume is at risk for HIV and being a trans person and like well You're not gay or you're born a girl. It's like there's so many layers of stigma That I still hear the same stuff. It's Unbelievable that I'm hearing the same stuff 30 40 years later and it's really scary Because I don't I want people to have the information. It's almost like we've washed it out and we don't want to remember That's painful. Let's not talk about it. And that's not helping people Like not get HIV like yeah, Vermont's doing great. We have great insurance and stuff But we could really make Stigma be addressed in our peer-to-peer stuff and I see that being our power and I think we do have this power as the generation to Keep talking about it and keep it moving so that it doesn't get washed out And I do feel that like it really was on all of our radars. Even if we're like what the act does that mean? And the two things I would say, you know my high school is incredible and responsible as it was This was very much presented as an equal opportunity So it was the gay thing was very much kind of brushed under the rug Like this is gonna happen among straight virgins somehow which Most of us weren't like they're just gonna pop up Without acknowledging right and that was a lot of when I look back and I learned about act up in Chicago a lot of their activism was about Things like on the CTA the Chicago Transit Authority They finally in the early 90s did a public education campaign with posters Of course, they picture straight couples in these ads and so what act up did is They hung out at one intersection and every time a bus came through they ran onto the bus and tore down the old posters and put up the New posters and then they and then eventually they end up lying down in the street and they got dragged It was a bit. It's kind of amazing the photo drive scene of this And I would say also about We do have survivors among the survivors of the original battle Who I will say I've had the voices of these survivors in my ears for the past five years These voices are what has gotten me through the past five years politically in this country These right these people know how to fight. They know how to fight when they have Everything to lose when they have nothing left to lose. They know how to fight when they're exhausted They know how to fight when they're sick. They know how to fight a losing battle and You know, they so much of what we know about direct action is from act up And it works direct action works That was one of the things that blew my mind because I was going I was going to the women's march and then coming home and writing scenes of protest and Learning that you know that 1990 act up demonstration One of the things they were fighting for was beds for women at Cook County Hospital Specifically that point of time was beds for black women at Cook County Hospital This is the place you'd go if you had no insurance And they had 15 vacant beds, but wouldn't a lot of the beds for women Because of staffing they got out there in the streets 15 women threw mattresses down this intersection and lay down on them and two days later They opened up 15 beds for women at Cook County. It Worked within two days. It actually worked and at a time when I was feeling like, you know, we're out there Shouting and nothing is happening, which I still feel like That was incredible for me to learn to to understand that it it actually matters And it matters most on the local level, you know, it matters when you can get in someone's face It matters when you can embarrass someone on the news And that's what they were doing. They were in in Chicago. They were bringing mayor daily around by getting in The space every day What else? Time for a couple more questions, I think, right? Are we doing I'm looking at you because you look like you might be near a source of time Okay So, I mean, I hear that The largest growing number of AIDS Paces are among black gay men in the south and that that's still so much stigma that they won't go for health and Is what's being done about that and and I guess in Indiana there's a growing number It seems like like you said because it's hidden. It's coming back again Even though there's things like this extremely expensive prep Right It's a very manageable disease if you happen to have excellent health care and insurance And you know 25 of people who have HIV in america right now don't know they have it So they're not getting any education any any health care There's a you know, the people who are most susceptible to it are those Without the education without the resources and we have about 1.1 million americans right now living with HIV 35 million people globally Most of them in africa, which is of course why you're not seeing it on the evening news because you know that if that were europe It would be on the news And the same thing happening here. I think that racism has taken over From where homophobia left off if it ever left off, which it hasn't really Um, and yeah, we're talking largely about black and brown populations in atlanta in dc um, and people without Access to education on this people without access to insurance and the health care that makes this the manageable disease That a lot of people think it is It you would be amazed the number of times i've been at some random cocktail party at a literary festival or something And someone says well, what did you write about and I say About aids and they go isn't it great that it's been cured Yeah, but it hasn't they go. Yeah. No, it has because magic johnson It's happened to me like 15 times in the past year It's staggeringly ignorant. I'm gonna pass this over to you now though Um, I really appreciate you naming racism because for me too when I look at the global epidemic and Sub-saharan africa and southeast asia are much more impacted by aids right now And that's about a lot of other layers And in this country like we do have really great health care and Med coverage. There's no reason That's great. Like there's no reason if somebody has hiv other than access Um, that they can't get connected to medical care. Obviously state-to-state is different and vermont is knocking it out of the park But we're in a new age too. We're undetectable. So somebody that's taking their medication You are suppressing your viral load and you're not going to pass hiv on That is very new that the world is behind the science So there's no Shame and fear that a lot of people were steeped in by medical providers And just the fear of getting tested of what then is my responsibility to my body and my partners If I do now the safest person to have sex with is someone who has hiv and knows it and is taking medication themselves undetectable Versus the general population Of which a certain percentage are positive and don't know it and are taking treatment Totally and we're we're beyond the days of prep being used for those serio discordant couples where like my partner I wouldn't recommend my partner to be on prep because i'm medicating hiv So the risk between me and my partner is not there because of my medication Five ten years ago. We were saying your partner should be on prep too if you're playing with other people It's a different situation, but things are moving really fast with the science But again, what's not moving is all that power between us Like to talk about hiv to get it on people's radar to talk about sex and drugs together Like we're not having these conversations all the time still or we're so misinformed or disinformed or uninformed So I really believe like we have the power to attack stigma in that that's about our assumptions and our beliefs And discrimination is happening. I don't know how many folks know that the red cross Totally discriminates still against gay men giving blood Talk about bringing act up into the streets. They were just doing a huge blood drive in the middle of city hall In burlington literally the day before we were on church street testing which lieutenant governor zuckerman came out for and It's just unreal the disparity of visibility for the work and people's lives Like blood draws are great and people need healthcare Yeah, well and um not to bring everyone down Um our administrator in charge of the country Between christmas and new years of 2017 Fired all the remaining members of the hiv aids advisory council and then pulled out of global aid spending In a way that the The estimate is that probably it's going to result in at least a million preventable deaths um That is At the same time paying all this lip service to if there's something like well, we're gonna end aids by 20 something great um, there's you know, I think Not that mandate on the national level, but they're only briefly only kind of maybe was um this moment where um You know clinton kind of sorda was brought around um It's it's it it people in power Understand that they can ignore this with little effect um You know in a way that 20 years ago they would have they would have faced the music a little bit more if not entirely Um, so we're back to grassroots is what that means. I mean until we can until we can do better In higher offices. We are we are back to grassroots, which the good thing is we know that that can work Um to be a flagrant optimist, which I'm not really But we know that we know that that works. We know that direct action works. We know that grassroots works And in a place like vermont and what I see in chicago, um The the organizations that started, you know out of someone's apartment in the 80s so many of them are still going um this one just to I'll tell you a happy story now because I just mentioned um someone unpleasant so happy a happy story, which is that um Uh, when this book first came out, I was doing a donation campaign That I managed to get all these bookstores to match when we got a lot of money to this one organization this tiny organization in chicago um, there's this woman named lori cannon who She started as an activist because she was a bus driver And she worked for a charter bus company in chicago And chicago house, which was an aides hospice organization Used to hire these charter buses to take Men to movies and stuff and the charter bus company figured out what was happening and we're like, no, no, no We can't do that. So she started stealing the buses at night To take these men to movies because she'd been very become very close to someone And then she became really involved in act up and she was out there. I've seen videos of her getting arrested in the streets She's like this loud awesome woman with like spanky red hair And then eventually she started this organization called open hand, which is mentioned briefly in the great believers. It's um An organization that was bringing groceries and prepared meals to people's homes And at a certain point she turned that into this more of a grocery store food pantry on the north side of chicago for people living with hiv And I had been introduced to her and I asked her if I could talk to her and she goes Yeah, no we can talk I want you to come meet me at the grocery store And you need to come meet me on wednesday because the store is closed on wednesday. So I need to be there And I was like, that doesn't make any sense So I meet her at the closed grocery store on wednesday And she sits down with me and she's like, okay, we're in this little like front seating area and she goes Yeah, so I need to be here because a lot of my boys have dementia Because you know aides related to monsha for those especially been living with it for a long time It's a very real problem and she goes a lot of them had dementia so they don't know that it's wednesday So I need to be here to tell them that it's wednesday and we're closed And sure enough as we sat there like four or five people came in Not knowing that it was wednesday And so she welcomed them in Told them that it was wednesday and they were closed and then gave them food anyway And then sent them away and told them to come back the next day Like this this is who this is who's doing this stuff. This is you know, she's someone who just She was drafted. She feels like there's a higher purpose to her involvement in this She feels like this was just a calling for her that she was chosen that she's a chosen survivor and um, you know, she's going to be there every wednesday forever And um, that you know, those those organizations are around those survivors are around those allies are around Now um, their stories are you know, our ones we need and those organizations are the ones we need to keep supporting because we're not It's not going to come from the top down. Should we do one last question? Is that about is that sound good? Yeah, you had one so, um I've read about two-thirds of your novel and liking it a great deal. I think it's great I'm confused about the title though at two-thirds of the way through. I don't know why it's called You skipped the epigraph No, it's a great way to end Everyone dies. I skip epigraphs The only time I don't skip epigraphs is when I'm listening to an audiobook And they'll start with some great sentences. I'm like, this is quick. It's going to be great. And then it's like that was from Shakespeare And then they want to Like oh never mind. Okay, so here's the deal. Um, when uh, this is actually a great one to end on. Um When I was researching I'm telling the whole thing. You're not alone. All right So, um, I had this idea of writing about this woman who'd been in the artist's world of, you know, 1920s Paris um, I had this idea of the subplot about aides in Chicago and Of course, it turned out to be way easier to find information about the art world of 1920s Paris Books upon books upon books of biographies of artists and it was there for the picking And so that's what I started with as I kind of put out feelers to figure out what I could about 1980s Chicago Um, and I was reading this lovely book called Flappers, Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith MacKrell um And it's six women. It's like, um Isidore Duncan and Zelda Fitzgerald and at some point in this book it has this mention Of F. Scott Fitzgerald talking about his generation and saying we were the great believers And I thought that was so odd um, you know this generation that I was educated to regard as very cynical um and When I looked at the full quote in the full essay it was from which was a posthumously published essay but about his generation It turns out that the quote was very much about um, his generation before world war one These young men who had gone into the war with this sense of sort of american destiny and their own sense of greatness And then they were horrendously disillusioned, right? Um, and I started thinking about the generation specifically of of visual artists of painters who came to paris before world war one Because it was the age of the art academy Sometimes we referred to that group of um artists as like old apari, but um, Modigliani is Soutine Fujita And they were coming to paris from everywhere around the world penniless living in little hovels burning furniture for a warmth and finding chosen family and making art and then World war two and the influenza of 1918 rolled through And decimated that generation largely of its young able-bodied men And it was in the aftermath of that That the american writers we think of Hemingway Fitzgerald, etc Go to paris and that's when Gertrude Stein says to Hemingway. You are all a lost generation And the parallels between that and the AIDS generation of a city like chicago Where people were coming from all over because it was this mecca It was this place where they could come make their art or just live their lives. They weren't all artists, of course They could find chosen family They could find happiness And then the way that epidemic rolled through and then the 20 to 30 years of relative aftermath That we've been living in as much as this is still an ongoing crisis um those parallels Struck me in that moment and I felt like this was where I had my novel And I'll so this is maybe how we'll end I will read you the epigraph of the novel which you have to I know I know, um, it's an italics everyone skips italics. That's the problem But the full quote is we were the great believers I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did And saw death ahead and were reprieved and who now walk the long stormy summer The second the second epigraph is from a contemporary poet From Chicago named Rebecca Hazelton and the quote is the world is a wonder, but the portions are small Um, so those those two things were kind of my guiding light My joke is that I'm trying to trick you into thinking it's a bible study book So that like period Janice would pick it up and then So I'm sure that's like half of you are here and you're the whole time you're like, oh my god get me out of here I thought this is a bible study Not sure Anyway, thank you all so much for coming. Kelly. Thank you so