Editor’s Note: At the Publishing Triangle Awards ceremony on April 17 at the New School in New York City, writer and editor David Groff, a cofounder of the group, received the Michele Karlsberg Leadership Award. Below are excerpts from his speech accepting the award.
THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, a small group of authors and book people came together in the offices of Robert Riger, a Book of the Month Club executive, and Michael Denneny, the trailblazing editor for St. Martin’s Press. It was a terrible time. Our community was under siege from the relentless epidemic of AIDS, with the 1970s Stonewall movement, the feminist movement, and the civil rights movement under constant assault from the cruel regime of Ronald Reagan.
But amid the epidemic and the oppression we faced, what thrived among us was books. Books were the main medium through which we connected with each other, how we built our identities and connections and as lesbian and gay people and bisexual and trans people. Every single one of you here tonight had your identity crystalized and liberated by a queer book.
Our work was urgent. Our resolve then was to come together to support our writers, enlarge the number of our readers, gather for events and parties, undertake these very awards, and maybe get a date, The other people in those early meetings, among them some who are here tonight, included Michele Karlsberg, Michael Denneny, Lew Archibald, Malaga Baldi, Christopher Bram, David Cashion, Jane DeLynn, Carole De Santi, Trent Duffy, Robin Hardy, Stan Leventhal, Ethan Morrden, Roz Parr, Howard Reeves, Robert Riger, Matt Sartwell, Lawrence Schimel, Anna Sequoia, Carrie Smith, Mary South, and Sharon Stonekey.
Tonight we again gather in a time of crisis. We have entered an era that is at least as dire for lgbtq+ people as the late 1980s and early ’90s. An epidemic of hate endangers us all. The virus of fascism threatens our democracy, our climate, our fellow humans who are immigrants or otherwise oppressed, as well as every queer person—as we’ve seen already with attacks on our health care and education, and with the brutal and inhuman offensive against trans rights and the denial of gender-affirming care to minors, with organizations like Transformative Schools, which we honor tonight, routinely menaced. As publishing people in particular, we’ve seen our pride flags furled, and our books banned from libraries across the country, from public schools to the U.S. Naval Academy.
Once again our work is urgent. We will stand up for lgbtq+ words. Let all of us resolve to publish and purchase and protect our books and the people who write, read, sell, and shelve them. Let’s work to make our publishing efforts and literary institutions more economically sustainable. Let’s reinforce our efforts not only on behalf of authors but on behalf of readers, those precious and necessary strangers who so need our solidarity, community, and art.
Let’s all recognize that we are the messengers of vital and ever-evolving ways to live and love—that we are, as the late Felice Picano referred to us, people in history. Let’s agree that we should, as Oliver Radclyffe said in the title of his trans memoir, “frighten the horses.” And let us be emboldened by the words of Audre Lorde: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
In that spirit, let’s embrace the truth that Dorothy Allison imparted last year on this stage: that we have the power to alter the plot, to see our stories as a way out, a way of loving and acting in the world—which is, as Dorothy told us, “a revolutionary transgression.” On the page and in the streets, let us be revolutionary transgressors, together.
David Groff, a writer and independent book editor, teaches poetry and publishing in the MFA Program at the City College of New York.
