Trailer for "Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival."

 

As a teenager fresh from Iowa and deeply closeted, Sean Strub ran a "Senators Only" elevator in the U.S. Capitol, and eventually came out and became deeply enmeshed in national Democratic politics and the nascent LGBT rights movement. 

 

When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 80s, his life was, as he says "hijacked" and he turned to activism to make sense of what was happening in his young life. Initially focused on fundraising, after he was formally diagnosed in 1985 he joined the People With AIDS Coalition/New York and, later, ACT UP/New York where he participated in some of the group's most daring demonstrations. 

 

In 1990, Strub became the first openly HIV positive person to run for the U.S. Congress and later produced the hit play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me and founded the groundbreaking POZ Magazine. His remarkable life has intersected with a fascinating cast of personalities along the way, including Keith Haring, Tennessee Williams, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, Gore Vidal and others.

 

Over the course of the epidemic, he became increasingly enmeshed in the behind-the-scenes politics, complicated personalities and conflicting priorities that continue to define the response to HIV/AIDS. In the mid 90s, he faced his own mortality with a destroyed immune system, a body covered in Kaposi's Sarcoma lesions and a skyrocketing viral load. He was near death when combination therapy was introduced in 1996 and Lazarus-like, he came back to life to continue his vital advocacy.  Body Counts is the story of a truly remarkable life and provides valuable insight into what it means to live a vibrant life in the face of life-threatening illness as well as on the challenges that have yet to be overcome in the battle against HIV.

 

 

Sean Strub's blog

http://www.seanstrub.com/blog/

 

Sean's overview of his memoir

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1A3eXZ142k

 

Sean Strub HIV is not a crime

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB-6blJjbjc

  

Only one question-are you in?

Your host:

Sean Strub is a long-time activist and writer who has been HIV positive for more than 33 years. He is the founder of POZ Magazine, the leading independent global source of information about HIV, and served as its publisher and executive editor from 1994 to 2004.  He presently serves as the executive director of the Sero Project, a network of people with HIV fighting for freedom from stigma and injustice and as treasurer of the U.S. Caucus of PWHA Organizations. He served on the board of directors of the Global Network of People living with HIV/AIDS from 2009 to 2012 and as co-chair of its North American affiliate from 2011 to 2012. He is a popular speaker and is frequently cited in the media as an expert on HIV prevention and treatment policy and the intersection of sex, public health and the law.  He is a recognized global leader in the effort to empower people with HIV to be meaningfully engaged in the response to the epidemic and in combating HIV-related stigma, discrimination and criminalization. Strub was active with the People With AIDS Coalition/New York in the mid 80s, co-chaired the fundraising committee for ACT UP/New York in the late 80s and in 1990 became the first openly HIV positive person to run for the U.S. Congress. He was the producer of David Drake's hit play, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, which has now been performed in more than 20 countries. In 2010, he co-founded the Positive Justice Project and produced the short documentary film, "HIV is Not a Crime," about HIV criminalization in the U.S. He has also been active in environmental protection, historic preservation and community redevelopment efforts in rural Pike County, Pennsylvania, since the late 1990s. He has helped launch cultural festivals, pass an open space preservation bond and in 2007, produced "Nature's Keepers" a documentary film about the conservation and land stewardship history in the region. Strub co-authored, with Steven D. Lydenberg and Alice Tepper Marlin, Rating America's Corporate Conscience, (Addison-Wesley, 1987) and, with Dan Baker and Bill Henning, Cracking The Corporate Closet, (HarperBusiness, 1995) and is the author of Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS & Survival (Scribner, 2014). A native Iowan, Strub attended Georgetown and Columbia Universities.  He and his partner, Xavier Morales, live in Milford, Pennsylvania and New York City.  His new book, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival, will be published by Scribner in January 2014.

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