Today in Writing History August 8, 1951: Writer Randy Shilts was born. Shilts was a reporter for “The Advocate,” the “San Francisco Chronicle,” as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the early 1980s, he was the first openly-gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. His first book was a biography of LGBT activist Harvey Milk, "The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”
His second book, “And the Band Played On” (1987), chronicled the history of the AIDS epidemic. His last book, “Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf,” (1993) examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military. He died of AIDS in 1994 at the age of 42.

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I guess I should post a few details now that Twitter seems to be dying.

About me: I teach part time in a number of health and human service-oriented grad programs. I’m also a pretty damn good professional grant writer.

But I’ve spent most of the past ten years researching and writing what will be the first mass market biography of #RandyShilts , the pioneering, controversial gay journalist who wrote The Mayor of Castro Street, And the Band Played On, and Conduct Unbecoming.