Anne-christine d’Adesky and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore will meet and converse at the intersection of art, memoir, and 90’s activism.

Ac d’Adesky is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who reported on the global AIDS epidemic for New York Native, OUT, The Nation, and The Village Voice. She received the first Award of Courage from amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. She was an early member of ACT UP and cofounder of the Lesbian Avengers. Her books include her 2017 memoir, The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris, Beyond Shock: Charting the Landscape of Sexual Violence in Post-Quake Haiti, Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS, and a novel set in post-Duvalier Haiti, Under the Bone.

Called “a masterpiece” by Michelle Tea, The Pox Lover is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris. In an account that is by turns searing, hectic, and funny, d’Adesky remembers “the poxed generation” of AIDS — their lives, their battles, and their determination to find love and make art in the heartbreaking years before lifesaving protease drugs arrived.

Described as “startlingly bold and provocative” by Howard Zinn, “a cross between Tinkerbell and a honky Malcolm X with a queer agenda” by the Austin Chronicle, and “a gender-fucking tower of pure pulsing purple fabulous” by The Stranger, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of a memoir, The End of San Francisco, winner of a 2014 Lambda Literary Award, and the editor of Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press 2012), an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

Mattilda is a columnist and the reviews editor at the feminist magazine Make/shift. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Time Out New York, Utne Reader, AlterNet, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Bitch, Bookslut, and The Stranger.

Mattilda’s activism has included ACT UP in the early ‘90s, Fed Up Queers in the late ‘90s, Gay Shame, and numerous lesser-known (or even unnamed) groups.