Outright Speakers & Talent Bureau [Best Selling Authors]

Eric Marcus is one of the best known gay journalists and authors in the country. He co-authored Greg Louganis' biography Breaking the Surface. His other well known titles include: Is it a Choice?: Answers to 300 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Gays and Lesbians, Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945 to 1990, an Oral History, and The Male Couple's Guide. Eric's presentation strips away ancient myths and misconceptions in a clear common sense way about gay people and what they want. He also has developed a coming out presentation entitled "Secrets: Why We Keep Them and How They Hurt Us". Eric is currently working on a new book The Gay and Lesbian Almanac.

Can DNA make you gay? Dean Hamer has the answer. As the top researcher in biological effects of DNA on sexuality for the National Institutes of Health, Dean has discovered a gene that links DNA to sexual orientation. The publication of Hamer's research and theories on biological vs. sociological determinants to sexual orientation is his book, Science of Desire: The Search for the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior. This powerful and tantalizing work has stirred debate in both scientific and legal communities around the country. His presentation clearly demonstrates for his audience the biological causes of homosexuality and explains the ramifications of his work upon society

Author of eight novels and an award-winning playwright and non-fiction writer, Sarah Schulman has spent as much time over the last twenty years writing about gay rights as she has fighting for them. In her novels After Delores, People in Trouble, Shimmer, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America, and Rat Bohemia, Sarah not only chronicles a community plagued by AIDS, but how society responds from the levels of the individual, family, corporate, and as a whole. A longtime member of ACT UP and a founding member of the direct action group Lesbian Avengers, Sarah is one of the country's best cultural critics and novelists, and what she has to say needs to be heard.

Michelangelo Signorile was dubbed by Time magazine as the man who invented "outing" in his column for the now defunct magazine Outweek. In his new book Outing Yourself: How to Come Out to Your Family, Friends, and Coworkers, he offers step by step tips on coming out. In his previous book, Queer In America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power, he examines three closets that keep gays invisible: the media in New York, politics in Washington, and entertainment in Hollywood. Michelangelo is also a monthly feature writer for the national magazine publication OUT. His work, which range from essays on rural life in gay America to a dissection of violence in the community is a touchstone for a new generation of gays and lesbians and a clarion call for mainstream America.

What is history's first love poem? Why do men have nipples? How did drag come to mean cross dressing? Has there ever been a gay pope? How long have people been giving the finger? Don't know? Charles Panati does. Author of Sexy Origins and Intimate Things: The Rites and Rituals of Straights, Gays, Bis, Drags, Trans, and Others, from the lascivious to the romantic, from myth to scientific, Charles' engaging presentation of little known facts about sex is both informative and endlessly entertaining. Using his skills as former Science editor of Newsweek and also the author of Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things Charles takes an audience on an exploration of facts that is as much provocative and stimulating as it is subject matter.

Author of the most popular and celebrated gay love story of all time, Patricia Nell Warren's novel, The Front Runner has sold over ten million copies and has been translated into eight languages. Written in 1974, it is the story of a tough closeted conservative college track coach and a brilliant young runner who is "out". When they fall in love they enter a race against hate and prejudice that takes them all the way to the Olympics. Patricia is one of the creators of the gay literary movement. She has written a sequel to The Front Runner as well as other works and is currently a Commissioner of Education for the Los Angeles School District. Patricia is a well respected activist who focuses on the issues confronting gay youth and the increase of censorship in our society.

Keith Boykin, author of One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America, is one of the nation's foremost commentators on issues of race and sexual orientation. A graduate of Harvard Law School, as Special assistant to President Bill Clinton, Keith was the highest ranking openly gay person to be appointed to the White House. Afterwards, Keith served for three years as Executive Director of the Nation Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum where he was the lead advocate on the interests of black lesbians and gay man nationwide. At thirty-five years old, Keith is a role model to young people everywhere as to what one can accomplish, straight or gay, people of color or not. In his presentation, Keith examines the issues of race and their impact upon sexual orientation. He opens eyes wide as to the perceptions of discrimination and prejudice on multi-levels and teaches that the river we all face as Americans is prejudice, against whose current we must defend our ideals of equality.

Kate Bornstein is a transgendered author, playwright, and performance artist. Her books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of us and My Gender Workbook are currently being used in over 120 colleges. Quite simply, Kate wants people to think of gender as more than simply "male and female". She believes that gender is a rainbow spectrum and everybody is free the explore it at will. Her performance piece Gender Outlaw is a highly entertaining and powerfully compassionate mix of dramatic monologues, slam poetry, and gently interactive lecture that can be tailored designed to take any audience on an explorative journey of gender roles, sexuality, and societal perspectives that shape the individual and challenge one to have the courage to freely be themselves. Kate also performs with her partner, Barbara Carrellas in Two Tall Blondes Do Sex, Death, & Gender exploring the relationship between gender identity, sex, and sexuality.

Let's watch TV! Media historian Steven Capsuto brings you the history of queer images in American television, interspersing a well-researched lecture with 50 minutes of video clips. How did America see gay people in the 1950s? The 1970s? The 1990s? Trace the path from Bob Hope's "fairy" jokes to today's reality TV, ER and Queer as Folk. Capsuto, the former director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Archives of Philadelphia, is the author of Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images in Radio and Television. The book was a semifinalist for the American Library Association's 2001 GLBT Book Award. For more than a decade, he has presented these video-illustrated lectures at colleges, community meetings and film festivals in the U.S. and abroad.

Gail Hand is a professional speaker, author and humorist. Since Gail started her stand-up career in 1989 in San Francisco, she's toured over 100 Universities & Colleges in the U.S. & Canada, with a humorous look on Coming-Out as well as an upbeat, fun filled diversity training for Residence Life, Orientations & Staff. Gail has performed a one-woman show "Lottie's Legacy" for several years, inspired by her larger than life small Bronx matriarch, Grandma Lottie Hand. In her new book: The Power of Laughter: Seven Secrets to Living and Laughing in a Stressful World, Gail shares her humor with the world on using laughter to deal with stressful situations offering her antics on living in a body cast for a year while in high school. Gail's programs are humorous, and offer a compelling look at overcoming adversity with a smile. Great for comedy shows, keynotes or dynamite diversity training's, Gail is sure to leave your campus laughing and thinking about celebrating our differences!!

Annie Sprinkle Ph.D. is the gay/straight/bisexual prostitute/porn star turned performance artist/sexologist. Having earned her Ph.D., she has passionately researched and explored sexuality in all of its glorious and inglorious forms for thirty years, and has shared her findings all along the way through producing and starring in her own unique brand of sex films, photographic work, teaching workshops, and college lectures. She is also an internationally acclaimed performance artist who tours one woman shows about her life in sex. Annie has championed sex worker rights and health care. She was one of the pivotal players in the 80’s "sex positive feminist movement". Her autobiography, Post Porn Modernist is a cult classic and her last book, Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance, won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award.

Bob Smith is the author of the best-selling books Openly Bob, winner of the 1998 Lambda Literary Award and Way To Go Smith. He is the first openly gay comedian to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, appear on Politically Incorrect with Bill Mahr, as well as to star in his own HBO Comedy Special. Bob has written for The Advocate, OUT, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He has also written for the MTV Video Awards, among numerous other shows for television such as Mad-TV. Bob sets out not to only to make us laugh, but to make us feel. He offers insight into his own life and the world around him -- family, relationships, and problems that we all can relate to.

Billy Bean solidified his role as a major-league base ball player even as he grappled with a secret that made hitting a Roger Clemens fastball look easy: he was a gay man in a brutally anti-gay world. Ultimately, Billy faced an agonizing choice between continuing to play, in secrecy and solitude, the game he loved and the honesty of a loving relationship. In the prime of his career, Billy walked away from baseball in 1996, in part, because of the sudden death of his former partner, and the frustration of holding onto that secret alone. His desire not to let that happen to anyone else pushed him to share his story. In his best selling book Going The Other Way and in his presentation Billy tells his story, that is at times heartbreaking and farcical, to ruminative and uncensored. He is a testament to the power of a single voice, and is the exemplary American tale, in that he points the way toward a more perfect game, one in which all men and women can pursue their dreams free of prejudice and discrimination.

When Sharon Kowalski was hit and paralyzed by a drunk driver ten years ago, it forever changed her own life and that of her life-partner Karen Thompson. Karen was denied guardianship of Sharon and became embroiled in a nine year court battle to live her life with Sharon. Finally, Sharon was brought home and Karen tells her story in the book Why Can't Sharon Come Home? Their unique story has given Karen the ability to speak on a variety of issues ranging from her own specific struggle to "Handicapped By Society: An Anti-Ableism Workshop".

Author of The Gay and Lesbian Parenting Handbook, and a psychologist in New York City, April Martin is known as the "Dr. Spock of the gay community". April herself is a lesbian mother. She and her life partner of twenty years have two children (now teenagers) through alternative insemination. As an advocate for gay and lesbian families, her presentation incorporates her personal experiences and over two decades of clinical work. In her presentation, she examines non-traditional families, and how to teach children about families, sexual identity, and prejudice.

Shane Windmeyer, co-editor of Out on Fraternity Row: Personal Accounts of Being Gay in a College Fraternity speaks candidly about his experience on coming out to his fraternity and how homophobia hurts everyone. Gay or straight, Greek or non-Greek... Shane opens the closet door that traditionally keeps students silent on issues surrounding sexual orientation. He combines humor and his own personal experiences to destroy stereotypes that perpetuate homophobia and sheds light on an often closeted segment of the college Greek community. This interactive, fun, and thought-provoking presentation explores some of the myths about being gay and allows for a greater understanding of sexual orientation among all college students.