Closets, Combat and Coming Out author Rob Smith will have brief remarks regarding the 11th anniversary of the Iraq War, and he will read from his new memoir. Signing and a Q&A afterwards. This event will be filmed for an upcoming docuseries. Attendees have the option not to appear on camera.

Rob Smith is an openly gay Iraq war veteran, journalist, lecturer, and LGBT Activist. He served for 5 years in the United States Army as an Infantryman, earning the Army Commendation Medal and Combat Infantry Badge. After graduating with honors from Syracuse University, he became a freelance journalist and opinion writer, with work published at Salon.com, Metro Weekly, The Advocate, CNN.com, and The Huffington Post among many others. In November 2010, he was arrested with 12 other LGBT military veterans and civilian activists at the front gates of the White House while protesting the U.S. Military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) law, which barred open military service by gays and lesbians. In December of that same year, he was an invited guest of President Barack Obama at the ceremony which saw the repeal of the discriminatory law be signed and put into effect.
Rob is a sought after lecturer on LGBT and diversity issues on college campuses and events across the country. He has lectured at Virginia Tech, Vanderbilt University, Hofstra University, Illinois College, and Buena Vista University among many others. In August of 2012, he made his literary debut in the anthology book For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home, which won the 2012 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award and was recently nominated for the 2012 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT anthology. Closets, Combat, and Coming Out: Coming of Age as a Gay Man in the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Army is his first full-length work as a solo author.