Song of Myself is the story of Daniel Dell Blake, a gay man navigating his way through a tumultuous twentieth-century America. In a world in which being gay is without social or legal status or even recognition, his rites of passage, of embracing his identity, garnering self-respect, and living with irrepressible creativity, will resonate for readers confronting today’s culture wars. Early on in this odyssey of self-discovery, Daniel is a given a gift of inspiration and guidance that will chart the course of his life: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, the Great Gay Poet of America, Democracy, Spirituality and The Body.

This event will take place in person at The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011. Room to be announced

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

youtube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.

All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

Arnie Kantrowitz (1940-2022) leaves behind a legacy as a true pioneer, sage and champion of the gay rights movement. He is the author of the gay classic, Under The Rainbow: Growing Up Gay; of a monograph, Walt Whitman; and was a notable writer and figure in gay and mainstream media. He became vice president of Gay Activists Alliance in 1970 and was a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in 1985. He introduced one of the earliest gay studies courses and in 1999 became chair of the English department at the College of Staten Island CUNY, where he was a longstanding and beloved professor of English. He is survived by Larry Mass, his life partner of 40 years.

Bill Goldstein reviews books and interviews authors for NBC’s Weekend Today in New York, and was the founding editor of The New York Times books website. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Goldstein received a PhD in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is writing a biography of Larry Kramer, to be published by Crown, and worked on the book as a 2019-2020 fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library. His book, The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year that Changed Literature, was published in 2017. Bill Goldstein is a co-recipient of this year’s CUNY Graduate Center Alumni Achievement Award.

Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., is a co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and was the first to write about AIDS in the press. In 2019 he was awarded GMHC’s Founders Activism Award. He is the author of Homosexuality and Sexuality: Dialogues of the Sexual Revolution, Volume 1, and Homosexuality as Behavior and Identity: Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution, Volume 2. He is the author/editor of an anthology, We Must Love One Another Or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer. He is the author of a memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America; of the sequel to that memoir, On the Future of Wagnerism: Art, Intoxication, Addiction, Codependence and Recovery, and the forthcoming Wayfaring With Ned Rorem: A Nonfiction Novella. They form a trilogy Mass has designated as his Jewish Wagnerism Series. Mass has written widely on medicine, health and culture for mainstream and specialist publications.  A recently retired physician specializing in addiction medicine, Mass resides in New York City and South Florida.