Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers (University of North Carolina Press, April 2014) explores how sexuality and gender overlap in the sprawling steel mills of Northwest Indiana. Drawing from extensive, detailed oral histories taken of a previously silent and invisible population, it investigates how gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers interact with their co-workers, communities and families in the context of their physically demanding, risky work. It explains how and why basic steel mills are inhospitable, even dangerous to queers, and demonstrates that we can’t understand what it means to be GLBT without including working-class, blue-collar voices and stories.

Anne Balay has taught English and Gender Studies in Chicago, and in Gary, Indiana, where she did most of the interviews that led to her book.