Talk: Bill Goldstein on Larry Kramer and AIDS Activism

Join the New York City AIDS Memorial and The Village Trip on Wednesday, September 22 at 6 PM for a talk on the early years of Larry Kramer’s AIDS activism on-site at the New York City AIDS Memorial at Greenwich Avenue & West 12th Street.

“It’s Difficult to Write This Without Sounding Alarmist…” The quote comes from the start of Larry Kramer’s first article on AIDS, “A Personal Appeal” published in August 1981 in the New York Native. This year marks the 40th anniversary of those first reports of the disease that became known as AIDS. Bill Goldstein, who is writing a biography of the activist and playwright, will discuss Kramer’s early calls to community activism that summer and fall, drawing largely on Kramer’s unpublished letters and journals.

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.

The Village Trip is a celebration of the history and heritage of Greenwich Village taking place from September 18-26 and venues across the Village.

Bill Goldstein photograph courtesy of Bill Hayes