Larry Kramer, the writer and tireless gay rights activist whose voice served as rallying cry to wake generations of Americans—both gay and straight—from their complacency in the dawning days of the AIDS epidemic, is to be the subject of a new biography due out from Henry Holt and Co.
Bill Goldstein will write the authorized biography that will include interviews with Kramer as well as his husband David Webster, along with friends, colleagues, and “foes” to capture a private and intimate side of a man whose public persona has loomed large for over 40 years as a founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Act Up.
The untitled book, which has not set a timeline for publication, will draw from Kramer’s archives at Yale University to offer a serious examination of his place as an American writer driven by an innate responsibility to chronicle the history and identity of LGBT people—from his incendiary 1978 novel Faggots to his theatrical call to arms The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me—to his recent publication, The American People, Volume 1: Search for My Heart.