On Friday August 3rd, the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association named me NLGJA Journalist of the Year 2012. Here I am receiving the award with David Stenberg, Copy Chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, and with the evening’s Master of Ceremonie, CNN Correspondent Miguel Marquez.
Yesterday I was deeply honored to be notified by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association that they are naming me NLGJA Journalist of the Year for 2012. They will present the award to me at the UNTY Convention in Las Vegas on August 3rd, where I will also make a speech. My good friends Chris Geidner and Michael Luongo are recipients of other NLGJA awards.
The award being presented to me is based upon five feature stories I wrote in 2011 for the Village Voice, the New York Times, and Out. They are:
“Diaz Family Values” published in the Village Voice June 22, 2011 (photos: C.S. Muncy)
“Maybe I Do and Maybe I Don’t” published in the Village Voice August 10, 2011 (photos: C.S. Muncy)
“Three Kids, Two Dads, One Uncle” published in Out January 9, 2011
“Paris Is (Still Burning)” published in Out May 22, 2011 (photos: Kevin Amato)
“A Church. A Shelter. Is It Safe?” published in the New York Times November 4, 2011
I am extremely touched to be receiving this award. NLGJA gave some background, along with some very kind words about my writing, in a press release:
NLGJA’s Excellence in Journalism Awards were established in 1993 to foster, recognize and reward excellence in journalism on issues related to the LGBT community. In addition to Journalist of the Year and the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media, awards will be presented for excellence in news writing, feature writing, opinion writing, local television, network television, radio, online, HIV/AIDS and student journalism.
The NLGJA 2012 Journalist of the Year is Steven W. Thrasher, a staff writer for the Village Voice and writer for the New York Times and Out. Whether it is about multigenerational gay families, a homeless shelter for LGBT youth, or a controversial political dynasty involved in New York’s same-sex marriage battles, Thrasher’s work succeeds at being interesting and unexpected. A keen interviewer and beautiful writer, his willingness to move beyond the usual in covering LGBT lives hit its peak this year.
It’s been an exciting couple of weeks. Last week, I went to the White House for the first time. It was an absolutely amazing experience, as I stood next to the Rose Garden heckler, covered the President’s LGBT Pride Month Reception in the East Room, and even signed my name on FDR’s underground pool beneath the briefing center.
I realized, in retrospect, that I had the only decent audio of heckler Neil Munro. It’s rare I have an exclusive, so here it is:
I’ll be playing it on Tuesday, June 19, when I guest host The Michelangelo Signorile Show on SiriusXM OutQ 108.
Last night, I delivered my short story “Fried Chicken and Hog Butchering” at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn during “Two Truths and a Lie.” The live story telling event has people tell stories in front of an audience without notes; some are true and some are lies, and the audience has to guess which are which.
For their tenth show, Two Truths took on “The Ten Commandments,” with each story teller riffing on one of the commandments. Mine was “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and I shared “Fried Chicken and Hog Butchering.” It’s about the time when I gave up vegetarianism and decided that if I wanted to eat meat again, I needed to go to my grandmother’s farm and learn how to butcher animals myself.
Was I lying, or telling the truth? Listen below, and you tell me.
It’s been yet another very full week. I began it by publishing my profile of composer (and East Village Resident) Philip Glass on the cover of The Village Voice (with beautiful artwork by Berlin-based artist Siggi Eggertsson). Then, I followed that up with four articles about Glass on the Voice’s Sound of the City music blog on Glass’s South Park style birthday, the U.S. premiere of his Symphony No. 9, an interview with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, and an interview with dj BC on mashing Glass up with the Beastie Boys and the Fugees.
Also, I cruised by the Voice news blog with reports on same-sex marriage in Washington state and some new numbers out regarding marijuana arrests and the NYPD, and I made my debut on the Voice food blog Fork in the Road with a report on being mistaken for a food safety inspector.
And I still feel behind the ball.
I just got home from finally seeing a movie called Michael Fassbender’s Penis. Shame at the Landmark Cinema. Here are some of my thoughts on Shame Michael Fassbender’s penis.
1. When you go up to the ticket taker, don’t say “Hi, I’d like one ticket to see Michael Fassbender’s penis,” even though every fiber of your being is screaming at you to do so because well, let’s face it, that’s why you’re there. I made the mistake of saying this. (Actually, that’s just a joke. I said, “I’d like one to Shame.” But then I was taken aback when the ticket lady started wanting to talk to me about Murakami’s 1Q84, which I had in my hand.
2. I was surprised at how many straight couples who looked like they were on dates. Still, hallfway through the trailers, someone in the audience yelled, “Hurry up and show us the penis!” (This is not a joke.) Continue reading
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb-EMFb0UKM Today is the day we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was able to observe what would have been his 83rd birthday in two ways that helped me feel connected to his spirit (and to the spirit of the two people who taught me most about what he stood for, my mother and father). First, I wrote a piece at the Voice about how I think MLK would have stood with many of the people we profiled in the list of the “100 Most Powerless New Yorkers.” Later this morning, I had the honor of appearing on the Brian Lehrer Show’s MLK day broadcast on WNYC and talking and power and powerlessness in our city.
Check out my magnum opus at the Village Voice.
I’ve had a busy week at the Voice. I wrote this week’s cover story about Dan Halloran, the conservative Republican New York City councilman from Queens who is also “America’s Top Heathen.” At the Runnin’ Scared blog, I started out posting my brother James Schmitz’s above video of the one percent questioning if “anybody great” every came out of the 99 percent. Then there’s also interviews with a CUNY grad student on getting arrested for protesting tuition hikes, and a World AIDS Day chat with two blind men living with AIDS about losing their former partners to the disease. And, finally, a gay community center moves into a building named for Ruben Diaz!
This week in the Voice I have two pieces that look at a fascinating question posed by the new book Is Marriage for White People? In the paper, I review the book in “All the Single (Black) Ladies,” and on the Runnin Scared’ blog, I have a Q&A with author Ralph Richard Banks.