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Originally from Savannah, Georgia, Perry Brass grew up, in the nineteen fifties and sixties, in equal parts Southern, Jewish, economically impoverished, and very much gay. To escape the South's violent homophobia, he hitchhiked at age 17 from Savannah to San Francisco--an adventure, he recalls, that was "like Mark Twain with drag queens." As a young man he worked as a male artist's model, on the floor of an aircraft factory, and, in the "Mad Men" period of anything-goes-advertising, in Madison Avenue art departments.
He's published 15 books and been a finalist six times in 3 categories (poetry; gay science fiction and fantasy; spirituality and religion) for Lambda Literary Awards, as well as winning numerous awards for his poetry, plays, fiction, and other writings. His work is unique in that it combines frank depictions of human sexuality, deep spiritual values, political acumen and insight, and often outrageous humor. This has given him a small but devoted readership that doesn't pigeonhole itself or his writing.
He has been involved in the gay rights movement since November of 1969, soon after the Stonewall Rebellion, when he co-edited "Come Out!," the world's first gay liberation newspaper.
Later, in 1972, with two friends he started the Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, still surviving as New York's Callen-Lourde Clinic. In 1984, his play "Night Chills," one of the first plays to deal with the AIDS crisis, won a Jane Chambers International Gay Playwriting Award.
As a poet, Brass's collaborations with composers include the words for the much-performed "All the Way Through Evening," a haunting cycle of five songs evoking the tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, set by the late young Chris DeBlasio; "The Angel Voices of Men" set by Ricky Ian Gordon, commissioned by the Dick Cable Fund for the New York City Gay Men's Chorus which premiered it at Carnegie Hall and featured it on its "Gay Century Songbook" CD; "Three Brass Songs," with famed composer-pianist Fred Hersch; and "The Restless Yearning Towards My Self," with New York City Opera composer Paula Kimper.
He is currently treasurer of the Greater New York Independent Publishers Association, and Co-Director of New York's Rainbow Book Fair, the only book fair and cultural conference in the U.S. solely devoted to the books of LGBT authors and publishers. He directs the publication of books through Belhue Press, an independent gay press.
Perry Brass is an accomplished reader and an internationally recognized voice on gender subjects, gay relationships, and the history and literature of the movement towards glbt equality. He lives in the Riverdale section of "da Bronx" with his partner of 28 years, but can cross bridges to other parts of America without a passport.
