LGBTQ&A

Martha Shelley talks to poet Audre Lorde in an episode of her radio show, Lesbian Nation. This was originally recorded in 1972 and is a part of Martha's archive at the Lesbian Herstory Archive.

Martha is a pre-Stonewall activist who got her start in the 1960s with the Daughters of Bilitis. Click here to listen to our new sit-down interview with Martha that aired last week.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders...

Martha Shelley began her life as a gay activist before the Stonewall uprising. She talks about joining the Daughters of Bilitis, co-founding the Gay Liberation Front, the first pride march, and her memoir, "We Set The Night On Fire".

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our Substack as a paid Subscriber to help support our work.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+...

Mia Yamamoto talks about her work as a criminal defense attorney, the racism she faced growing up as a Japanese-American after World War II, and coming out as trans later in life.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider subscribing to our Substack in order to help support our work.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. Click here to listen to our interview with Duane Mi...

Bob "Rose" Levine talks about his first trip to Cherry Grove in 1955, being a part of the original drag "Invasion of the Pines" in 1976, and how the AIDS crisis changed Fire Island in the 1980s.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our Substack to help support our work.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. Click here to listen to our inter...

Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about learning that she was Two-Spirit as a kid, her rural upbringing, and the challenges of being an out indigenous lesbian in Thunder Bay, Canada in the 1980s. Ma-Nee is the author of A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder. (Note: This episode discusses domestic violence.)

"Put love in front of you when you get up in the morning and it'll guide you to a beautiful place...

Sandy Stone talks about working with the lesbian separatists of Olivia Records, why the attacks on the trans community today mirror the attacks from the 1970s, and the moment that led her to write "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto"—an essay that became a founding document of trans studies.

You can learn more about Girl Island, the documentary that's in the works about Sandy's life here: girlisl...

Joan Jett Blakk (a.k.a. Terence Alan Smith) talks about her historic 1992 presidential campaign, why the AIDS crisis influenced her run, and what it was like to be an out gay teenager in the '70s. 

"They still ask the same questions that they asked in the '90s. 'Drag queens run for president in America?' I'm like, 'Well, they told us anybody could run for president. Anybody.' So, okay, we'll mak...

Duane Michals has never followed the rules. The pioneering photographer, now 92 years old, says, "Because I didn't learn the photo rules it was very easy for me to abandon them. You're either defined by the medium...well, I redefined the medium."

Duane talks about discovering his love for photography in the 1950s, not looking down on commercial work, his half-century-long relationship with his partner, and why tal...

Hi! We're coming back! On February 27th! And we're continuing our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. I can't wait for you to hear it.

For more info, come check out our Substack.

Do you know an amazing elder and want to hear from them on the show? Come find me on Substack or social media (@jeffmasters1) and let me know. I'd love to hear all about them.

Ok, I'm off to finish editing the first episode. Lo...

When Amy Ray first started playing music with her Indigo Girls bandmate, Emily Saliers, her "head felt like it was going to explode". She remembers thinking, "This is amazing. Not, we sound amazing. But this feels amazing. It was always about, This feels amazing."

They've been playing together for over 35 years now and it's their music that the queer community (and Greta Gerwig in the new Barbie movie) c...

Darcelle XV (Walter Cole), the world's oldest drag queen, died on March 23, 2023. She was 92.

Since 1967, Darcelle has been performing and running the Portland drag venue, Darcelle XV Showplace, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. I had the opportunity to speak with Darcelle and her friend and collaborator, Poison Waters (Kevin Cook) a few weeks before her death.

This is part of our special ser...

Dr. Charles Silverstein died this week at the age of 87. Best known for making the 1973 presentation before the American Psychiatric Association that led to the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s list of mental illnesses, he was also a co-author of the landmark book The Joy of Gay Sex.

More than simply a sex manual with graphic drawings (though there was plenty of that), The Joy of Gay Sex, first ...

Shatzi Weisberger died this week at the age of 92. A lifelong activist, Shatzi was a fixture at marches and protests here in NYC and was affectionately known as The People’s Bubbie. "I was a political lesbian for many years. I just loved being around lesbians...one of my earlier demonstrations was here in New York City and we did a die-in along with other people lying on the ground. And I started to cry because I felt that I was in...

"I totally support the politics of coming out, but at the same time, I'm critical of the assumption that one's identity has to be the major driving force that determines one's politics." 

For the final episode of our season, Angela Davis joins us to talk about how to keep pushing movements forward, why her incarceration was crucial in shaping her political journey, and why we must challenge the notion that there is only one im...

"Prior to Hadestown, I played The Magical Negro. I have no regrets about that. But all the while...and this is going to sound corny, but it's true. All the while I was saying, 'Why doesn't someone cast me for my mind? For my intellect? Am I really just another pretty face?' And it came together in Hadestown."

André De Shields talks about the five decades he's spent working on Broadway, being a long-term survivor of HIV, and arrivin...

Please welcome to the stage, Miss Memory Lane! Colton Haynes talks about the barriers that queer actors still face in Hollywood, why he went back into the closet while acting on hit shows like Teen Wolf and Arrow, and his new memoir, Miss Memory Lane.

LGBTQ&A is hosted by Jeffrey Masters and produced by The Advocate magazine, in partnership with GLAAD. A condensed transcript of each week's interview is posted on The Advocate's ...

Gloria Allen is a legendary figure in Chicago's trans community. The 76-year-old joins us to talk about coming out as trans in the 1960s, why her family's support was so transformational, and the extraordinary impact that her charm school had on LGBTQ+ youth in Chicago. Mama Gloria, a new documentary by Luchina Fisher, is now streaming on PBS.

LGBTQ&A is hosted by Jeffrey Masters and produced by The Advocate magazine, in partne...

The history-making politician shares every inspiring, heartbreaking, and drunken moment that led her to become the first openly trans person to serve in a state legislature in the United States. Danica Roem's new memoir, Burn The Page, is out now. 

Kate Kelly (who you also hear from in the episode) and Danica co-authored this recent piece in Teen Vogue about why the Equal Rights Amendment is a gender-inclusive document, one th...

Janelle Monáe (!!!) joins us to talk about her journey to becoming a queer icon, new music, and her debut book, The Memory Librarian.

“One of the main points that’s super important is about the threat of censorship, memory censorship. Because as we know, memories are essentially our stories that we tell ourselves to survive.”

LGBTQ&A is hosted by Jeffrey Masters and produced by The Advocate magazine, in partnership with GLAAD. ...