Acknowledgments
Susan Golomb and Scott Cohen at Writers House and Morgan Entrekin and Peter Blackstock at Grove Atlantic all saw something in Christodora and helped me make it a better book. Also at Grove Atlantic, Deb Seager, John Mark Boling, Judy Hottensen, Elisabeth Schmitz, and Becca Putman were a joy to work alongside in putting this book out into the world. Also, Charles Rue Woods and Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich created a beautiful cover.
Several brilliant magazine editors gave me work prior to and while I was writing this book, and I count many of them as friends: Walter Armstrong, Laura Whitehorn, Jennifer Morton, Oriol Gutierrez, Carl Swanson, Jesse Oxfeld, Aileen Gallagher, Jebediah Reed, Noreen Malone, Denny Lee, Aaron Hicklin, Jeffries Blackerby, Jesse Ashlock, Maura Egan, Kai Wright, and Sally Chew.
Christodora is a work of fiction obviously inspired by the history of AIDS activism in America, particularly New York, and in my efforts to cleave to the bones, if not the fine points, of what really happened, I am indebted to the amazing documentaries How to Survive a Plague by David France and United in Anger by Jim Hubbard, as well as Sarah Schulman’s invaluable online ACT UP Oral History Project. And also to more than twenty years of in-depth coverage from the folks at POZ magazine, the closest thing to a work family this freelancer has ever had.
I am so grateful to the generous-hearted Sarah Burnes, an early reader of this book, who told me what to lose, expand on, and modulate. Other first readers were Mark Leydorf, Maria Striar, Jeffrey Golick, and James Hannaham — all members of my beloved urban family, which also includes Clint Ramos and Jason Moff, Cathay Che, Cara Buckley, Stephen Best, John Polly, Christian Del Moral, Mike Ackil, and Diana Scholl. My love and gratitude for all of you are woven into these pages. Thanks as well to Noel Alicea, Michael Alicea, Maggie Malina and Tim Horn for their reads and feedback. And to Nancy Tan for an impeccable copyedit.
In the past twenty years, I have met and interviewed so many people living with and/or fighting against the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, which has colored my entire adult life as an urban gay man. Many of them are no longer alive and many of those who are have had a rough go. Those conversations live in my heart and moved me to write this book, which I hope in part is about what people are capable of, individually and collectively, when pushed to the wall.