I’m over the moon that Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma have finally brought his words―in all their vitality, humor, earnestness, heartache, sexiness, fierceness and unflinching honesty―to an audience that is sure to appreciate them as much as I (and they) clearly do.

I never met Lou in the flesh, but for nearly 30 years he’s occupied a huge place in my life, both as a fellow trans person as well as an historian of LGBTQ+ experience and a theorist of gender, and I have been gratified to see how many other people similarly have been inspired by the life Lou led and the legacy he left. Words cannot adequately express how excited (excited!) I am that Lou Sullivan’s journals are finally being published. ‘My Own Interpretation of Happiness’: An Introduction to the Journals of Lou Sullivan He lives and works in Philadelphia and is the author of BLACK DOG DRINKING FROM AN OUTDOOR POOL (forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). In 2015, Ozma received a BFA in Community Arts from California College of the Arts in Oakland. Zach Ozma is a poet, potter, and social practice artist. His short films have screened at San Francisco Transgender Film Festival and Trans Stellar Film Festival. He holds a BA in Visual and Critical Studies from Mills College. Sullivan left 8.4 cubic feet of archival material from his life and studies to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, of which he was a founding member.Įllis Martin works with digital derivatives in the interstice of art and archive.

The first publicly gay trans man to medically transition, Lou meticulously journaled his experiences (romantic, lascivious, challenging, quotidian, poetic, political). Sullivan began writing his life in diaries as an adolescent and continued until his death from AIDS complications. San Francisco, 1991) was a writer, activist, typesetter, trans historian and ground breaking queer activist.

We both laughed in pleasure