Sean Strub is best known as the founder of POZ magazine and the first openly HIV-positive person to run for Congress.
But his new memoir, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival (Scribner/2014) is a personal account that shows Strub’s experience with AIDS paralleling the evolving politics and policies of the epidemic. Strub details life as a young political junkie in the closeted world of powerful gay men in D.C. The work also reveals the trauma of watching his friends die around him during the heart of the epidemic and his own near-death struggle and recovery. Strub has been a central force in AIDS activism throughout his life through involvement in ACT UP, and is now the director of The Sero Project, a national network of people combating HIV/AIDS stigma and injustice.
Host Frank Stasio talks to Strub about his life, work and reflections on the status of the epidemic today. Strub will be reading from his memoir at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham tonight at 7 p.m.
In his conversation on air, Strub detailed a memorable moment from his career as an activist during one of the most famous ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) demonstrations:
