Owen Keehnen

About Owen

Lambda Award nominated LGBTQ writer and grassroots historian Owen Keehnenʼs books include the novels Young Digby Swank, The Sand Bar, Love Underground, The Matinee Idol, and Doorway Unto Darkness as well as the short horror collection, Night Visitors. Chicago’s gay disco scene of the 1970s/80s was the topic of his queer pop bio, Dugan’s Bistro and the Legend of the Bearded Lady. With Tracy Baim, Keehnen wrote the bios of three Chicago LGBT legends: Chuck Renslow, Jim Flint, and Vernita Gray. Keehnen is the coauthor of the Tell Me About It series with St Sukie de la Croix. Over 100 of his interviews with 1990s LGBTQ activists, artists, and writers are collected in, Weʼre Here, Weʼre Queer. He is the author of the Starz collection, four books of interviews with gay porn stars. He compiled the reference book, the LGBT Book of Days, as well as the revised version. He co-edited the Jon-Henri Damski collection, Nothing Personal: Chronicles of Chicago’s LGBTQ Community 1977-1997. Keehnen is co-founder and senior biographer of the LGBT history/education organization The Legacy Project. He is currently working on collecting the history of the Belmont Rocks, Chicago’s prime queer space from the 1960s-1990s. He is also on the planning committee of AIDS Garden Chicago. He was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2011. 

 

Books by Owen Keehnen Available from Rattling Good Yarns Press