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Tell Me About It 2: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions, and Life Stories

St Sukie de la Croix & Owen Keehnen

“The beauty of Tell Me About It 2 lies in its diversity. It’s deeply personal and universally resonant, moving from wild nights in the city to quiet, heartfelt moments of self-discovery. A prime example of the power of sharing our truth.

—Tracy Baim, Windy City Media Group

$17.95

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Released:
May 12, 2019
Pages:
Pages: 256
Formats Available:
Paperback •Ebook
Paperback:
978-1-7341464-0-0
Ebook:
979-8223016-49-6

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Description

The Stories Didn’t Stop

We all have stories — sometimes poignant, sometimes entertaining, and usually quite interesting. As historians of LGBTQ life, St Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen have been recording and collecting the memories, personal experiences, and anecdotes of queer folks for decades. The Tell Me About It series is an extension of their ongoing work. The Tell Me About It series sheds light on the lives, circumstances, and realities of LGBTQ people by sharing personal anecdotes in response to a series of questions. The results are a prime example of the power and the connection that comes from sharing our stories. Like its predecessor, Tell Me About It 2 is full of moving, horrendous, hilarious, and thought-provoking answers from LGBTQ people across the country and around the globe, capturing a variety of experiences while often revealing deeper similarities. Tell Me About It 2 offers glimpses of what makes us different, who we are, what we share, and where we fit in.

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About the Author

St Sukie de la Croix

St Sukie de la Croix has been a social commentator and researcher on Chicago’s LGBT history for three decades. He has published oral-history interviews; lectured; conducted historical tours; documented LGBT life through columns, photographs, humor features, and fiction; and written the book Chicago Whispers (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) on local LGBT history. St Sukie de la Croix, the man the Chicago Sun-Times described as “the gay Studs Terkel,” came to Chicago from his native Bath, England, in 1991. He has had columns in local publications and online news and entertainment sources, including Chicago Free Press, Gay Chicago, Nightlines/Nightspots, Outlines, Blacklines, Windy City Times, and GoPride.com, as well as numerous others outside the city. In 2008, he served as a historical consultant and an on-screen interviewee for the WTTW television documentary “Out & Proud in Chicago.” In 2005 and 2006 he had two of his plays, “A White Light in God’s Choir” and “Two Weeks in a Bus Station with an Iguana,” performed by Chicago’s Irreverence Dance & Theatre Company. A popular and engaging lecturer, he has spoken at a range of venues, from Chubb Insurance to Boeing and from Horizons Gay Youth Services to the Chicago Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. His crowning achievement came in 2012 when the University of Wisconsin published his in-depth, vibrant record of LGBT Chicagoans, Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. With a foreword by noted historian John D’Emilio, the book received glowing reviews and cemented de la Croix’s deserved position as a top-ranking historian and leader. In 2012, de la Croix was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. Two years later he moved to Cathedral City, California, and in 2017 published The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity, a novel set in 1924 Chicago, followed by The Orange Spong and Storytelling at the Vamp Art Café in 2020. In 2018 he published The Memoir of a Groucho Marxist, a work about growing up Gay in Great Britain, and in 2019, Out of the Underground: Homosexuals, the Radical Press and the Rise and Fall of the Gay Liberation Front. Also in 2019 he published St Sukie’s Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures with celebrated illustrator Roy Alton Wald. It was in 2019 that St Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen launched their Tell Me About It Project, which led to the 2019 publication of Tell Me About It, Tell Me About It 2, and in 2020, Tell Me About It 3. In 2020, St Sukie’s latest work of fictionThe Orange Spong and Storytelling at the Vamp-Arts Café, the second book in the popular Spong Series, was published. He is also the author of the popular comic Twilight Manors in Palm Springs, which follows the hysterical adventures of Brian & Stéphane, a retired gay couple. The series includes Twilight Manors in Palm Springs, God’s Waiting Room, and Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Strange Case of Donna Reed’s Missing Wig, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Peculiar Case of the Follies Dancer, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Lady in Gray & The Bessie Mae Diamond, Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Great New Orleans Powder Puff Caper, and Twilight Manors in Palm Springs: The Hunt fo the Hairdo Killer,

Queer historian and writer Owen Keehnen is the author of several fiction and nonfiction titles. His books of LGBT Chicago history include Dugan’s Bistro and the Legend of the Bearded Lady, Man’s Country More Than a Bathhouse, and Gay Chicago Memories 1300 N. Wells. He coauthored, with Tracy Baim, the biographies of three Chicago LGBTQ community legends — Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow, Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria, and Vernita Gray: From Woodstock to the White House. He worked with St. Sukie de la Croix on the Tell Me About It series, a gay-studies trilogy chronicling milestones in LGBTQ lives. Keehnen is the co-founder of the LGBTQ history/education organization, the Legacy Project and was on the founding committee for AIDS Garden Chicago. He was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2011. He lives in Chicago with his husband, Carl, and their dogs, Vince and Daisy.

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“The beauty of Tell Me About It 2 lies in its diversity. It’s deeply personal and universally resonant, moving from wild nights in the city to quiet, heartfelt moments of self-discovery. A prime example of the power of sharing our truth”

—Tracy Baim, Windy City Media Group

With this second collection, Sukie and Owen have proven that the first volume wasn’t just a lucky strike—it was the start of a profoundly important tradition. These stories are the bedrock of our history, told by the people who lived it.”