6: Sarah Schulman

In this episode of Q+A, GCN’s Queer and Alternative podcast, we meet the legendary American novelist, historian, playwright, and early chronicler of the AIDS crisis, Sarah Schulman. The author of 11 novels, six non-fiction books, and two plays, as an activist and organiser, Schulman joined ACT UP in 1987. She co-founded the Lesbian Avengers, was a key organiser for the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation's efforts to march in the New York Saint Patrick's Day Parade; and with Jim Hubbard created the ACT UP Oral History Project.

“I’m super jet-lagged but maybe that will make me freer,” Sarah says as she sits down in our podcast studio with GCN editor, Brian Finnegan, to discuss (among a lot of other things) how coming from a holocaust family fused her love of writing and passion for activism together, the problem with religious fundamentalism in Trump’s America, activism in the age of the hashtag and the t-shirt, the growing criminalisation of HIV positive people across the world, and the possibility that her 30 year-old her lesbian detective novel, After Dolores may become a movie. 

Music by Will St Leger and Faune