TRAVELS IN A GAY NATION Paperback / softback

This collection of interviews with gay activists and artists is like going to dinner with people you’d love to know but don’t, and Phil Gambone is the perfect stand-in for the reader: impressively prepared, sympathetic, and smart.—Andrew Holleran, author of Grief: A Novel For two years, Philip Gambone traveled the length and breadth of the United States, talking candidly with LGBTQ people about their lives.

In addition to interviews from David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin, Travels in a Gay Nation brings us lesser-known voices—a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and ""drag king,"" a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be lovers, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay frat house, and a pair of Vermont garden designers. In this age when contemporary gay America is still coming under attack, Gambone captures the humanity of each individual.

For some, their identity as a sexual minority is crucial to their life's work; for others, it has been less so, perhaps even irrelevant.

But, whether splashy or quiet, center-stage or behind the scenes, Gambone's subjects have managed—despite facing ignorance, fear, hatred, intolerance, injustice, violence, ridicule, or just plain indifference—to construct passionate, inspiring lives. ""By asking good questions and really listening, Philip Gambone opens an illuminating window into the minds, hearts, and guts of a fabulous array of extraordinary Americans.

At this critical time in America's decades-long movement toward LGBTQ equality, you really shouldn’t miss this view.""—Will Fellows, author of Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest