THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL: A Conversation with authors Anne-christine d'Adesky and Michael Goff. They will discuss d'Adesky's memoir, The Pox Lover: An Activist's Decade in New York and Paris.

The Pox Lover is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris by a pioneering American AIDS journalist, lesbian activist, and daughter of French-Haitian elites. In an account that is by turns searing, hectic, and funny, Anne-christine d'Adesky remembers "the poxed generation" of AIDS-their lives, their battles, and their determination to find love and make art in the heartbreaking years before lifesaving protease drugs arrived.

D'Adesky takes us through a fast-changing East Village: squatter protests and civil disobedience lead to all-night drag and art-dance parties, the fun-loving Lesbian Avengers organize dyke marches, and the protest group ACT UP stages public funerals. Traveling as a journalist to Paris, an insomniac d'Adesky trolls the Seine, encountering waves of exiles fleeing violence in the Balkans, Haiti, and Rwanda. As the last of the French Nazis stand trial and the new National Front rises in the polls, d'Adesky digs into her aristocratic family's roots in Vichy France and colonial Haiti. This is a testament with a message for every generation: grab at life and love, connect with others, fight for justice, keep despair at bay, and remember.

Anne-christine d'Adesky is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who reported on the global AIDS epidemic for New York Native, Out Magazine, The Nation Magazine, and The Village Voice. She received the first Award of Courage from amfAR The Foundation for AIDS Research. She was an early member of ACT UP New York and cofounder of the Lesbian Avengers. Her books include "Beyond Shock: Charting the Landscape of Sexual Violence in Post-Quake Haiti", "Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS", and a novel set in post-Duvalier Haiti, "Under the Bone".

Michael Goff is a magazine editor and partner in Towleroad, with Andy Towle, and with AskTell Media Group and other projects since May, 2006. He was a founding Editor of Out magazine and out.com in the 1990s, and built it to become a leading gay title. In 1996 he became editorial director on the team launching Microsoft's Sidewalk city guides (sold to Citysearch), and went on as a General Manager of MSN. Since 2001 he's launched numerous editorial projects, and served as a consultant and advisor to nonprofits and startups, including: a mobile publishing company, serving as the Clinton Foundation AIDS Initiative olunteer Lead in Haiti for a year; launching Bayosphere citizen-journalism effort, with Dan Gilmore; advising (pre-Google) Blogger, Treehugger.com, and NowPublic.com startups.  

There will be a reception after the conversation.