In Washington Blade Op-Ed, Randy Boyd Examines the Contradictions of HIV Stigma
The longtime HIV survivor explores the gap between medical progress and lingering prejudice, and how it seeded his new novel.
“If I admit I’m HIV positive, some men immediately reject me,” Randy Boyd writes in “Time Travelers from the AIDS Era,” his op-ed for The Washington Blade. “If I lie and say I’m HIV negative, many of those same men will gladly have unprotected sex with me.” That contradiction leads Boyd, who learned he was HIV-positive in 1985 at age 23, to ask what the gay men who died of AIDS in the 1980s would think of the world today.
“As a long-term survivor, I sometimes feel like a time traveler trapped between two worlds: one that remembers the terror and one that barely remembers the war,” Boyd writes. “That feeling became the seed for my new novel, The Unfrozen Few.”
Founded in 1969, The Washington Blade is the oldest LGBTQ newspaper in the United States. In 1991, the Blade reviewed the anthology Certain Voices, singling out Boyd’s first published short story, “Hostage,” writing, “Randy Boyd… definitely knows how to write well.”
About Randy Boyd: Randy Boyd is the author of five novels, with his first four earning five Lambda Literary Award finalist honors. His latest novel, The Unfrozen Few, Book One: Welcome to the Future, is published by West Beach Books and available in print and digital editions. More information is available at RandyBoydAuthor.com.
Media Contact: Steven V., West Beach Books — stevenv@westbeachbooks.com