Stan Leventhal

01/15/2025

Thirty years ago today I lost my brother, Stan, to AIDS! He was not only my brother, but my best friend! He was also a writer, musician & friend to many & co-founded the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Center Library in NY! Not a day goes by I don’t think of him or wish I could give him a call to talk about the latest in music & politics. I miss him every day. I will keep fighting the fight against HIV/AIDS, like I do every year, in his memory! A special thanks to ReQueered Tales for bringing some of his works back to life & helping to keep his memory alive!

10/26/2024

This past October the The Le***an, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Centerthey celebrated re-opening of the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library.

Carol Rosenfeld representing The Publishing Triangle read the following piece -

Stan Leventhal had a vision—one that would create a library dedicated to LGBTQ books. He shared this vision with others, including the Publishing Triangle and the Center, and introduced what he called his "lion," a metaphor for his passion and central concept. Stan's dedication was clear: he wanted the library to be a full service lending library and also serve as a repository for out-of-print LGBTQ literature, ensuring these works would always be available.

That vision became reality with the establishment of the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library, created by the Publishing Triangle and the Le***an and Gay Community Services Center of New York. Named in honor of poet Pat Parker and author-activist Vito Russo, the library served as a lending and browsing space for LGBTQ literature.

Stan was later joined by Kevin Jennings and Brian Phillips, and together with the help of dedicated volunteers and donated books, they built the library, one shelf at a time. Over time, the vision was for the Library to become more than just a collection of books—it would become a space for community engagement, hosting book fairs, readings, lectures, seminars, storytelling programs, and a special literacy program that was close to Stan's heart, aimed at helping those who needed reading assistance.

Their ultimate goal was for the library to become a permanent fixture at New York’s LGBTQ+ Community Services Center.

And now, with the re-opening of the library, I know that Stan would be sipping his glass of jack, taking a slow pull of his cigarette and be beaming with joy.

https://gaycenter.org/event/pat-parker-vito-russo-library-re-launch-event/

https://donyc.com/events/2024/11/24/open-pat-parker-vito-russo-library-tickets

Check out (OPEN) Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library at The Center in New York on November 24, 2024 and get detailed info for the event - tickets, photos, video and reviews.

09/29/2024

DID YOU KNOW that Stan's Uncle was Harold Leventhal?

He loved his Uncle. Harold came to Stan's memorial at The LGBTQ Center in NYC.

Harold Leventhal (May 24, 1919 – October 4, 2005) was an American music manager. Leventhal's career began as a song plugger for Irving Berlin and then Benny Goodman.

While working for Goodman, he connected with a new artist, Frank Sinatra, booking him as a singer for a Benny Goodman event. Leventhal later managed The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Alan Arkin, Judy Collins, Theodore Bikel, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Mary Travers, Tom Paxton, Don McLean and many others, and promoted major concert events in the genre, thus playing a significant role in the popularization and influence of American folk music in the 1950s and 1960s.

He died in 2005 at the age of 86.

If you want to know some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Leventhal

09/11/2024

Never Forget

We look back in time via The Advocate's special cover story after the tragedy on September 11, 2001.

08/30/2024

Why revisit the early years of HIV/AIDS in Gay America?

I wrote After Francesco because as we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Center for Disease Control report on what would become known as AIDS, the pandemic - as my generation of gay men experienced it - is becoming a footnote in some histories, and completely absent in others. The contemporary fiction by gay authors of the time is largely out of print, books like Facing It by Paul Reed, Eighty-Sixed by David B. Feinberg, A Hundred Days From Now by Steven Corbin, and The Body and Its Dangers by Allen Barnett. The gay writers we lost to the disease leave behind a legacy of what might have been - had this country decided that the lives of gay men mattered, had it dedicated the resources necessary to fight the crisis as it had done with Legionnaire's Disease and Toxic Shock Syndrome. I imagine the body of work created by Reinaldo Arenas, Allen Barnett, Joseph Beam, Christopher Coe, Steven Corbin, Sam D'Allesandro, Melvin Dixon, Michael Grumley, Tim Dlugos, David B. Feinberg, John Fox, Robert Ferro, Essex Hemphill, Bo Huston, Stan Leventhal, Paul Monette, Darrell Yates Rist, Marlon Riggs, Vito Russo, Assotto Saint, Randy Shilts, George Whitmore, and many, many others, had they lived. Had their own government and so many of their fellow Americans not turned their backs because.....

https://www.malloywriter.com/newsletter.htm

08/12/2024

Sacred Spells is essential reading as a dissident counter-archive that affirms Black and q***r working-class life beyond state and media necropolitics, and in a sense, we are all living in Assotto Saint's world now, luckily with this book to guide us. - TThe Gay & Le***an Review

Poetry sustains people and place.

08/12/2024

Beautiful New Editions - make for great summer reads.

07/19/2024

Have you added SKYDIVING on Christopher Street to your WANT TO READ LIST! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57660144

06/29/2024

Typewriter near window, writing away while looking out over Sheridan Square. Happy Gay Pride Weekend NYC.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/mountain-climbing-in-sheridan-square-stan-leventhal/14403873?ean=9781951092214

06/10/2024

Faultlines.

New York-bred Kevin O'Conover, white, gay and twenty-something, thought two weeks in San Francisco would make a fine holiday ... until he woke up in the dark, tied up on a concrete floor, and with a splitting headache. He finds Thad Heath, ex-Vietnam vet, black and straight, tied to a metal pole beside him. What are they doing held captive in crime boss Jack Corrigan's basement? Corrigan's maid Leona Ramirez helps them to escape in a van about to set out to distribute co***ne at a strip mall drop-off. Two thugs, vicious Sam and not-too-bright Kurt, are driving and, when the boys escape in the mall parking lot, there ensues a chase into the woods and hills where Kevin and Thad fall into the rescuing arms of Weslya, an off-the-grid reclusive child-of-the-60s pot-toking hippie ...

https://bookshop.org/p/books/faultlines-stan-leventhal/20153353?ean=9781951092917

05/29/2024

Congratulations to ReQueered Tales on their 5 year anniversary. We are grateful that you have published Stan's portfolio of books. Thank you for inviting Michele Karlsberg Sarah Schulman Christopher Bram Paras Sonowal Borgohain Alexander Inglis to the party.

All books are available from Bureau of General Services-Queer Division

05/24/2024

Today is National Brother’s Day & also my brother Stan’s birthday! He would’ve been 73 today had we not lost him to AIDS in 1995. He wasn’t just my brother, but my best friend! I miss our weekly talks about music & politics. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of you! Love & miss you, bro!

02/04/2024

1992 Cathedral Hill Hotel, San Francisco.

01/23/2024

Baby, it's cold outside. Grab a Stan Leventhal book to cozy up to.

https://www.req***redtales.com/stan-leventhal

"Another great story from the late Stan Leventhal's canon thanks to ReQueered Tales republishing these amazing books. This time an unnamed narrator, a music critic travels to Key West to write a magazine article and sneak in some rest and fun. He's left his live-in lover/boyfriend back in NYC. Within minutes of arriving at the guest house, he discovers a dead body and so begins this amateur sleuth mystery. Leventhal leads him down all sorts of wrong paths. He bumbles through the discovery of clues and even the police tell him he shouldn't be doing this, but he can't help himself. When I read Leventhal's 1988 book Mountain Climbing in Sheridan Square earlier this year, I described his writing as "a sweet combination of cozy novel and beautiful literature. For me, it was the perfect kind of... read." I still think that although this book wasn't quite as perfect as the first. There were a few underdeveloped characters including the far-away boyfriend. The ending was also abrupt. But I moved quickly through the book and enjoy the author's writing, so when his next two books get re-released this year, I will add them to my to-read list."