Vernita Gray: From Woodstock to the White House - Paperback

Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor at Windy City Media Group, which produces Windy City Times, Nightspots, and other gay media in Chicago. She has won numerous gay community and journalism honors, including the Community Media Workshop's Studs Terkel Award in 2005 and several Peter Lisagor journalism awards. Baim received the 2013 Chicago Headline Club Lifetime Achievement Award. Baim is the editor and co-author of Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America (2012), a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Top 10 selection from the American Library Association GLBT Round Table. She is the author of Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage. She is also the co-author and editor of Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community (the companion website is ChicagoGayHistory.org); and author of Where the World Meets, a book about Gay Games VII in Chicago, Her books include a novel, The Half Life of Sgt. Jen Hunter, about lesbians in the military prior to Don't Ask, Don't Tell (it was the stage play Half Life in 2005), and the biographies Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow, and Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria. She is also creator of That's So Gay!, a 2,400-question LGBT history trivia game. Owen Keehnen is the author of the novels Young Digby Swank, The Sand Bar, Doorway Unto Darkness, and the upcoming The Dog Trainer. Along with Tracy Baim he has co-authored Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow and Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria. Keehnen also authored The LGBT Book of Days, a fun comprehensive guide to the most important dates in LGBT history. More than 100 of his interviews with various LGBT authors and activists from the 1990s have been collected in the book We're Here, We're Queer. He co-edited Nothing Personal: Chronicles of Chicago's LGBTQ Community 1977-1997, was a contributor to Gay Press, Gay Power, wrote the foreword for the Mark Abramson memoir For My Brothers, and contributed several biographical essays to the coffee-table history book Out and Proud in Chicago. Keehnen was on the founding committee and executive board of The Legacy Project and is currently a contributing biographer for the LGBT history education arts program focused on pride, acceptance, and bringing proper recognition to courageous lives and their contributions in LGBT history.

Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor at Windy City Media Group, which produces Windy City Times, Nightspots, and other gay media in Chicago. She co-founded Windy City Times in 1985 and Outlines newspaper in 1987. She has won numerous gay community and journalism honors, including the Community Media Workshop's Studs Terkel Award in 2005. She started in Chicago gay journalism in 1984 at GayLife newspaper, one month after graduating with a news-editorial degree from Drake University. Baim is the author of Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage (2010, Prairie Avenue Productions). She is also the co-author and editor of Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community (2008, Agate), the first comprehensive book on Chicago's gay history; and author of Where the World Meets, a book about Gay Games VII in Chicago (2007, Lulu.com-Baim served as co-vice chair of the Gay Games board). Baim was executive producer of the lesbian feature film Hannah Free, starring Sharon Gless (2008, Ripe Fruit Films). She was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1994 and was named a Crain's Chicago Business 40 Under 40 leader in 1995. Baim is a native Chicagoan and has been with her partner, 20-year Air Force veteran Jean Albright, since 1994.