Hank Plante Discusses WHEN THE BAND PLAYED ON with author Michael G. Lee.

The Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation invites you to join author Michael Lee in conversation with journalist Hank Plante about his important new book When the Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist.

Randy Shilts was the preeminent LGBTQ+ reporter of his generation. Based in San Francisco, he was the author of And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, a 1987 bestseller about the start of America's AIDS epidemic. The book made Shilts a trusted commentator on AIDS, to the point that he was the closing speaker at 1989's Fifth International AIDS Conference in Montreal. Shilts also wrote The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk and the bestselling Conduct Unbecoming: Lesbians and Gays in the U.S. Military, Vietnam to the Persian Gulf.

Shilts, who worked for The San Francisco Chronicle, was the first openly gay reporter assigned to a gay beat at a mainstream paper and one of the nation’s most influential chroniclers of gay history, politics, and culture. Yet the intimate life story of Randy Shilts has been left unwritten. When the Band Played On tells that story, recognizing his legacy as a trailblazing figure in gay activism, journalism, and public policy. Author Michael G. Lee conducted interviews with Shilts’ family, friends, college professors, colleagues, informants, lovers and critics. The resulting narrative tells the tale of a singularly gifted voice, a talented yet insecure young man whose coming of age became intricately linked to the historic peaks and devastating perils of modern gay liberation.

Join author Michael Lee in conversation with journalist Hank Plante about this important book. For more than 20 years, Lee has had a passion for storytelling that has fueled a dynamic career of LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS organizing, human services, research, writing, and teaching. He has taught graduate courses at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota for more than a decade while working as a professional grant writer. His interest in Randy Shilts came about while he was researching the origins of 1970s-era gay and lesbian community services and their influence on AIDS organizations of the 1980s. He lives in Minneapolis.

Host or Publisher Palm Springs Cultural Center