Queer Happened Here by Marc Zinaman – Book Launch Party at Henrietta Hudson

Celebrate the release of Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places with author Marc Zinaman and special guests/book contributors Meryl Meisler, Nina Kennedy, and Sharee M. Nash at Henrietta Hudson for a toast to the iconic queer spaces that have shaped LGBTQ+ culture, community, and activism for decades. Doors open at 6, conversation 6:30 – 7 pm.

Signed copies of Queer Happened Here will be available on the night for purchase, courtesy of Hive Mind Books.

We hope you can join us!

About Marc Zinaman

Marc Zinaman is a New York City-based writer and historian. Since 2021, he has been running the social media account @Queer_Happened_Here, which maps the forgotten LGBTQ+ history of the city. He has also been a contributing writer for the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and Making Queer History website. He was the contributing editor of the book Getting In: NYC Club Flyers from the Gay 1990s, and currently serves on the planning committee for the forthcoming American LGBTQ+ Museum.

About Meryl Meisler

Meryl Meisler was born in 1951 in the Bronx and raised on Long Island. Inspired by her dad Jack Meisler’s family photos and Diane Arbus, she enrolled in a photo class at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. Upon moving to NYC in 1975 to study with Lisette Model, Meryl frequented and photographed the legendary ’70s discos. After retiring from teaching art in the NYC Public Schools, she released large bodies of unseen work. Meryl continues documenting her life and the world around her with a queer, quirky eye and Jewish sense of humor. Nearly five decades later, she’s back, photographing the contemporary LGBTQ+-friendly club scene. CLAMP, NYC, and Polka, Paris, represent Meryl’s work.

About Nina Kennedy

Nina Kennedy has been a part of New York’s lesbian community since 1982 when she arrived from Tennessee to pursue a master’s degree at Juilliard. She is a world-renowned concert pianist, orchestral conductor, and award-winning filmmaker and TV talk show host. She gave her first complete piano recital at nine years old, and appeared as piano soloist with the Nashville Symphony playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at age thirteen. For twelve years she lived and performed in Europe, residing in Amsterdam, Vienna, Cologne, and Paris.

Nina is the subject of a short film produced by Alberto Ferreras of HBO titled Verbal Sex that was selected for screenings at the Berlin International Film Festival, New York’s New Fest, as well as international film festivals in Frankfurt, Jerusalem, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Oslo, Philadelphia, and Sydney.

Nina Kennedy was awarded the prize for “Best Film by a Black Filmmaker” at the Nashville International Film Festival for the documentary film she directed and produced about her father, former director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, titled Matthew Kennedy: One Man’s Journey, which was selected and screened at international film festivals worldwide.

She is the host of The Noshing with Nina Show, an award-winning cable television talk show produced at Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

Nina’s first book of memoirs, Practicing for Love: A Memoir, is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Her second book of memoirs, Practice What You Preach, was published in 2022. She was selected and interviewed for the Lesbian Herstory Archives’ “Lesbian Elders Oral History Project.” She was also selected by Crain’s New York Business as one of the 2023 Notable LGBTQIA+ Leaders. Last year she was named by Gay City News as a recipient of their 2024 Impact Award.

About Sharee M. Nash

Sharee M. Nash is a prose & poetry writer, LGBTQ+ event creator, DJ and radio presenter. She moved to New York City from Frankfurt, Germany in 1989. She began collecting records at age nine and amassed an even greater collection from her travels abroad. The love of music eventually turned into DJ gigs at some of NYC’s trendy, gay-friendly bars and lounges, such as g Lounge, Bowery Bar, Flamingo East and Clit Club. Sharee is co-founder of No Day Like Sunday @ Cafe Tabac in NYC’s East Village, Pleasure @ bar d’O in the West Village and Wonder Bar in New York’s East Village, where a packed house would dance to her soulful spins every Friday and Saturday night. Sharee contributed a short story to an anthology of black lesbian writers titled, Afrekete, a tribute to the phenomenal Audre Lorde. Sharee has presented a radio show at The Face Radio, BK. She calls Harlem home.

About Queer Happened Here

A sprawling, unique visual history of New York City’s queer spaces, Queer Happened Here documents the evolution of LGBTQ+ culture, community, and activism within Manhattan’s dynamic landscape over the course of a century, spanning from 1920 to 2020.

New York’s LGBTQ+ history is everywhere, but rarely is it visibly documented. Aside from current venues and a handful of landmark plaques, important queer spaces from the city’s past have otherwise been forgotten about, or remain entirely hidden.

This multifaceted book joyfully and poignantly explores a century of LGBTQ+ gathering spaces across Manhattan through hundreds of historic photographs, flyers, posters, club membership cards, magazine spreads, and more. Author Marc Zinaman’s carefully researched, engaging text includes first-person accounts and little-known facts that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking.

From 1920s bathhouses, drag balls, and the ascent of homophobia during World War II, to the protests and parades of the 1960s and 1970s, to the horrors of AIDS; from the vibrant nightlife scene of the 1990s to 2018’s Rainbow Wave, which saw a record number of queer elected officials in the US, to the rise of geosocial dating apps, every major milestone of LGBTQ+ social history is thoughtfully documented.

Published by Prestel

To find out more, visit www.penguinrandomhouse.com