Author Visit & Book Signing: Allen Young, Author of Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life.
Tuesday, April 24 @ 6:30 p.m.
Join the Athol Public Library on Tuesday, April 24, at 6:30, as we welcome local author Allen Young presenting his new autobiography, Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life. Mr. Young will read excerpts, answer questions, and sign copies of the book.
Allen Young has held a number of interesting careers and roles, from reporter for the Washington Post and Liberation News Service, to activist, editor, and founding member of a commune. Now, from his Octagon House in the North Quabbin region of Massachusetts, he provides insights into his most memorable moments.
Growing up on a poultry farm in New York’s Borscht Belt, his childhood gave him not only a lifelong love for the great outdoors but also his first political education. His Communist parents fostered in their son a passion for standing up to power and fighting for the oppressed. After six years at Columbia and Stanford and a sojourn to South America, Young devoted himself wholeheartedly to a variety of causes. He gave up a reporter’s job at the Washington Post to join the New Left’s underground press, edited pioneering gay liberation anthologies, and put down new roots in one of the most rural parts of Massachusetts. Through it all, Young constantly explored what it meant to be “left, gay, and green.” His career, political pursuits, and relationships all took him in surprising new directions, but even as his identity was changing, Young never lost his true sense of self.
Young is also the author of many books of particular local interest, among them The Man Who Got Lost: North Quabbin Stories and Make Hay While the Sun Shines: Farms, Forests, and People of the North Quabbin, which are in the collection of the Athol Public Library. He also writes a regular column for the Athol Daily News.
Books will be available for purchase at this event ($25) with a portion of the proceeds to be donated to the Friends of the Athol Public Library.
Free and Open to the Public.
Registration appreciated. Please call (978) 249 – 9515 to reserve your spot.
