Author Biography
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 co-author of Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow. She is co-author and editor of Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community, the first comprehensive book on Chicago's gay history. And she is author of Where the World Meets, a book about Gay Games VII in Chicago. Her first novel is The Half Life of Sgt. Jen Hunter, about lesbians in the military prior to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. She also has an essay in the book Media Queered (Peter Lang, 2007). Baim was executive producer of the lesbian feature film Hannah Free, starring Sharon Gless (Ripe Fruit Films, 2008). She was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1994. Inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2011, writer and historian Owen Keehnen's fiction, essays, erotica, reviews and interviews have appeared in hundreds of magazines, newspapers and anthologies worldwide. With Tracy Baim, he was a co-author of Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow. His gay novel The Sandbar was released in 2011 by Lethe Press. He is the author of We're Here, We're Queer, a collection of more than 100 interviews with LGBTQ writers and activists who helped shape contemporary gay culture and the modern gay movement. Keehnen is the author of the horror novel Doorway Unto Darkness and the humorous gay novel I May Not Be Much but I'm All I Think About, available at e-gaymag.com. In addition, he co-edited Nothing Personal: Chronicles of Chicago's LGBTQ Community 1977-1997 and contributed 10 essays to the groundbreaking, richly illustrated book of LGBTQ history Out and Proud in Chicago. He is also the author of the Starz series, a set of four books of interviews with the men of the XXX film industry. Keehnen was on the founding committee of The Legacy Project and currently serves as board secretary for that LGBT history-education-arts program focused on pride, acceptance and bringing recognition to the courageous lives and contributions of LGBTQ historical figures.
