Join us for an exciting discussion about LGBTQ+ newspapers in Chicago with Michal Brody & Tracy Baim on Wednesday, July 2nd at 6:30 PM!
Michal was involved in the Lavender Woman collective, which published Chicago’s first lesbian newspaper, Lavender Woman, in 1971. Tracy is the co-founder of Windy City Times, a LGBTQ+ newspaper going strong in Chicago since 1985.
RSVP for this free event here!
Join us for the discussion and explore our current exhibit, “Windy City Times @40: Breaking News. Breaking Silence” to learn more about LGBTQ+ journalism in Chicago.
This event will be recorded and shared online for those unable to attend in person.
About Michal Brody:
Michal Brody is a Chicago native who currently lives in Austin, Texas and Yucatan, Mexico. In the early 1970s, she was the warm-up act for Family of Woman band, the first out lesbian band in the country, and a member of the Lavender Woman collective, which published the first lesbian newspaper in Chicago. Michal was also a co-founder of Chicago Gay Liberation. In 1985 she authored Are We There Yet? A Continuing History of Lavender Woman, a Chicago Lesbian Newspaper, 1971-1976 (Aunt Lute Books). Later, she became a linguist working with contemporary Yucatec Maya and, more broadly, second language pedagogy. She taught linguistics courses at universities in Texas, California, and Yucatan.
About Tracy Baim
Tracy Baim is executive director of Press Forward Chicago, a pooled fund for community journalism based at The Chicago Community Trust. Baim is co-founder and owner of Windy City Times. She is former publisher of the Chicago Reader newspaper. Baim has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Chicago Headline Club and the Chicago Journalists Association. She is in the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame and the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. She has won numerous LGBTQ community and journalism honors, including the Studs Terkel Award in 2005 and the Lambda Legal Bon Foster Award in 2023. Baim has written and/or edited 14 books, her newest a biography of Howard Brown Health.
About Lavender Woman
Lavender Woman, Chicago’s first lesbian newspaper, was founded in 1971 and offered a wide variety of resources to lesbians in Chicago, such as information on lesbian community centers, bars, and resources.
Lavender Woman was also a site for many spirited debates over conflicts within Chicago’s lesbian feminist community, including separatism, racism, conflicts over butch/femme roles within Chicago’s gay bars, and other political issues. A group of lesbian volunteers wrote, produced, and sold the paper in the local bars as well as, boldly, distributing issues on the streets.
About Windy City Times
Founded in September 1985, Windy City Times helped document the rise of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ movement, from the fight for gay rights to the battles against HIV/AIDS, the rise of trans organizing, to the push for visibility by lesbians and people of color. That and so much more was documented in the thousands of issues of LGBTQ+ media published by Windy City Times, Outlines, and sister publications.