R. Diskin Black reads from his new collection of memoir poetry, THE NIGHT OF SWAYING GRASS, and sits in conversation with author and activist Benjamin Heim Shepard.

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Black tells a story with his poetry of childhood loss and grief, a story of coming of age and coming out, a story of resilience and reinvention. From the death of his father when he was six years old in 1969 to his involvement in ACT UP decades later, from the events of 9/11 to the COVID pandemic, the 63 poems in this collection reflect all that was lost and all that was gained in the 63 years Black has so far lived.

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Born and raised in northern New Jersey, R. DISKIN BLACK graduated with a BA in History from Lafayette College in Easton, PA. He also went to law school, but nobody wants to hear about that. He has been gainfully employed in the legal profession his entire adult life. He is the author of the novel “Zombie Scout: The Diary of Jack Sullivan”. He currently lives in New York City.

Benjamin Shepard, PhD, is an Professor of Human Service at New York School of Technology/City University of New York. He received his Masters at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, PhD at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and training in psychoanalysis from the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in their Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. As a social worker he worked in AIDS housing settings from San Francisco to Chicago to New York, where he directed the start ups for two congregate housing programs for people with HIV/AIDS, as well as served as Deputy Director at CitiWide Harm Reduction..

Much of Dr. Shepard’s scholarship is based on the ethnographic study of social services and social movements. He is the author/editor of six books including White Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco AIDS Epidemic (Cassell, 1997) and From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (co-edited with Ron Hayduck) (Verso, 2002). The latter work was a non-fiction finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in 2002.