BODY COUNTS

This is a memoir by POZ magazine founder Sean Strub, the first openly HIV positive person to run for U.S. Congress and one of the principal fundraisers for activist organization ACT UP in the 1990s. BODY COUNTS opens a window into the most extraordinary moments in the history of U.S. AIDS activism and a personal testament to loss and survival.

Born in 1958 to a large Irish family, Sean Strub arrived in Washington, D.C., as a starry-eyed 17-year-old--an idealistic Georgetown University freshman with a part-time patronage job running the Senate elevator inside the Capitol building.

The spring of 1976 was an exciting time to be in Washington. The voting age had been lowered to 18, the Equal Rights Amendment had passed, and the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision affirmed women’s right to reproductive choice. Strub reveled in his newly cosmopolitan, politically elite surroundings. The streets of D.C. would also usher Strub into a more secretive world. Gradually, Strub dipped into D.C.'s hidden gay world.

But as Strub became popular as both a young democratic operative and an ongoing member of D.C.'s gay community, another story began to unfold. In May 1981 reports about a "gay cancer" began to appear in gay newspapers and medical journals. At the time, rather than his own health, Strub was mostly concerned by the leering coverage that depicted gay sex as unnatural. He never imagined that three decades later, his "entire adult life would have become largely defined by AIDS--and by the struggle against not only a virus in my body but the stigma imposed on people with HIV by a confused, frightened and vengeful world."

Strub would go on to become one of the most pivotal forces in AIDS activism, as a principal fundraiser for ACT UP (The AIDS Colaition to Unleash Power), the first openly HIV person to run for Congress, and the founder of POZ magazine, which became the leading independent source of information on HIV/AIDS in the United States. His extraordinary life takes readers inside the raucous ACT UP meetings where members planned their iconic "actions" and into the private offices and hotel rooms where politically savvy young gay men figured out how to make AIDS a legitimate cause in the eyes of straight America.

Beyond politics, Strub's book also captures a special moment in New York history--the days of Studio 54, Warhol's factory, a Wall Street dominated by people, not algorithms, a city where networking meant working a room and a rolodex, not a computer screen. His memoir is a vivid account of how AIDS activists evolved from renegades to a well-funded political movement, but it is also a deeply personal testament--from a long-time survivor--of the countless lives lost to AIDS.

Strub is an activist, writer and entrepreneuer who has co-authored two books on corporate social responsibility, produced Off-Broadway theater, and founded successful marketing and publishing companies. In 1994 Strub founded POZ magazine, the leading source of information about the HIV epidemic and its treatments, and served as its executive editor until 2004. Strub has been living with HIV for more than 30 years. In 1990 Strub was the first openly HIV positive person to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress.

From 1987 to 1991 he was involved with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), serving as one of the organization's principal fundraisers and participating in many actions and demonstrations. He is a frequent speaker at HIV-related conferences around the world. A native of Iowa, Strub attended Georgetown and Columbia Universities. Strub has also restored more than a dozen historic buildings in northeast Pennsylvania.