George Whitmore, Nebraska, published by The Song Cave
Book release and reading from the novel by Tom Cole
Sunday, October 5, 7:30pm

First published in 1987 by Grove Press and long out of print, Nebraska is a classic underground novel by the gay writer and activist George Whitmore.

George Whitmore (September 27, 1945 – April 19, 1989) was an American playwright, novelist, and poet. He also wrote non-fiction accounts about homosexuality and AIDS. Raised in Denver, he received a BA degree in English and Theatre from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1967. Whitmore was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and pursued graduate studies in the Theatre Department at Bennington College.

Once in New York City, Whitmore worked for Planned Parenthood (1968-1972) and the Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York (1972-1981). Whitmore wrote poetry and short stories that were published in both gay and straight periodicals, as well as issued under his own imprint, the Free Milk Fund Press, which was headquartered in his Upper West Side apartment. Three of Whitmore's plays were produced in New York: The Caseworker (1976), Two Plays for Three Women: Flight/The Legacy (1979), and The Rights(1980), and three of his novels were also published: The Confessions of Danny Slocum (1980), Deep Dish (serialized between 1980 and 1982), and Nebraska (1987). The latter, loosely based on Whitmore's childhood memories, was developed from an earlier unproduced play and written during his residencies at the Edward Albee Foundation (1983) and the MacDowell Colony (1985). Whitmore was a member of a literary group known as the Violet Quill, whose seven authors are regarded as the strongest voices of the gay male experience in the post-Stonewall era: Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White.

At the same time, his personal and professional communities were rapidly being overtaken by the AIDS epidemic, as gay male friends and colleagues around him began to get sick and die. Whitmore's response was perhaps his most important contribution to non-fiction literature: three interrelated articles and one book that focused on the human face of AIDS. Relying on his reporting skills and journalism contacts, he fashioned the first article for a general public already frightened by rising morbidity statistics: “Reaching Out to Someone With AIDS,” a profile of the daily life of an AIDS patient and his volunteer advocate, appeared in The New York Times Magazine.

A second article, “Someone Was Here,” ran in GQthe next year. Whitmore reused the title for his 1988 book, Someone Was Here: Profiles in the AIDS Epidemic, which expanded on his Times article by looking at the lives of patients’ families and medical professionals as well as the patients themselves, thereby emphasizing the toll of the disease on both the heterosexual and homosexual populations. In the essay, “Bearing Witness,” Whitmore revealed that he too was a victim of AIDS, having been diagnosed a year after the publication of his “Reaching Out” article. He was 43 years old when he died in New York on April 19, 1989, from AIDS-related complications, two years after the publication of Nebraska.