Joel Redon was born Nov. 15, 1961, in Portland, Oregon, studied writing with Paul Bowles in Morocco and with Elizabeth Pollet at NYU, and wrote columns and reviews for the New York Native in 1986-87. He is the author of Bloodstream (1989), If Not on Earth, Then in Heaven (1991), and Road to Zena (1992). He died June 6, 1995, at age 33. His epitaph reads: To have placed the impossible word on the rainbow's arc, then it would have been all said.

A writer, he had published three novels and received several writing grants. In the mid-1980s, Mr. Redon moved to California from Portland.

In Bloodstream, Peter returnes to his childhood home, where he must deal with an alcoholic father, a hostile sister, and a loving mother as well as confront his own impending death. If Not on Earth, Then in Heaven, an historical fiction, Joel Redon, HIV positive, depicts the prejudice TB sufferers experienced earlier in the XX century.

Burial: Zena Cemetery, Spring Valley, Polk County, Oregon, USA


AIDS Quilt


Joel Redon, by Robert Giard

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

Further Readings:

Confronting AIDS through Literature: The Responsibilities of Representation by Judith Pastore
Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: University of Illinois Press (June 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0252062949
ISBN-13: 978-0252062940
Amazon: Confronting AIDS through Literature: The Responsibilities of Representation

Offers readers an array of literature and of viewpoints on the use of literature to confront AIDS as a social, literary, and medical phenomenon.

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices


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