Gay’s the Word!

I loved visiting “Gay’s the Word” bookshop, the UK’s oldest LGBTQ bookshop in Bloomsbury, just blocks from the British Library.  One of the founders Jim MacSweeney kindly listened to my “archive activist” spiel, an honor for me to share some of our original research with him. He told me his inspiration to open an all gay (in the most expansive meaning of the word) bookshop in London was the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop that opened in 1967 in Greenwich Village.  It was a thrill to be in an all gay/queer bookstore again—so few, if any, are left.