Will Roscoe

American writer, educator and gay activist. Born in Seattle to a chemistry professor father and pharmacist mother, Will Roscoe was raised in western Montana where he says "sky, mountains, and streams inspired me to be a dreamer." He came out as gay in 1975, becoming active in the Gay movement and helping to establish Lambda, the first Gay/Lesbian organization in Montana. In 1976 he served as an intern at the National Gay Task Force and next year spearheaded the formation of the Oregon Gay Alliance, a statewide coalition of Gay/Lesbian groups. In 1978, he completed an internship at the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley, where he coordinated a successful campaign to win United Way funding. His was the first Lesbian/Gay social service agency to do so. In 1979, Roscoe attended the first Radical Faerie gathering in Arizona, meeting the movement's gay guru Harry Hay, and helping found Nomenus, a gay retreat still operating in Southern Oregon. In 1980, with other local artists he organized "Mainstream Exiles: a Lesbian and Gay Men’s Cultural Festival" and co-published and co-edited "Vortex: A Journal of New Vision" 1980-82, with his partner Bradley Rose. In 1984, he became Project Coordinator for the Gay American Indians History Project and edited "Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology." Roscoe’s research on the Native American berdache or two-spirit tradition has appeared in numerous journals and publications. His book, "The Zuni Man-Woman" 1991, received the Margaret Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association and a Lambda Literary Award. He has since published "Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book" 1995 and edited "Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder" 1996, by Harry Hay. He is also co-editor of "Islamic Homosexualities" 1996; "Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities" 1998; and "Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America" 1998, which is a comprehensive study of the lives and cultures of "two-spirit people." Roscoe holds a 1991 Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has taught Anthropology, Native American Studies, and American Studies at UC/Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, UC/Berkeley, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Dominican College. From 1991-1995 he was an affiliated scholar with the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University, and he is now adjunct faculty for the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. Link to Wikipedia biography