Richard Grayson (writer) - Gay Rights Activism

Gay Rights Activism

Grayson also worked in the unsuccessful 1994 campaign to defeat an anti-gay rights referendum in Alachua County, Florida, where Gainesville is located. Grayson was a member of the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Council of North Central Florida and its political action committee, which in subsequent years managed to help elect enough pro-gay candidates to the Gainesville city commission to pass local gay rights legislation.

Grayson's experience as a lawyer and gay activist informed some of the stories in his 1996 collection, I Survived Caracas Traffic, whose title story Kirkus Reviews called "a resonant meditation on the themes of relationships, AIDS, and mortality." Another story in the same volume is "Twelve Step Barbie," which, along with "With Hitler in New York" is probably the author's best-known work and the subject of academic criticism. The New York Times Book Review called the book "far too bright and keenly made to flick casually away."

After leaving Gainesville and the University of Florida Law School in 1997, Grayson spent time in different parts of the country, writing what would become the stories in his 2000 book The Silicon Valley Diet, which featured gay protagonists living in the different places where Grayson had resided: his native New York City, northeast Wyoming, Silicon Valley, and various parts of Florida. Less experimental and more realistic, the new stories dealt with the impact of the computer culture, interracial friendships between gay men, and topics related to food and dieting. (In the early 1990s Grayson lost over forty pounds and became a vegetarian.)

Except for one year when he taught English at Arizona State University and other schools in the Phoenix area, Grayson spent most of his time after 1999 in South Florida, where he was a visiting professor of undergraduate legal studies at Nova Southeastern University and director of academic support at the university's law school for a number of years. Since 2005, Grayson has divided his time between Phoenix and his native Brooklyn.