Hops at the History Center: The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick

Join author Martin Padgett as he presents about his book, The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick, and the Atlanta-area LGBTQ movement in the 1980s.

In The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick, Martin Padgett assembles the complete kaleidoscope of Hardwick’s life—as a child of Stonewall, as an artist, and as one of many thousands claimed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Blending biography and history, Padgett traces how Hardwick became a political symbol, first by chance, then by his own choice, even when it made him an object of derision and scrutiny.

Martin Padgett is the author of A Night at the Sweet Gum Head. Recipient of a Lambda Literary Fellowship, his writing has appeared in the Oxford American, The Paris Review, and Washington Post, among other publications. He lives in Pensacola Beach, Florida.