Novelist and teacher Tom Spanbauer, who mined his own life for unabashed tales of queer love, heartbreak, shame, family and HIV, died September 21, 2024. He was 78. Spanbauer had been living with HIV since the 1980s and with Parkinson’s disease for the past eight years. According to OregonLive.com, the cause of death was heart failure.
The author of five novels—Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, In the City of Shy Hunters, Now Is the Hour and I Loved You More—Spanbauer taught a method he referred to as “dangerous writing.” He was considered the godfather of Portland’s literary world, and his many students included Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club).
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In a 2014 interview with POZ, Spanbauer elaborated about his writing and teaching style:
“Dangerous writing isn’t about serial killers or anything like that. It’s about what it is to be human and all of the unique battles that you face and the places they take you.
“We try to go to those places and write about them. Most of these places have a social taboo or social sanction. When you go to these places within your psyche, they can be these big scary places in us that are important to go to and write about.
“There’s forgiveness there, or maybe not necessarily, but going on this journey is what’s important. Somebody the other day asked me what my muse is, and I told them it’s this place inside of me where I feel fear and tells me what I should be addressing right now.”
Born in 1946 in Idaho, Spanbauer graduated from Idaho State University before joining the Peace Corps in Kenya. After two and a half year, he returned to Idaho and got married to a woman. In 1978, he came out as gay and left the state, first for Vermont and then for Key West, Florida. He then went on to earn an MFA in creative writing in New York City during the 1980s—the height of the AIDS epidemic—before settling in Portland.
“Without Tom Spanbauer as my writing teacher, my life would’ve been a nonevent,” wrote novelist Palahniuk on Facebook. “We fought. We celebrated. Now we’ll mourn without him. Tom’s death hurts more than my father’s did twenty-five years ago.”
Justin Vivian Bond, a transgender performer and advocate, noted Spanbauer’s passing with an Instagram post showing the writer with Bond and actor/singer John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch). “Deeply saddened by the news that one of our greatest writers and dearest men has taken his place shining brightly in the universe," Bond wrote. “If you haven’t already, now is the time to read ‘The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon’ and ‘In the City of Shy Hunters’ — two of the greatest queer novels in the canon.”
“Tom was absolutely devastated by AIDS,’ his partner Sage Ricci told OregonLive.com. “He lost everybody. He called it ‘the monster.’ He felt fear and death stalking him.”
Ricci added: “All his books were about creating family and either finding acceptance within that family, or finding peace in the otherness.”
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