About the Author

Sean Strub is a long-time activist and writer who has been HIV positive for more than 33 years. He is the founder of POZ Magazine, the leading independent global source of information about HIV, and served as its publisher and executive editor from 1994 to 2004. 

He presently serves as the executive director of the Sero Project, a network of people with HIV fighting for freedom from stigma and injustice and as treasurer of the U.S. Caucus of PWHA Organizations. He served on the board of directors of the Global Network of People living with HIV/AIDS from 2009 to 2012 and as co-chair of its North American affiliate from 2011 to 2012.

He is a popular speaker and is frequently cited in the media as an expert on HIV prevention and treatment policy and the intersection of sex, public health and the law.  He is a recognized global leader in the effort to empower people with HIV to be meaningfully engaged in the response to the epidemic and in combating HIV-related stigma, discrimination and criminalization.

Strub was active with the People With AIDS Coalition/New York in the mid 80s, co-chaired the fundraising committee for ACT UP/New York in the late 80s and in 1990 became the first openly HIV positive person to run for the U.S. Congress. He was the producer of David Drake’s hit play, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, which has now been performed in more than 20 countries. In 2010, he co-founded the Positive Justice Project and produced the short documentary film, “HIV is Not a Crime,” about HIV criminalization in the U.S.

He has also been active in environmental protection, historic preservation and community redevelopment efforts in rural Pike County, Pennsylvania, since the late 1990s. He has helped launch cultural festivals, pass an open space preservation bond and in 2007, produced “Nature’s Keepers” a documentary film about the conservation and land stewardship history in the region. 

Strub co-authored, with Steven D. Lydenberg and Alice Tepper Marlin, Rating America’s Corporate Conscience, (Addison-Wesley, 1987) and, with Dan Baker and Bill Henning, Cracking The Corporate Closet, (HarperBusiness, 1995) and is the author of Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS & Survival (Scribner, 2014).

A native Iowan, Strub attended Georgetown and Columbia Universities.  He and his partner, Xavier Morales, live in Milford, Pennsylvania and New York City. 

His new book, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival, will be published by Scribner in January 2014.