Q+ Public is an outgrowth, after a long hibernation, of OUT/LOOK National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly, a pioneering political and cultural journal that sparked intense national debate over the five years it was published, 1988 to 1992. As an early model of intersectional inclusion, OUT/LOOK was the first publication after the early 1970’s to bring together lesbians and gay men after years of separate movements. OUT/LOOK emerged in the context of a major upheaval in queer culture. The movement that had started with Stonewall was built on the struggles for political and civil rights of people of color, women, labor unions, the disabled and the incarcerated; these struggles led, unwittingly, to a major reconfiguration of the sex and gender system. A new queer world was being born.

The visual and written content in OUT/LOOK addressed complex gender roles (with a blind spot about transgender issues), was racially diverse, embraced political and cultural topics that were controversial or had not yet been articulated, and emphasized visual art along with scholarly and creative writing. In a period when LGBTQ studies and queer theory were coalescing but not yet established, OUT/LOOK built a bridge between academic inquiry and broader community.

OUT/LOOK also spawned the inspirational OutWrite conferences that started in San Francisco in 1990 and 1991, then moved to Boston. These conferences provided a much-needed public forum of support for queer writers and readers, who had long been left out or marginalized within the mainstream publishing world.

Thirty years after OUT/LOOK was launched, E.G. Crichton developed the OUT/LOOK & the Birth of the Queer project with Jeffrey Escoffier. She mailed one of seventeen issues of OUT/LOOK to 38 younger participants, asking each to respond in some way. The resulting creative work generated an exhibition, event series, a new issue of OUT/LOOK, and this website: https://egcrichton.sites.ucsc.edu/projects/outlook-and-the-birth-of-the-queer/

The Q+ Public book series was initially conceived by E.G. Crichton and Jeffrey Escoffier, two of the six founders of OUT/LOOK. They established a publishing contract with Rutgers University Press, and brought together a diverse and highly qualified editorial collective. The plan is to issue several books a year in which engaged research, art and critical reflection address difficult and challenging topics.

Jeffrey Escoffier (1942-2022)

The idea of a complicated and radical queer public in all its manifestations has long been part of the vision and writing of Jeffrey Escoffier. Sadly, Jeffrey died unexpectedly in May, 2022 at age 79, leaving behind Q+ Public, as well as several other publishing projects. Prolific, full of ideas and vision to the end, he is widely missed. The Q+ Public collective continues this work in his honor.