10,000 Loves is amazingly accessible. How did you set things out so that the book might be, in part, a springboard for future works?

I loved reading all of Minnesota’s old LGBT newspapers–Equal Time, the GLC Voice, Focus Point, and others–and I became enraptured with the journalistic style. At its best, the style is fair, balanced, and to the point. So the book is an assemblage of short articles about people, places, or events from the past that individually read like newspaper articles, but can collectively serve as a serious contribution to American history. It can be read from cover-to-cover, or without any direction at all.

So the book can be read several ways. It can be read as entertainment—a collection of amazing stories that all happen to be true. It can also be read as an illustrated guide to the Tretter Collection’s holdings. For scholars, it can be read as a compendium of information that leads to many new questions that have yet to be answered.

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