Hank Trout, who continues to make significant contributions to the LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS communities nationwide, has been named the LGBTQ+ Center’s first Distinguished LGBTQ+ Alumni Spotlight feature.
Born and raised in Morgantown, Trout is a dear friend of the LGBTQ+ Center. A resident of San Francisco for the past 41 years, he returned to West Virginia and his alma mater in 2017 to discuss the documentary film “Last Men Standing.” This film explores the everyday difficulties faced by eight long-term HIV/AIDS survivors in San Francisco Bay Area who lived to tell their stories.
Being able to spotlight Trout, a 32-year HIV/AIDS survivor, is particularly salient as we approach World AIDS Day, observed globally on Dec. 1. He is an author, activist and proud “Elder of his tribe,” as well as a senior editor at A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine.
Prior to his work at A&U, he edited Drummer, Folsom, Midwest and Malebox magazines throughout the 1980s. He has an extensive catalogue of published articles and is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Additionally, Trout is a co-creator of The San Francisco Principles, which advocates for greater awareness, inclusion and resources for long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS, who comprise a "forgotten majority" of people living with HIV in the U.S. Last year, he was a featured speaker for the LGBTQ+ Center’s 2020 World AIDS Day program, where he discussed “The San Francisco Principles” and the goals of this important advocacy.
Trout also was recently honored by his former professor and long-time friend, Judith Stitzel, the founding director of the WVU’s Women’s Studies Program (now the Women’s and Gender Studies Program) who gave a generous gift to the LGBTQ+ Center in his honor. The two have enjoyed a friendship since the early 1970s, after he enrolled in one of her courses in women’s literature.
In 1977, during his last year as a graduate student, he took Stitzel’s course in Literary Criticism, which he describes as an “epiphany” that taught him an entirely new way of looking at the literature he had studied. “[Dr. Stitzel] awakened in me the realization that all of these eras were indeed connected, intertwined, of one whole,” Trout said, who credits Stitzel with his realization then that “This is why I study literature.” Of his education from Stitzel, he adds, “It changed my life.”
In the years that followed, they have become even closer and dear friends, as well as readers for each other's works in progress. “[Judith] was my sounding board while I was struggling to write Tornado, my poem about the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s. Her judgment, her instincts, and her generosity of spirit have given me succor and encouragement for many years now. Her influence on me can be found in everything I've written,” Trout said.
The LGBTQ+ Center sincerely thanks Stitzel for her recent generous gift to the LGBTQ+ Center in Trout’s honor. In accordance with his wishes, the gift will be used for programs and initiatives that support WVU’s transgender population who, according to Trout, “are bearing the worst brunt of the ignorance and bigotry aimed at us [the LGBTQ+ community].”
Find Trought’s most recent articles for A&U:
Peter Staley: Never Silent, Sept. 28.
AIDS Diva: Connie Norman, Oct. 11.
Toxic! Masculinity! In! Space!, Oct. 22.