Joan Nestle Oral History (2011)

Joan Nestle was born in the Bronx in 1940. After graduating from Queens College and receiving her M.A. in English from NYU, she began to teach writing. She was active in protesting against the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Vietnam War, segregation and apartheid, and supporting civil rights, women’s rights, and Gay Liberation. She helped launch the Gay Academic Union in 1972 and founded the Lesbian Herstory Archive in 1973, a rich collection of documents and memorabilia of lesbian history and culture. Nestle is the author of A Fragile Union (1998) and A Restricted Country (1988). Her other publications include Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction and The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader. She currently resides in Australia with her partner.

Mark Levy was born on May 30, 1939 in New York City to Harold and Leona Levy. He studied at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio from 1957 to 1959 and then transferred to Queens College, where he received a B.A. in Sociology (1964) and an M.S. in Social Studies Education (1973). While at Queens College, he served as Student Association President from 1962 to 1963. Levy was active in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in a school desegregation project in Jackson, Mississippi. From 1968 to 1973 he was on the faculty at Queens College in the SEEK Program. He also taught high school students in the Upward Bound Program and led seminars and supervised field internships in the Action Program. In 1973, he embarked on a second career as a union organizer and representative at United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE). He then went on to work for Local 1199/NY (United Drug, Hospital and Healthcare Workers Union), and the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR/SEIU) retiring as Executive Director in 2008.