Victoria Noe

It’s been four and a half years since COVID shut down our world. And though it’s still with us, a lot of that world is back to ‘normal’. Nothing feels quite the same, though, does it? People panic at the first hint of a cough, attending fewer big events, even outdoors. Some even report feeling newly claustrophobic, when trying to decide if they should squeeze into a crowded subway car. Olympic athletes aren’t immune to COVID, so why would we assume we are?

I spent six months planning book events for the spring and summer of 2020 that never happened. Like many of you, I had to retool my business to adapt to the lack of in-person activity. I learned a lot about making better use of technology - a work in progress, to put it mildly - and largely kept busy doing things that I could do from home. I led writing workshops on Zoom, put out the audio version of F*g Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community, and wrote another book that hit all too close to home, What Our Friends Left Behind: Grief and Laughter in a Pandemic. I made a couple of trips for research and to interview people for that book, but not until the summer of 2021. 

All of my books take a toll on me emotionally because I write about tough subjects: grieving the death of a friend, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The last book, though, broke me. I was writing in real time about friends who died just months earlier. Most of the people I approached to share their stories politely declined. I was used to people approaching me, eager to talk about their friend whose death changed their life. But now I know it was too soon. The grief was too raw. After it was published in September, 2023, I spent the next few months concentrating on my health.

Now I feel like I’ve come out of the worst of it, newly energized and focused on updating and expanding the F*g Hags book. But how do I do that in a still-changing world?

I’ve been very particular about the events I attend. I’m fully vaxxed, but I’ve had COVID once and I’m not eager to repeat that experience. So it is only now that I’m again scheduling multiple events in a short period of time. I’m not 100% comfortable doing this, but I’ll take whatever precautions are appropriate.

I’m looking forward to these three very different events: indoors at a library, a huge outdoor literary festival, a major conference. I’m doing book signings at the first two; attending the third and interviewing women there for my next book. If you’re going to any of them, please join me. I’d love to see you.

August 24 - Elmhurst Public Library Author Fair - Elmhurst, Illinois

September 7 - Printers Row Lit Fest (Chicago Writers Association tent) - Chicago, Illinois 

September 12-15 - US Conference on HIV/AIDS - New Orleans, Louisiana

There are more events on the horizon, starting in October, and I’ll share details as they are confirmed. I hope by then, gathering in public will lose some of the angst that lingers. Because I’m more than ready to see and be seen.

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