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‘The End’ is the beginning: an interview with Wayne Hoffman

Gay author’s new book features a family mystery and coping with Alzheimer’s

Published

4 years ago

March 17, 2022

Author Wayne Hoffman’s new book is ‘The End of Her: Racing Against Alzheimer’s to Solve a Murder.

Writer Wayne Hoffman’s name will be familiar to readers of gay fiction, including those who enjoy an erotic edge to what they’re reading. His novels include “Hard,” “Sweet Like Sugar,” and “An Older Man.” Hoffman’s journalism career has also earned him a following via publications such as The Nation, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Billboard, and The Forward, as Tablet Magazine, where he is presently editor. For his new book, the non-fiction work “The End of Her: Racing Against Alzheimer’s to Solve a Murder” (Heliotrope Books, 2022), he called on his skills as a journalist and storyteller, to unravel a family mystery, all the while coming to terms with his mother Susan’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and subsequent decline. The result is a kind of PBS’ “Finding Your Roots” crossed with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Hoffman was kind enough to answer a few questions about his book in a recent interview.

BLADE: Wayne, you’re known as both a journalist and a novelist. When thinking about writing your new book, ‘The End of Her: Racing Against Alzheimer’s to Solve a Murder,’ did you always know that you would tell the story in a non-fiction format, or had you considered writing it as a novel?

WAYNE HOFFMAN: I knew it’d be non-fiction because my goal was to find out the facts about what really happened to my great-grandmother—was she really murdered, and if so, by whom? I could have made up a story and turned it into a novel. But that’s what other relatives had basically already done, with the outlandish legends about her that they’d passed down as family lore. I wanted to focus instead on uncovering the truth, as much as possible.

BLADE: After having written three novels, what impact did creating a work of nonfiction have on you as a journalist?

HOFFMAN: I’m used to daily and weekly journalism—reporting quickly, writing quickly, publishing quickly, and moving on quickly. And I’m used to writing novels—having years to write and revise. This was a new combination: I was reporting, but without any solid deadline. I could go back and rethink things, look for new sources, change conclusions, rewrite a thousand times. That’s a luxury journalists rarely get. If I hadn’t had that time—if I’d had to publish what I’d found after the first few weeks or months—I wouldn’t have understood what really happened.

BLADE: How much did your time as an editor at the Forward and Tablet come in handy in your research?

HOFFMAN: Being a newspaper and magazine editor allowed me to imagine what I’d say if a writer turned in what I’d written, and see what pieces were still missing. But working specifically in the Jewish press—the Forward and now Tablet—for the past 20 years also gave me a broader understanding of the larger context around my great-grandmother’s murder: the waves of Yiddish-speaking immigrants coming to North America from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, how they did and didn’t assimilate, how they tried to build not just families but larger communities, how they found new ways to make a living.

BLADE: I’m glad you mentioned immigration because ‘The End of Her’ is many things including an immigrant story, both American and Canadian, with an emphasis on Jews in Manitoba, a subject that may be new to many readers. What was it like exploring that, both on a personal and professional level?

HOFFMAN: It was fascinating because so much of the story was both unknown to me and unexpected. I knew there were plenty of Jews who immigrated to Manitoba—Winnipeg in particular, which is where my family settled, and where my great-grandmother was murdered. But I couldn’t have imagined what their lives were like. My great-grandfather was basically a cowboy, riding horses and buying cattle on the prairies of Saskatchewan; his brothers were almost certainly bootleggers. Who knew? When I went to the tiny town of Canora, Saskatchewan, to dig into that slice of my family’s history, I had never imagined I’d end up there. But then I thought, I bet my great-grandfather, who grew up in Russia, thought the same thing when he arrived a hundred years ago!

BLADE: Religion and religious traditions also figure prominently. What makes it unique is that they are written about from a gay perspective. In what ways do you think religion has made you the person you are today?

HOFFMAN: I grew up in a traditional Jewish home—I kept kosher, went to synagogue every week, went to Jewish summer camps, attended Hebrew school, took classes at the Jewish Community Center. So, it certainly had a huge influence on who I am today. Coming out as a teenager—as gay and atheist—complicated all of that. Some things fell by the wayside: I don’t keep kosher or go to synagogue anymore. My brother is a rabbi, and he goes to synagogue enough for both of us [laughs]. But I’m still strongly culturally identified, and working in the Jewish press, I spend every day steeped in Jewish culture and the Jewish community—all of it as a very public, very open gay man. Yeesh! Look at my novels—there’s no way to pretend I’m not super-gay [laughs].

BLADE: As you said earlier, ‘The End of Her’ is about family lore and learning as much as possible about it while your mother, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, can both provide details, and benefit from the solving of your great grandmother Sarah’s murder. Do you think with this book you may inspire others to clarify longstanding family myths?

HOFFMAN: I hope so. We have so many tools now to help us understand our personal histories in terms of genetics and DNA. Those are things you can discover from a drop of blood, or a swab. But what about the parts of our history that aren’t stored in our blood or our genes, but in our memories? You can find out a lot from documents—whether they’re official documents like birth certificates or personal documents like letters. But some things you can only find out from relatives and friends who remember things. The more of those people you can contact—before it’s too late—the richer picture you can create of your family’s history, and your own. That might clear up mysteries and scandals, or it might reveal mysteries and scandals you didn’t know existed, which might even be more interesting.

BLADE: In writing about your own, and your immediate family’s, experiences in dealing with your mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, you share heartbreaking and devastating details. For example, the frustration with physicians unable to comprehend the intricacies of treating an Alzheimer’s patient as in chapter 29. Was it your intention for the book to be a tool for others going through a version of something similar?

HOFFMAN: Definitely. There are a lot of resources for people trying to understand what someone with Alzheimer’s is going through—or will go through. But there aren’t enough stories for those same people trying to understand how the disease will affect them, too, as family members or friends, or caregivers. We have our own journey, and I hope that people who read what I went through, and how my family dealt with things—the parts we got right and wrong, and the choices we made—will understand a bit more about what they’re really facing.

BLADE: Have you started thinking about or working on your next book project?

HOFFMAN: I have a few projects sketched out, and even begun. At some point, I’ll sit down and spread them out on my desk, and one of them will (I hope) call out to me, “Me, me! I’m next [laughs]!”

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Memorial for groundbreaking bisexual activist set for May 2

Loraine Hutchins remembered as a ‘force of nature’

Published

2 days ago

April 23, 2026

Emma Cieslik

Loraine Hutchins died last year. (File photo courtesy of Hutchins)

The Montgomery County Pride Center will host a celebration honoring the life and legacy of Loraine Hutchins, Ph.D., on May 2. People are invited to attend the onsite memorial or a livestream event. The on-site event will begin at 10 a.m. with a meet-and-greet mixer before moving into a memorial service around the theme “Loraine a Force of Nature!” at 11 a.m., a panel talk at 12 p.m., break out sessions for artists, academics, and activists to build on her legacy at 1 p.m. and a closing reception at 2 p.m.

Attendees are encouraged to register for the on-site memorial gathering or the livestreamed memorial. The goal of this event is also to collect stories and memories of Loraine. Attendees and others can share their stories at padlet.com.

An obituary for Hutchins was published in the Bladelast Nov. 24, where people can learn more about her activism in the bisexual community. A private service for friends and family was held in December but this memorial service is open to all.

Alongside her groundbreaking work organizing for U.S. bisexual rights and liberation including co-editing “Bi Any Other Name: BIsexual People Speak Out” (1991), she also integrated faith into her sexual education and advocacy work. Her 2001 doctoral dissertation, “Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary U.S. Sacred Sexuality Traditions and Trends,” offered a pointed queer and feminist analysis to sex-neutral and sex-positive spiritual traditions in the United States. Her thesis was also groundbreaking in exploring the intersections between sex workers and those in caregiving professionals, including spiritual ones.

In an oral history interview conducted by Michelle Mueller back in August 2023, Hutchins described herself as a “priestess without a congregation.” While she has occasionally had a sense of community and feels part of a group of loving people, she admitted that “I don’t feel like we have the shape or the purpose that we need.”

“I’ve often experienced being the Cassandra in the room, the Cassandra in the community. Somebody who’s kind of way out there ahead, thinking through the strategic action points that my community hasn’t gotten to yet, and getting a lot of resistance and hostile responses from people who are frightened by dissent and conflict and not ready for the changes we have to make to survive,” she said.

“For somebody who’s bisexual in an out political way and who’s been a spokesperson for the polyamory movement in an out political way, it’s very exposing. And it’s very important to me to be able to try to explain and help other people understand the connection between spirituality and sexuality,” she explained citing how even as a graduate student she was “exploring how to feel erotic and spiritual, and not feel them in conflict with each other in my own spiritual contemplative life and my own sensual body awareness of being alive in the world.”

“Every religion has a sense of sacred sexuality. It’s just they put a lot of boundaries and regulations on it, and if we have a spiritual practice that is totally affirming of women’s priesthood and of gay people, queer people’s ability to minister to everyone and to be ministered to be everyone, what does that do to the gender of God, or our understanding of how we practice our spirituality and our sexuality in community and privately?”

“There’s no easy answer,” she concludes, and she continued to grapple with these questions throughout her life, co-editing another seminal text, “Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual, and Polysexual Perspectives,” published in 2012. Her work blending spiritual and queer liberation remains groundbreaking to this day.

Rev. Eric Eldritch, a local community organizer and ordained Pagan minister with Circle Sanctuary who has worked for decades with the DC Center’s Center Faith to organize the Pride Interfaith Service, is eager to highlight this element of her legacy at the memorial service next month.

a&e features

Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood

Modern creative talks nightlife, coming out, and his personal queer heroes

Published

1 week ago

April 16, 2026

Staff reports

John Levengood (Blade photo by Michael Key)

John Levengood (he/him) describes himself as a modern creative with a wide‑ranging toolkit. He blends music, technology, civic duty, and a sharp sense of wit into a cohesive artistic identity. Known primarily as a recording artist and performer, he’s also a self‑taught music producer and software engineer who embodies a generation of creators who build their own lanes rather than wait for one to appear.

Levengood, 32, who is single and identifies as gay and queer, is best known as a recording artist who has performed at Pride festivals across the country, including the main stages of World Pride DC, Central Arkansas Pride, and Charlotte Pride.

“Locally in the DMV, I’m known for turning heads at nightlife venues with my eye-catching sense of style. When I go out, I don’t try to blend in. I hope I inspire people to be themselves and have the courage to stand out,” he says.

He’s also known for hosting karaoke at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington, Va., on Thursday nights. “I like to create a space where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, building community, and showcasing their talents.”

He also creates social media content from my performances and do interviews at LGBTQ+ bars and theatres in the DMV. Follow the Arlington resident @johnlevengood.

How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?

I have been fully out of the closet since 2019. My parents were the hardest people to tell because my family has always been my rock and at the time I couldn’t imagine a world without them. Their reactions were extremely positive and supportive so I had nothing to fear all along.
I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, dad, and sister in our hotel room in New Orleans during our winter vacation and being so nervous to tell them. After I finally mustered up the nerve and made the proclamation, I realized my dad had already fallen asleep on the couch. My mom promised to tell him when he woke up.

Who’s your LGBTQ hero?

My LGBTQ heroes are Harvey Milk for paving the way for gays in politics and Elton John for being a pioneer for the fabulous and authentic. My local heroes in the DMV are Howard Hicks, manager of Green Lantern, and Tony Rivenbark, manager of Freddie’s Beach Bar. Both of them are essential to creating spaces where I’ve felt welcome and safe since moving to the DMV.

What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?

Trade tops the list for me because of the dance floor and outdoor space. It’s so nice to get a break from the music every once and a while to be able to have a conversation.

We live in challenging times. How do you cope?

I’m still figuring this out. What is working right now is writing music and spending time with family and friends. I’ve also been spending less time on social media going to the gym at least three times a week.

What streaming show are you binging?

After “Traitors” Season 4 ended, I was in a bit of a show hole, but “Stumble” has me in a laughing loop right now. The writing is so witty.

What do you wish you’d known at 18?

At 18, I wish I would have known how liberating it is to come out of the closet. It would have been nice to know some winning lottery numbers as well.

What are your friends messaging about in your most recent group chat?

We are planning our next trip to New York City. If you can believe it, I visited NYC for the first time in 2025 for Pride and I’ve been back every quarter since. Growing up in the country, I was subconsciously primed to be scared of the city. But my mind has been blown. I can’t wait to go back.

Why Washington?

It’s the closest metropolitan area to my family, but not too close. I love the museums, the diversity, the history, and the proximity to the beach and mountains. It’s also nice to live in a city with public transportation.

a&e features

Project GLOW celebrates LGBTQ acts

D.C.’s electronic music festival set for May 30-31

Published

1 week ago

April 16, 2026

Evan Caplan

A scene from last year’s Project GLOW. (Photo courtesy organizers)

Aging RFK Stadium has come down, but the RFK grounds are still getting lit up. Welcome back to the stage Project GLOW, D.C.’s homegrown electronic festival, on May 30-31. Back for its fifth year on these musically inclined acres, Project GLOW returns with an even more diverse lineup, and one that continues to celebrate LGBTQ antecedents, attendees, and acts.

Project GLOW 2026 headliners include house and techno star Mau P, progressive house legend Eric Prydz, hard-techno favorite Sara Landry, and bass acts Excision b2b Sullivan King, among the lineup of trance, bass, house, techno, dubstep, and others for the fifth anniversary year.

President & CEO Pete Kalamoutsos — born and raised in D.C. — founded Club GLOW in 1999. In 2020, GLOW entered into a partnership with global entertainment company Insomniac Events to produce live events like Project GLOW, which kicked off in 2022.

As in past years, Project GLOW not only makes space, but is intentionally inclusive of the LGBTQ community, one of its most dedicated fan bases. The festival’s LGBTQ-focused Secret Garden stage blooms again — a more intimate dance area that stands on the strength of DJs and musicians who draw from the LGBTQ community. D.C.’s LGBTQ nightlife mastermind Ed Bailey is the creative mind behind Secret Garden again. He joined Project GLOW in 2023.

“Kalamoustos says that “he’s proud of his partnership with Ed Bailey, along with Capital Pride and [nightlife producer] Jake Resnikow. It’s amazing to collaborate with Bailey at the Secret Garden stage, especially after the curated lineup we worked on at Pride last year.”

The Secret Garden will be a bit different from other stages: Eternal (“At the Eternal stage, time stands still. Lose yourself in the dance of past, present, and future, surrendering to the eternal rhythm of the universe”) and Pulse (“Feel the rhythm of the beat pulse through your veins as the heartbeat of the crowd synchronizes into one. Here, every moment vibrates with life as it guides you through a new dimension of euphoria”). The Secret Garden stage is in the round, surrounded by 16 shipping containers. The containers play canvas to muralists from around the world, who are coming in to paint them in a vibrant garden-style vibe. “We gave this stage some extra love with this layout,” K says, “ we finally cracked the code.”

K says that this will be the biggest lineup yet for the Secret Garden, featuring Nicole Moudaber b2b Chasewest, Riordan b2b Bullet Tooth, Ranger Trucco, Cassian, Eli & Fur, Cosmic Gate and Hayla. The stage is also the largest yet, featuring an expanded dance floor and 360-degree viewing.

Across all stages, K says that his goal for the fifth anniversary is “More art and fan interactive experience, more like a festival, strive to be like a Tomorrowland, as budget grows to add more experience.” Last year’s Project GLOW alone drew 40,000 attendees over two days.

K, however, was not satisfied with one festival this spring. GLOW recently announced a “pop-up” one-day event. Teaming up with Black Book Records, GLOW is set to throw a first-of-its-kind dance-music takeover of Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., headlined by electronic music star Chris Lake. Set for April 18, this euphoric block party will feature bass and vibes blocks from the White House. Organizers expect as many as 10,000 fans to attend. Beyond music, there will be food, activations, and plenty of other activities taking place around 6th St and Pennsylvania Ave NW – a location familiar to many in the LGBTQ community, as this sits squarely inside the blocks of the Capital Pride party that takes place in DC every June.

Over the past two decades, Club GLOW has produced thousands of events, from club nights to large-scale festivals including Project GLOW, Moonrise Festival, and more. Club GLOW also operates Echostage.