Author of Love in the 90s, BB & Jo: The Story of a Lifelong Love, A Granddaughter’s Portrait (Warner Books, 1995) had a first printing of 150,000 copies. Faeries (Aperture Books, 2000) won the Lambda Literary Award for best art book of 2000 and Saving Body & Soul, The Mission of Mary Jo Copeland (Random House, 2004) Photographs by Keri Pickett. Essays & Interviews by Margaret Nelson helped raise money for the homeless shelter it features.
"In 1983 Fred McDarrah gave me an internship at the Village Voice Newspaper in NYC and I have been on my own ever since that time. In the late 80’s I left NYC and went home to MN due to a diagnosis of Burkitt’s lymphoma cancer. During my two years of chemotherapy I photographed children coping with life-threatening illness and often I would finish the roll of film at my grandparent’s home before heading to the darkroom to process my film. The result was not what I expected as I never published the book about children, but I did create my first book which paired images of my grandparents in their mid 90’s with their year long postal courtship from the late 1920s. That first book had a miraculous printing of 150,000 copies and the title is Love in the 90s, BB and Jo, The Story of a Lifelong Love, a Granddaughter’s Portrait (WarnerBooks, 1995).
My second book Faeries (Aperture, 2000) is about a retreat place in the north woods for a group of gay men who identify as being radical faeries.
My most recent book is about Mary Jo Copeland who I first photographed on a People magazine assignment. The reporter and I decided to go further and create a book about this amazing woman’s work with the poor and homeless resulting in Saving Body & Soul, The Mission of Mary Jo Copeland (Shaw, 2004) photographs by Keri Pickett and texts by Margaret Nelson.
