Spoken Word: Episode 18: Dennis Altman: Death in the Sauna

29 Jun 2023

Spoken Word: Episode 18: Dennis Altman: Death in the Sauna

Arts, James WF Roberts, Joy Media, Joy94.9, Literature, Performing Arts, Podcasting, Sexuality, Spoken Word

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Spoken Word: Episode 18: Dennis Altman: Death in the Sauna

This week on Spoken Word we are honoured to have an Australian Literary Queer Icon, Dennis Altman.

On the eve of a major international AIDS Conference in London, the Conference chair is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Tracking down how he died reveals layers of deception, rivalry and danger for those close to him.

This is a small, page-turning, sweaty, twisty and joyous novel. It’s refreshing crime, that’s completely unique but comforting in its form, and that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Death in the Sauna been described by many people, including Ben Law, as what Agatha Christie would have written had she been a gay man.

Dennis Altman has written widely on sexuality, politics and culture both in Australia and globally. Since his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, Altman has written seventeen books, including Global Sex and Unrequited Love: Diary of an Accidental Activist.

‘I was President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific (2001-5) and have been a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society. I know of no other crime book that takes as its setting the international AIDS/HIV world, which I know very well and which is the background to the story.’ – Dennis Altman

Altman supports organizations that are dedicated to creating a better life for homosexuals, serving on the Australian National Council on AIDS and other international organizations including the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific, of which (as of the 2005 Kobe ICAAP Congress) he is president.] In October 2006 he was elected to the board of Oxfam Australia. In 2010 he stepped down from this position.

Altman is a long-time patron of the Australian Queer Archives. He has been deeply involved with government and community responses to HIV/AIDS in Australia and the Asia Pacific. He has written in the Mind of America (1986) and Power and Community (1994), regarding the topics of HIV and AIDS.

Altman is a professorial fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University. He was president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific (2001–2005), and has been a member of the governing council of the International AIDS Society. In 2005 he was visiting professor of Australian studies at Harvard. In July 2006, he was listed by The Bulletin as one of the 100 most influential Australians ever.

In June 2008, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.