Sasha Alyson

Alyson grew up in Berea, Ohio. He recalls being discouraged from reading because the books were dull. "I wasn't making much progress until my parents got me a copy of The Cat in the Hat. That caught my imagination, and I soon became an avid reader." His earliest publishing experience came at the age of 16, when he and friends produced an underground newspaper at their high school, taking up issues of the Vietnam War, racism, and students' rights.

Activism

In 1988, Alyson initiated publication of the book You Can Do Something About AIDS, in which members of the publishing industry cooperated to produce a 126-page book that was distributed free through bookstores. Other publishers and writers contributed articles and funding, and Elizabeth Taylor wrote the book's introduction. A first printing of 150,000 copies was gone in 10 days, and the book went through additional printings, finally reaching 1.5 million copies in print. As a result of this work, Alyson received the first Lambda Literary award for Publisher's Service.

In 1990, Alyson created the imprint "Alyson Wonderland" to publish children's books that depicted families with lesbian and gay parents. Under the penname Johnny Valentine, Alyson wrote five of these children's books including The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans (1991) which won a Lambda Literary Award and was named an outstanding children's book of the season by Robert Hale in Horn Book Magazine. Books from the new imprint were frequently challenged in libraries, and were the subject of a major controversy in New York City when some of the titles were included on a reading list for the "Children of the Rainbow" curriculum. One title, Daddy's Roommate, faced more challenges from library patrons than any other book in the country in 1993 and 1994, according to the American Library Association. Alyson replied to the critics with an editorial in the New York Times, in which he wrote that "The parents who protest the Rainbow curriculum grew up at a time when gay people were invisible. But their children will live in a different world."

By 1992, Alyson Publications had become the largest independent publisher of gay and lesbian books, with sales of almost one million dollars a year. Alyson and his company were named "Publisher of the Year" by the New England Booksellers Association in 1994 and received the "Small Business of the Year Award" from the Greater Boston Business Council in the same year.

In 1995, Alyson sold the business to Liberation Publications, publisher of the gay magazine, The Advocate. The new owner moved the offices to California (and later to New York) and renamed it "Alyson Books".

Alyson also founded Bay Windows, a weekly gay newspaper in Boston, in 1983. It is still published, under different ownership.