THE GEORGE HODGMAN SCHOLARSHIP FUND
George Hodgman 1959-2019
George Hodgman, author of the bestselling memoir Bettyville, was a magazine and book editor whose work included award-winning books and articles.
George worked as an editor at Simon & Schuster, Vanity Fair, Henry Holt and Houghton Mifflin. His own writing appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Interview, W, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications. In Bettyville, George shares his life as a gay man in New York City at the start of the AIDS crisis, his complex relationship with his aging mother who never acknowledged his sexuality, and his return to Paris, MO, a small, rural town where he grew up, to care for her.
“Going to my first Gay Alliance meeting [as a teenager] was difficult for me for many reasons, most especially because it showed me that I had no idea what was going on inside me. I had no idea what I was carrying around in my head. I thought I would walk into that meeting with no problems. I wasn’t nervous or scared or worried when I contemplated it. But when I walked in that room, I was overcome with anxiety, guilt, and nerves . . .”
“One of the reasons I wanted to include the gay material in this book is that I think that straight people still don’t get the things that young gay kids have to overcome in order to live without guilt and find a way of living outside the conventions that they are comfortable with. As a boy, I went to the library to try to find out who I was and what that meant. I am interested in the ways gay children find and enter their lives and their processes and journeys toward figuring out their identities. People think this is a rare problem now. It is not.”
* Excerpted from “A Conversation with George Hodgman”
Your gift to the George Hodgman Scholarship Fund will support Hetrick-Martin Institute’s Academic Enrichment Program, which helps young people with tutoring, test prep, high school equivalency classes and college counseling.
About Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI)
HMI is the nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ youth serving agency providing a 360-degree approach that ensures LGBTQ youth have stabilized housing, basic resources like food, clothing and hot showers, and access to mental health counseling, education, job-readiness, art and health services and supportive adults to help them achieve a path to success.