Kevin Howard Scott Sessums (born March 28, 1956) is an American

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

, editor and actor.

Early life

Kevin Sessums was born on March 28, 1956, in

Forest, Mississippi Forest is a city and the county seat of Scott County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 5,684 at the 2010 census and the population is a minority-majority. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total a ...

. His brother is artist Dr. J. Kim Sessums of

Brookhaven, Mississippi Brookhaven is a small city in Lincoln County, Mississippi, United States, south of the state capital of Jackson. The population was 12,520 at the 2010 U.S. Census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County. It was named after the town of Brookha ...

. Sessums attended, but dropped out of, the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Career

Sessums has served as executive editor of ''

Interview An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" ...

'' and as a contributing editor of '' Vanity Fair'', '' Allure'', and Parade. His work has also appeared in Travel+Leisure, Elle, Out, Marie Claire, Playboy, Thedailybeast.com and Towleroad.com. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of '' FourTwoNine'' magazine and the Editor at Large of the

Curran Theatre The Curran Theatre, located at 445 Geary Street between Taylor and Mason Streets in the Theatre District of San Francisco, California opened in February 1922, and was named after its first owner, Homer Curran. As of 2014, the theater is owned by ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. Currently, he is the Editor in Chief of sessumsMagazine.com which he founded in October 2017 as well as Editor at Large at ''Grazia USA''. In 2007, Sessums published a memoir titled ''Mississippi Sissy'', which is about the conflicted life of a self-aware gay boy growing up in Forest, Mississippi. It made the New York Times Bestseller list and won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Best Male Memoir. His audio recording of ''Mississippi Sissy'' was nominated for a 2007

Quill Award The Quill Award was an American literary award that ran for three years in 2005-2007. It was a "consumer-driven award created to inspire reading while promoting literacy." The Quills Foundation, the organization behind the Quill Award, was suppor ...

. In 2015, he published his second memoir, ''I Left It on the Mountain,'' which made the New York Times Celebrity Bestseller List. Sessums portrayed the character Peter Cipriani in the miniseries adaptation of Armistead Maupin's

Tales of the City ''Tales of the City'' is a series of nine novels written by American author Armistead Maupin from 1978 to 2014, depicting the life of a group of friends in San Francisco, many of whom are LGBT. The stories from ''Tales'' were originally serial ...

. Sessums was banned from posting on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

for 24 hours on December 29, 2016, after he compared the supporters of President-elect

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

to a "nasty fascistic lot" in a post. The company subsequently issued an apology.

Personal life

Sessums is openly

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

and he is

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

+. In an August 2014 interview with ''The New York Times'' to promote ''FourTwoNine'', a magazine, he claimed to have used

crystal meth Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamphe ...

. At the time of the interview, he resided in San Francisco, but now lives in partially abroad.

Works

* *

References

External links

Web site for ''Mississippi Sissy''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sessums, Kevin 1956 births American memoirists American gay writers LGBT people from Mississippi Living people Lambda Literary Award winners People with HIV/AIDS Juilliard School alumni People from Forest, Mississippi Gay memoirists