Dan Savage, author of the wildly popular sex advice column “Savage Love” and cofounder with his husband Terry Miller of the It Gets Better Project,  returns to University of Alaska Anchorage on February 9, 2012 with his honest and funny question and answer session on everything sexual. Tickets available at UAATix starting January 20.

Dan Savage delivers his unique brand of sex advice in the wildly popular “Savage Love,”an internationally syndicated column read by millions of people every week. “Savage Love” is a cultural force that, over the years, has brought LGBT relationships into the mainstream. Savage has written the column for 15 years and it runs in more than 70 newspapers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Savage is also the editorial director of The Stranger, Seattle’s weekly alternative newspaper.

Savage has come to UAA twice before, in 2009 and 2010. In 2009, an in-depth interview of Savage by Brendan Joel Kelley (5 Feb 2009) appeared the Anchorage Press, which at that time still carried his Savage’s column.

Dan Savage is the author of four books, including Savage Love: Straight Answers from America’s Most Popular Sex Columnist (1998), a compilation of his sex advice columns; The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (1999), an award-winning memoir about adoption which is the inspiration for a new musical from the producers of Avenue Q; The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family (2006); and the Lambda Literary Award-winning Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America (2003).

Savage is also famous for his 2003 campaign to redefine santorum following antigay comments by then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, in which Santorum equated same-sex marriage with pedophilia and bestiality. By way of Google bombing, the campaign’s success was such that the redefinition coined by Savage and his readers continues to top Google search results for Santorum. With Rick Santorum’s current campaign to be the Republican nominee for President, the redefinition continues to have political currency, as demonstrated by Savage’s most recent “Savage Love” column, entitled “Santorum Surges” (11 Jan 2012).

In 2010, reacting to the suicides of bullied LGBT youth, Savage and his husband Terry Miller started the It Gets Better Project, which encourages adults to submit videos assuring gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender teens that life gets better. As of early 2012, the project generated more than 30,000 video submissions, including testimonials from President Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Gunn, Anne Hathaway, Kesha, and other celebrities. For creating It Gets Better, Savage received a Webby Special Achievement Award, the leading international award honoring online excellence. With his husband Terry Miller, Savage compiled a book based on It Gets Better videos, It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living, about which Bent Alaska wrote last March.

Savage is a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of the New York Times and to the public radio program This American Life. His writings have also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Salon.com, Nest, Rolling Stone, The Onion, and other publications. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, 20/20, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.

Savage’s audience-driven “Savage Love” talk, part of UAA’s Healthy Sexuality Week, may contain explicit language and sexual content. This event is very popular is likely to sell-out quickly — as it did two years ago when Dan Savage came to UAA. Get your tickets early! — they become available at UAATix starting January 20.

• Date/time: Thursday, February 9, 7:30 to 9:00 PM
• Location: Wendy Williamson Auditorium, University of Alaska Anchorage, 2533 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK (see map)
• Cost of admission: UAA students with current ID: In advance $5.00/ at the door $10.00. General Public: In advance $16.00/ at the door $20.00 Tickets available at UAATix starting January 20.
• Further info: If you have any questions on this event, or any other UAA Student Activities’ events, please contact 786-1219 or events@uaa.alaska.edu

Photo credit: Dan Savage, 12 June 2005. Photo via Wikimedia provided by Dan Savage; used in accordance with Creative Commons license.

Is your event not on our calendar? No matter where you are in the state, if you’re running an event of interest to the LGBTQA community, we’d be glad to put it on the  Bent Alaska events calendar.