RKarlin

Inducted in Cchicago's Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1997

Hall of Fame Bio
For more than 20 years, he has been a visible public figure in print and onstage. He has lent his talents to countless charitable events, co-founded the city’s first gay parents group, volunteered extensively for Horizons Community Services, been a leading advocate for gay and lesbian teachers, and contributed his writings to all the local gay and lesbian media.
Rick Karlin has been an activist in Chicago’s gay and lesbian community for more than 20 years. A visible public figure in print and onstage, he has also lent his talents to countless charitable events. Many know him only in his public persona, but he is as comfortable working behind the scenes doing drudge work as he is onstage receiving plaudits.
Karlin’s activism began in 1976. As a single gay father, he found it hard to reconcile his status as a parent with that of a gay man. Working with his friend Kathy Ramos, he founded Chicago’s first gay parents group. Later, he moved it toward affiliation with Horizons Community Services.
In 1984 and 1985, he brought to Chicago the Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International’s conference, which he chaired. Later, he served as an executive vice president of the coalition, organized its 1987 March on Washington contingent, and received its President’s Award in 1996.
From 1978 to 1982, Karlin wrote for GayLife as the Gay Gourmet. Meanwhile, in 1979, he began as a volunteer at Horizons Community Services (then Gay Horizons), rose to a board position, and organized Horizons’ Saturday Night Coffeehouse at the Jane Addams Hull House Center until 1986. In 1980, Spin Cycle, a musical he cowrote with the late Frank DePaul, opened for a three-month run at the Theatre Building and became the first gay-themed musical to be reviewed by Chicago’s mainstream press.
In 1982, he began writing for Gay Chicago Magazine. His serials, “Tales of the Second City” and “Death on the Rocks,” became popular features of the magazine through 1995. In 1988, he began editing the magazine’s “After Dark” section, aided in turning the magazine’s focus from being a bar guide to being a full entertainment guide, and helped to showcase charity events and benefits on the magazine’s covers. He inaugurated the magazine’s “Dream Date with Gay Chicago’s Most Eligible Bachelors” as a benefit auction for Chicago House, and he made the magazine’s “After Dark” Awards into a benefit for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. In 1996, he moved to Nightlines and began broadcasting on Chicago’s “LesBiGay Radio” program.
Karlin emceed ceremonies for the NAMES Project’s Quilt and has organized or served as auctioneer in benefits for Horizons Community Services, the Gerber/Hart Library, Open Hand Chicago, and numerous other groups. Since 1994, he has produced four annual benefit versions of “A Commitment to Love,” which received much publicity as the world’s first gay and lesbian “wedding fair,” and he produced “Night of 100 Drag Queens” benefits in 1994 and 1995.
Besides that, Karlin helped his friend Alyn Toler to establish Chicago’s Pink Angels in 1992, was a founding member and enthusiastic publicist for the Chicago chapter of what is now the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), has been named one of Illinois’s “Most Talented Teachers” and an “Outstanding Teacher” in Chicago, received a Rochelle Lee Fund grant, and reared two sons. He is now working toward his doctorate degree in education and writes for Chicago Outlines.

Addendum: Since my inducation, I have also written for Chicago Free Press and am currently editor of BOI Magazine and a contributor to the Wisconsin Gazette and ChicagoPride.com. I have written a dozen musicals which have been produced locally and my first novel, "Show Biz Kids" was released in 2007. My new musical, written with Scott Free, "Witches Among Us" will be produced in the fall of 2014. While I continue to contribute to ChicagoPride.com and edit BOI Magazine, I am currently living in Wilton Manors, FL, where I am the travel editopr for Florida Agenda and Guy Magazine and work in public relations.

Interests

Interests

Travel,theater, movies, pulp fiction, memoirs and biographies, cooking and cuisine and spendingg time with my hubby, the talented Gregg Shapiro, and my son Adam and playiing with my "girl", Dusty K.D.(a basenji/pitbull mix).