Stu Levitan welcomes Kim Oclon for a conversation about her new LGBTQ coming of age novel, The War on All Fronts.
What would life be like for two closeted young men from Chicago in the late sixties – one serving in the infantry in Vietnam, one a freshman at the University of Wisconsin? And what would their life be like as individuals and as a closeted couple – sometimes in the same city, sometimes half a world away from each other?
Answering those questions is the business that occupies Kim Oclon in this moving and insightful young adult novel – a novel she is well-equipped to write, by both experience and training. She has a bachelor’s degree in Screenwriting from Columbia College and a MFA in Fiction Writing from Roosevelt University, both of the Chicago. And she was the co-founder of the first Gay/Straight Alliance at Grayslake Central High School, where she taught creative writing for six years. The War on all Fronts is her second YA novel, following 2020’s Man Up, an LGBTQ coming of age novel about high school athletes.
It is a real pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat Kim Oclon.
