Randy Shilts was a literary journalist working in the tradition of Norman Mailer and Truman Capote and became a pioneering voice in raising awareness of gay civil rights issues, as well as the AIDS crisis, and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists' Association in 1993. He found that he was HIV positive in 1987 and died in 1994. He also wrote The Mayor of Castro Street, a biography of Harvey Milk.
Rivals in power and intensity, and in the brilliance of its reporting and writing, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood * Boston Globe * Stunning ... An impressively researched and richly detailed narrative. * TIME * A heroic work of journalism on what must rank as one of the foremost catastrophes of modern history. * The New York Times *