Joe Wood was attending the Unity ’99 journalism conference in Seattle when he went for a hike on Mount Rainier and never returned. Wood had been a writer and editor at Village Voice, and at numerous other publications through the 1980's and 90's. He was also an editor at The New Press, which made him one of the few Black editors in New York book publishing. His disappearance left a hole in his community and in that of the reading public. Wood’s story, along with many others about the country’s first alt-weekly, is part of Alta Journal contributor Tricia Romano’s new book, The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the “Village Voice,” the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture. Romano sits down with Alta senior editor (and former Village Voice online editor) Matt Haber and Wood's friend and colleague, author Martha Southgate to share Wood’s story and details of his disappearance. Romano and Haber will also discuss the incredible history of the Voice and take your questions about this journalistic institution.

About the guests:

Tricia Romano is a writer based in Seattle. She has been the editor in chief of the Stranger and a staff writer at the Village Voice and the Seattle Times.

Martha Southgate is the author of four novels: The Taste of Salt, Third Girl From The Left, The Fall of Rome and Another Way to Dance. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Book Review as well as the paper’s OpEd page and the New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post and the Village Voice. Among her more recent work is “We Lost It At The Movies” for the Los Angeles Review of Books and ”Rise Up,” an essay in the American Scholar about the transformative effect of Hamilton: An American Musical.

About the book:

The Freaks Came Out to Write is a rollicking history of America’s most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers. You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution cofounded by Norman Mailer, the Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and off Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats.•