Nadine L. McGann

Afterimage, May-June, 2005 by David Trend

Former Afterimage coeditor Nadine L. McGann died unexpectedly in October 2004 at age 42. Known within the Afterimage community as a versatile critic and skilled editor, McGann joined the staff in 1989 as an assistant during my tenure as editor. I had been greatly impressed with McGann's freelance writing and I welcomed the opportunity for her to join us. McGann had graduated from the University of Chicago a few years earlier, where she edited the Grey City Journal. At Afterimage, McGann's talent and generosity as an editor quickly earned her the admiration of the journal's writers. When I left Afterimage in 1990. McGann was appointed coeditor, a position she held jointly with Grant Kester.

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Always a prolific writer, McGann continued generating her own articles during her time at Afterimage. This material reflected the cultural politics and critical priorities that brought McGann to the journal. Censorship preoccupied much of the arts community during the early 1990s and McGann responded with a series of reports on funding denials to lesbian and gay arts groups. McGann's interviews included "Television that Works" (September 1989; Vol. 17, no. 2) with Chicago's Committee for Labor Access and "A Kiss is Not A Kiss: An Interview with John Greyson" (January 1992; Vol. 19, no. 6). These interviews revealed an aptitude for drawing subjects into the conversation with depth and good cheer, as when McGann remarked to Greyson, "So for a gay audience it's funny and for a straight audience it's funny but for slightly different reasons. I often have these moments where I think. 'what would my mother think?"

After leaving Afterimage in early 1993, McGann relocated briefly to San Francisco before returning to her native New York City. McGann's lifelong struggle with clinical depression, which in 1994 intensified and rendered McGann unable to work, was the subject of a feature article in The New York Times ("Some Still Despair in a Prozac Nation," July 27, 1999). Since then, McGann had become a dog trainer and a familiar figure among dog owners frequenting Brooklyn's Prospect Park, where she volunteered and taught classes.

Nadine was one of the most thorough and conscientious editors I've ever known. At the same time, she was an extremely important voice for issues of queer theory and media studies in Afterimage during the late 1980s and early '90s. Her passing is a great loss.

DAVID TREND, former editor of Afterimage, is professor of Studio Art, University of California, Irvine.