From the Octagon

Allen Young has lived in Royalston, Massachusetts, since 1973, coming with several friends to the North Quabbin region of central Massachusetts as part of the back-to-the-land movement . He helped build his own octagonal timber-framed house, has hiked and canoed throughout the region, and has cultivated a productive organic vegetable garden .He first experienced forests, waterfalls, and gar- dening during his childhood on a poultry farm in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York state, where he was born in 1941 .After graduating from Fall- sburgh Central High School, he attended Columbia285College in New York City, receiving the bachelor of arts degree in 1962 . He earned a master of arts degree in Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian studies from Stanford University in California and a master of sci- ence degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism .Upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964, he spent three years in Brazil and other Latin American countries, and while there he contributed numerous articles to the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and other periodicals .Returning to the United States in 1967, he worked briefly as a reporter for the Washington Post, resigning in the fall of that year to become a full-time antiwar activist and staff member of Liberation News Service .In 1970, following the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, Young participated in the gay liberation movement, collaborating with lesbian writer and schol- ar Karla Jay on four books, including the pioneering anthology Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation.After returning to his rural roots, Young becamea reporter for the Athol Daily News, later serving as assistant editor . He launched Millers River Publishing Company in 1983 to produce his regional guidebook North of Quabbin and published more than a dozen ti- tles after that. Haley's published his North of Quabbin Revisited in 2003 .From 1989 to 1999, he was director of communi-ty relations for Athol Memorial Hospital . He was a co-founder of the North Quabbin Diversity Awareness Group. In 1998, he was the first recipient of the North Quabbin Community Coalition's Barbara Corey Award286"in honor of his passion for life, his values and his love for the citizens of our region." In 2004, he receivedthe Writing and Society Award from the University of Massachusetts English Department "honoring a distin- guished career of commitment to the work of writing in the world."He was invited by Erving Paper Mills to write the official company history for its 2005 centennial. Oth-er books of local interest include Millers River Read-er, which he edited; Make Hay While the Sun Shines: Farms, Forests, and People of the North Quabbin; The Man Who Got Lost: North Quabbin Stories; and Thalas- sa: One Week in a Provincetown Dune Shack.He self-published his autobiography, Left, Gay & Green: A Writer's Life, in 2018 .