The Poz 100 Honors Plus Editor

Every year, Poz magazine honors advocates who are making an impact in the fight against HIV. The 2019 list celebrates 100 advocates who are transgender, gender-nonconforming, or nonbinary. One of those honored this year is Plus magazine’s own deputy editor, Jacob Anderson-Minshall, a disabled queer trans man.

In addition to his duties at Plus, Anderson-Minshall is also deputy editor for the long-running LGBTQ magazine (and Plus’s sister publication), The Advocate. Together, he and his wife, Diane Anderson-Minshall, The Advocate’s editorial director, run Retrograde Communications, an editorial services partner of Pride Media. Both publications have won numerous journalistic awards under their leadership, including Folio’s Eddie & Ozzie Award in 2018 naming them “Editorial Team of the Year.”

A long-time fixture in LGBTQ media, Anderson-Minshall co-founded the now-defunct lesbian magazine Girlfriends; founded and cohosted the Portland, Ore., radio show Gender Blender; wrote the nationally syndicated column TransNation; and has contributed to numerous LGBTQ outlets. With Diane, he's the coauthor of the Blind Eye Detectives mysteries and Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders, an award-winning memoir recounting their experience transitioning from a lesbian couple to man and wife. His 2018 literary novel Swimming Upstreamrevolves in part around the early days of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and his webcomic Ripple FX features an HIV-positive protagonist.  Jacob is also a past recipient of a Marguerite Casey Foundation–funded grant for an investigative series on the intersections of race, poverty, gender, criminalization, and HIV. 

Plus deputy editor Jacob Anderson-Minshall (left) with wife Diane (right) at the 2018-19 Dorian Awards in West Hollywood, Calif.

Though this year’s Poz 100 included celebrity advocates like Pose star Dominique Jackson and Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness (who recently revealed his own HIV-positive status), the list is mostly made up of people like Anderson-Minshall; those working in the trenches everyday in the fight against HIV and its associated stigma. 

Whether it be through his creative work, his advocacy for disabled and chronically ill folks, or his work at Plus, Anderson-Minshall continues to be a major ally for those living with HIV and other marginalized people. “Storytelling remains one of the most powerful tools for advocacy and education,” stated Poz, “especially when that story is written by someone like Jacob.”