Dedicated to the Last Pearl: Jojo “Josefina Larina Queen of the Congolina” Gilbert, of the Pearl Box Revue

Harrison Apple is an oral historian, reluctant community archivist, and PhD of gender and women's studies with a minor in information from the University of Arizona. Their dissertation, “A Social Member in Good Standing: Pittsburgh's Gay and Lesbian Afterhours Social Clubs,” weaves the oral history of club owner and gay would-be mafiosa “Lucky” with urban history of race and sexuality in Pittsburgh to reconstruct the meaning of “membership” to these after-hours queer discos. In their work to rediscover records of club activity beneath layers of complex and intentionally opaque documentation, they simultaneously lean toward betraying the archival profession by preserving materials in place, even as they are imminently deteriorating. Apple's writing has been published in Archivaria, TSQ, Outhistory.org, and the Introduction to Transgender Studies (2019).