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This series comprises a variety of materials documenting Stephen Gendin's personal and family life from his childhood until his death at age 34. Correspondence in the series consists of letters written to Gendin by friends, partners, lovers, and relatives. Gendin's journals and personal writings provide great insight into his formative teenage and early adult years, particularly his coming out and identity as a gay man. In his early journals, Gendin writes about coming out to his family and friends during high school, as well as his experiences and feelings about being an openly gay teenager during the early 1980s. During his teenage years, Gendin also started writing frankly in his journal about his own sexuality and sexual experiences, a theme that would eventually carry over into his work for POZ Magazine, where he was known for often writing candidly about his sex life. In Gendin's Sex Journal, compiled during the late-1990s, he individually lists and describes most, if not all of his sexual encounters and partners dating back to 1982. After high school, Gendin's journal writing became more inconsistent. In journals dating from his college years, Gendin writes primarily about romantic and sexual experiences, his studies, and makes only occasional references to his contraction of HIV and his increasing involvement in HIV/AIDS activism. Only a few pages of journal writing from his post-college years are included in the papers. Also included in Gendin's personal writings are poems that he wrote for Kyle "Hush" McDowell, his partner from 1996 until his death; an essay on an experience at a gay dance club called The Saint; and a piece titled "Unnamed Magazine," which is handwritten and roughly laid out like a magazine, but does not appear to be a template for an actual publication. Gendin's student files include papers and assignments completed while he was a student at Ypsilanti High School, at Brown University, and during his graduate studies at the Union Theological Seminary. Also included are copies of Gendin's college applications; awards and scholarships he received when he graduated high school; college transcripts; and papers related to job searches both during and right after college. Photographs in the collection date primarily from the 1990s, and consist mostly of snapshots of Gendin and his friends at social functions, and on vacations and trips abroad. Some of these photographs appear to have been taken at Gay Pride events in New York City. There are also a number of nude photographs of Gendin, many of which appear to be self-portraits, and some of which feature vivid depictions of sexual acts.