ST Sukie de la Croix, who wrote for the Gay and Lesbian Humanist, among many other publications, has just published a new book, The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity.

He is most widely known for his 2012 book Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. His works have explored the underground cultures and aspects of Chicago’s LGBT community dating back to decades.

He has had several columns in Chicago publications, both in print and online: Outlines (now Windy City Times), Nightspots, Chicago Now, and Chicago Free Press.

St Sukie De la Croix was approached by Chicago’s municipal tourism authority to script and conduct the first “LGBT History of Chicago” bus tour. He had two plays, A White Light in God’s Choir (2005), and Two Weeks in a Bus Shelter with an Iguana (2006), performed by Chicago’s Irreverence Dance & Theater company.

In 2008, he participated as a historian in a PBS television documentary, Out and Proud in Chicago.

In 2011, he was honoured with an Esteem Award for Outstanding Magazine Reporter or Columnist. In November 2012, he was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

The writer and photographer was born in Bath, Somerset, as Darryl Michael Vincent, to a poor family. His father Stanley Reginald was a truck driver while his gypsy mother Doreen Mary worked in an engineering factory.

He was an only child and grew up an hour away from Stonehenge in a community populated by many pagans and gypsies. Due to his community and socialist parents, he was not raised to follow a specific religion. After changing his name to Sukie de la Croix, six years later he added “Saint”. When asked what he is the saint of, he replied that he’s the patron saint of homosexuals.

• The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity – a humorous fantasy that is receiving rave reviews – is available from Amazon.