Twenty-Five Years of Living in Leather: The National Leather Association, 1986-2011

This book is a detailed retrospective of the first twenty-five years of the National Leather Association: International. It follows the progression of one man's idea as it was achieved by the hands of many. As you will see while reading this story, the road that NLA took was certainly the one less traveled. The creation of the National Leather Association (NLA) marked the culmination of the hopes of many people for a national, pansexual organization that brought together all the diverse elements of the SM/leather/fetish community that emerged in the generation following World War II. While previous efforts to form a nationwide SM organization in the United States had failed, the NLA flourished and grew rapidly, particularly during its first decade. NLA chapters formed across the United States and Canada, and people attended the NLA's flagship event, the annual Living in Leather conference, from across the world. The first event of its kind, the Living in Leather (LIL) conference became a model for the other SM organizations and pioneered a format that remains common to virtually all SM conferences today.