Getting his start as a child actor in the early 1990s, Joey Hardy Gray has since worked in film, television, theater, dance, fashion, photography, journalism, and art.

In 2017, Joey graduated from University of California Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in English (minor focus on film studies and queer literature) and then went on to New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where he earned a master’s degree in Cultural Reporting & Criticism in 2019, under the mentorship of program director Katie Roiphe.

As a queer millennial artist having grown up during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Joey is also focused on activism and outreach: in 2016 he founded HARDY, a hybrid print-only zine as a platform for queer visibility (named for his gay grandfather); he has volunteered as a crisis counselor at the Trevor Project Lifeline, an intervention and suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth; since 2022 he has served as director of Adam Lambert’s charity, Feel Something Foundation.

Joey is passionate about intergenerational erasure and the preservation of queer cultural archives. His work is rooted in the spirit of joyful resilience found in the pockets of time between landmark events in LGBTQ history. His production company, HARDY Productions, is dedicated to innovative storytelling that highlights lost or lesser-known happenings in our history, in homage to pioneers like Vito Russo.