Clint Catalyst

Born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Catalyst was raised an only child to Southern Baptist parents. Other than a year in Germany on scholarship, he remained there until he attended Hendrix College, where he started As If magazine and received a Bachelors in English with honors distinction.

British journalist Mick Mercer describes As If as an "excellent magazine in terms of its international content, the artwork and contributions. Normally poetry-based things can cause your spleen to explode with fury at wasted space but Clint knows who means what." Upon graduation, Catalyst went to San Francisco, where he earned a Master of Arts in writing from the University of San Francisco. He said he knew he was gay from a young age, but identifies with the term "queer" in regards to his orientation.

Writing in the LA Weekly, Linda Immediato called Catalyst a "Midwestern ex–meth head who came to L.A. by way of San Francisco, where he was a goth art-club darling — the most photographed model of the underground." In Los Angeles in the 1990s "he became the most sought-after nightclub... guest-list gatekeeper, wooed by seemingly every hip promoter in the city."