I’ve been riding a wave of pride, community, and inspiration, since returning from Lambda Literary Foundation’s 2011 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices.
There were forty-two of us Fellows in the program, and I’ll be adding blog links to some of the fabulous writers I connected with.
Many people have been asking me to describe the experience. On a nuts-and-bolts level, it’s easy.
I was in the Genre Fiction workshop (Genre Queer, we quickly named ourselves). There were ten Fellows in that track. The instructor was lesbian mystery and sci fi author Katherine V. Forrest.
For six days we participated in half day workshops that were part didactic, in terms of craft, and part critiquing each others’ work. Then there were evening programs with panels, featured speakers (including trans historian and artist Susan Stryker), and readings by the Fellows.
All this was great, and gave me a fresh perspective on my writing, the publishing biz, etc. What was less expected, and a bit harder to describe, was how the program impacted my identity as a queer writer.
A writer’s life can be a lonely. For minority writers, it can feel even more alienating. This I was aware of well before the retreat, but meeting queer writers from parts of the country where there’s even less queer visibility drove the point home deeper.
A debate among LGBT/queer authors comes up frequently. Are you an LGBT author? Or are you an author who “happens to be” LGBT?
We’re all searching for a readership, and I guess folks who respond better to the latter question resent being limited in their reach because of who they are. Or, they may prefer to say, being queer is an infinitesimal part of who they are (thank you very much), and it has nothing to do with their writing.
Fine.
I’ve always felt solidly in the queer-identified author camp, and the LLF retreat reinforced that. A different way of looking at the debate is: how does being an out and proud queer author expand your reach? I think it does, since it tells readers what they can expect from you, not merely in terms of what kinds of stories you tell, but also your point-of-view. You have to define your product in order to market it. You have to know yourself in order to sell who you are to other people. Yes, I believe writing is necessarily an extension of who you are, whether it’s intentionally autobiographical or not.
So, back to the retreat, I guess it was the experience of being surrounded by so many other queer writers, who love queer fiction. We were all eating it up ravenously, no questions about “will this play to a non-queer audience?” or “will other readers get it?” This was what changed me. I want to celebrate queer lit. I want to shout it from the bell towers. I found the place where I belong, and it’s fucking great!
Queer lit can change the world. It’s happening every day.
