PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEW: Jerry Wheeler

Today’s Pride Month interview is with author, editor and book reviewer Jerry Wheeler:

Hi, Jerry! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during the current pandemic lockdowns. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

I take early morning walks, listening to old sci-fi radio broadcasts and other spoken word recordings – not audiobooks or podcasts, though. I tend to stick to decades when radio drama and comedy was popular.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being gay influenced or informed your writing and editing?

I think it’s responsible for my writing and editing. Ever since high school, I’d written for various publications, had newspaper internships during college, was a wire service stringer for a while – all journalistic experience. I never received much fulfillment or found any direction writing fiction until I stopped trying to write ‘straight’ and changed a story I’d been shopping around to reflect that difference. And that was my first short story sale.

You run the excellent Out In Print website, reviewing gay literature across the spectrum from science fiction to mysteries to stage plays. I’m not aware of any other review sites that focus on gay lit without also keeping a narrow focus on specific genres. Why is it important to you to cast such a broad net?

For the same reason you also won’t see any major publishers appearing in Out in Print. My goal is to create a space for the independent publisher and the unreviewed author—the books that don’t fit easily definable categories. That’s not to say my reviewers and I don’t read genre lit. We do. But we also read drama, poetry, biographies, and non-fiction. And I see no difference between gay lit and genre lit other than formula. A good story is a good story. The only thing I don’t usually review is M/M romance because those books already have a number of exclusive review outlets.

You’ve edited a number of anthologies centered on gay themes, and were shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award for Tented: Gay Erotic Tales From Under the Big Top. What’s your process like for bringing an anthology together, from concept to final ToC?

It depends. If it’s a closed call for submissions, I’ll contact the authors on my closed call list and see how much interest they have. If it’s an open call, I’ll put the specs out and wait for the stories to come in. For a recent anthology that didn’t come off, I got over 100 stories and only had at most 15 slots to fill. Then, you have to read. And read. And read. Stuff that fits the specs. Stuff that doesn’t. Stuff that isn’t even close. Alternate fonts. Little margins. Formatting from hell. Once you’ve made your choices, you send the letters, get the contracts signed, edit the stories, put them in order and get the final manuscript to the publisher. It’s as easy as that.

You’ve also recently re-released your Lamda-nominated story collection Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits (with a stunning new cover by Matt Bright). Tell us about the book and why it was time to bring it back into print.

Well, had it not been for a dispute with Steve Berman at Lethe Press, it’d still be in print. It was an unfortunate casualty of my firing him. Since I retained the rights, I decided to update it with four new stories (more on that later) and self-publish it. To be fair, Matt Bright’s terrific cover was actually on the last version of the book as published on Lethe’s Unzipped imprint, so Steve paid for it (he’d want everyone to know that). It never got a push from Lethe, but that’s not a surprise. However, I did update the cover with the Lambda nominee medal, and it looks spiffy indeed.

Erotica tends to get a bad rap and a sneering reaction. As editor and author of multiple erotic short stories and anthologies, do think we’re slowly seeing a shift towards acceptance/”legitimacy” of erotica as a genre?

I hope not. Erotica should be ground-breaking and should always, always push the envelope. The closer it comes to telling its truth rather than an “acceptable” version of its truth, the closer it should be to the edge. The more acceptance it gets, the more mainstream and homogenized it becomes—and life is way too short to have the same kind of sex everyone else does.

What are you working on now and what do you have coming out soon?

Right now, I’m working on a novel about vampires who subsist on musical talent instead of blood. It’s called “Pangs,” and it’s an expansion of the novella with which I ended my short story collection. That novella is actually the first part of the book. I took it out of the short story collection and substituted four new stories (“T-Bone, Medium Rare,” an essay about a blind date, “Discodemius,” a time-traveling tale of a demon from the 1970s, “Necessary Elvis,” about Elvis’s return to glory, and “Wings,” my very first short short). I’m about 10K from finishing the novel, so I hope to have it out soon.

And finally, where can people find you and your work online?

I’m on Facebook (Jerry L. Wheeler), Twitter (@jw_den), and Instagram (wheeler_jerry). People can also visit my website at Write and Shine (https://jerrywheelerblog.wordpress.com/) for information about my editing services and where to buy my books. For the best in queer lit reviews, join me at Out in Print (https://outinprintblog.wordpress.com/)

Jerry L. Wheeler is the editor of the Lambda Literary Award finalist Tented: Gay Erotic Tales from Under the Big Top (Lethe Press, 2010) as well as Riding the Rails: Locomotive Lust and Carnal Cabooses, The Dirty Diner: Gay Erotica on the Menu, and is the author of Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits (Lethe Press, 2012), also a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEW: Delia Sherman

Tonight’s Pride Month interview is with author Delia Sherman. Today is also Delia’s birthday!

Hi, Delia! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

Since the book I’m currently working on is about war, regime change, revolt, hunger, and desperation, I’m having less trouble than I would have expected staying focused. When I first started this book four years ago, I wanted to write a historical novel, not about the kings and nobles and generals who make history, but about the people history happens to when they’re just trying to live their lives. Before, it was more of a thought experiment; now it’s our reality.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being lesbian influenced or informed your art/craft?

 It has certainly had some influence on the stories I choose to tell, but even more on who I choose to tell them about. My tendency to write about finding community and creating family comes, I think, primarily from my being adopted. But my characters, and the kinds of communities and families they create, were born of my experience of being in my 20’s, closeted, shy, and looking for a context in an age of Women’s Liberation and Gay Pride and AIDS. I didn’t realize that at the time, of course—this is 20/20 hindsight. These days, I’m a little more deliberate in my choices. My current novel is very much focused on women’s lives and loves, with men in secondary roles. I’m also exploring gender-neutral and gender-fluid characters, and how they fit in historical periods where men were supposed to be men and women were supposed to be subservient.

You co-authored The Fall of the Kings with your wife Ellen Kushner. As you know, the book made a huge impression on me. It was, I think, the first fantasy novel I was able to see “myself” in after I started my coming-out process. So thanks again for that. Can you talk a bit about how collaborating on a book with your spouse differs, if at all, from collaborating with other writers (for instance, your work on the Serial Box series Whitehall, which sadly did not get a second season)?

For me, writing is kind of like tightrope walking. I’ve got to get from here (my premise) to there (my conclusion) in an entertaining and suspenseful way, without either boring the audience or falling off and breaking my neck. Collaboration is working with a net. Not only do I have someone who can come up with ideas for tricks that would never cross my mind, but if one of us falters, the other can help steady them. Of course, there have to be rules. For The Fall of the Kings, Ellen and I divided the writing. She was responsible for the Society Plot; I came up with the Academic Plot; she was Queen of Worldbuilding, because it was her world. Early on, we decided that the only way this was going to work was to agree that the book was more important than our egos, and then it was all horse-trading and compromise and discussion. We shared our strengths. If I got stuck on dialogue, Ellen wrote it; if she needed description, I added it.

The Freedom Maze and The Evil Wizard Smallbone were among my favorite books in the years they were published and remain high on my recommendations lists. Any chance you’ll return to either of those worlds for further adventures?

Probably not. I’m not, by nature, a series writer. I’ve always liked books that had felt like an episode in the characters’ lives, with a before and after that we might guess or imagine, but aren’t told. Also, they’re middle-grade books, and I’m looking at three long adult historicals that have been circling the runway for something like 15 years. If I get those done (I’m a slow writer, and they’re all pretty research-heavy), then we’ll see. <laughs like a pack of coyotes on holiday>

What are you working on now and what do you have coming out soon?

I am currently enmeshed in a big historical covering (among other things) the eight months between July of 1870 and May of 1871, during which Paris lived through a war, a regime change, a winter siege, a humiliating defeat and brief occupation, a revolution, and a savage repression of that revolution. My main characters are prostitutes, who tended to turn to each other for love and true intimacy. It’s kind of Dickens meets Victor Hugo and they take Baudelaire and Sarah Waters out for dinner. It’s called The Absinthe Drinker, and it’s giving my brain a real workout.  

Finally, where can people find you and your work online?

They can find me at www.deliasherman.com, my ancient and out of date website about which I really must do something real soon now.

There are two novellas that are going to form part of the book I’ll be writing when I finish The Absinthe Drinker.

 “The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor” is at https://www.tor.com/2011/10/07/the-ghost-of-cwmlech-manor/

“The Great Detective” is at https://www.tor.com/2016/02/17/the-great-detective-delia-sherman/

I haven’t been able to find any of my short stories for free on-line, but there’s an excerpt from “Walpurgis Afternoon,” my lesbian witches in the suburbs story, at https://www.tor.com/2014/10/09/young-woman-in-a-garden-excerpt-walpurgis-afternoon-delia-sherman/

Delia Sherman writes short stories and novels for adults and young readers. Several of her short stories have been nominated for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. The Freedom Maze received the Andre Norton Award, the Mythopoeic Award, and the Prometheus Award. Young Woman in a Garden, a collection of short stories, came out in 20014 from Small Beer Press.  Her most recent projects are MG novel The Evil Wizard Smallbone and 3 episodes in the Serial Box series Whitehall in collaboration with Liz Duffy Adams. She has taught several writing workshops, including Clarion, the Hollins University Program in Children's Literature, and Odyssey. She can write almost anywhere, but prefers cafes and comfy sofas near a source of tea. She lives in New York City with her wife Ellen Kushner and many books, most of which at least one of them has read.  Besides writing and reading other people's manuscripts, favorite occupations are travel, knitting, cooking, and having fun adventures, as long as they don't involve zombies or long-leggedy beasties.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEW: SA Hunt

Today’s Pride Month interview is with author SA Hunt:

Hi, Samara! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during the current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

Self-care, self-care, self-care. Love, both for myself and from my friends. Really, you can read all the books you want, or watch all the TV, play all the games, but if you feel bad, you’re not gonna produce anything. Take care of yourself so the words can come out.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being transgender influenced or informed your writing?

First, it has made me profoundly more aware of the trials and tribulations of being transgender. It has introduced me to a whole new world of terror and paranoia that I’d never experienced before, not even during my year in Afghanistan, and a level of wonder and confidence I never could have dreamed of.

Second, it’s nothing short of astonishing watching my body and face change under the effects of the estrogen. I would almost say it’s sort of a form of body-modification. Six months in, the shape and texture of my face have changed to become more rounder and softer. All of the fat gain in my body has redistributed itself to a more feminine shape.

I say both of those things because I am a huge believer in the adage “Write what you know.”

Most people don’t understand what WWYK actually means, they think it means that you can only write things that you’re familiar with, or that you do for a living. They think WWYK means that plumber authors can only write plumber characters, or that they can’t write about exotic things that no one can experience, like meeting an alien disguised as a human, crashing a hovercraft into a cyberpunk city, or having your body torn apart by a monster. I’ve seen people reply with, “No! Write what you don’t know!” and I’m like, “But that’s what it really means! Use what you do know to write what you don’t.”

Write What You Know means to use the emotions and sensations you’ve experienced throughout your life to inform your writing, and infuse it with more authenticity, more depth, more tactility. Take your own pain, your own joy, your sorrow, your anger, and feed it to your characters. Let your characters feel it, and through them, your readers.

You don’t know what it’s like to crash a hovercraft into a cyberpunk skyscraper? Maybe not, but you’ve crashed a real car.

You remember the screech of the bumper ripping into the guardrail. You remember the flash as the reflection of your headlights gleamed on steel. The BOOM of the impact rippling through the entire car, rattling your bones, slamming the oxygen out of your lungs. The cold rush as the windshield smashed, letting in a gust of night air, and the feeling of being peppered with broken glass. You can translate all those sensations into the context of a hovercraft crashing into a futuristic skyscraper.

And the unique experience of being transgender has given me very valuable life experience that I can now use in my writing.

The creeping paranoia of walking around public spaces in a dress and makeup, feeling vulnerable, wondering who around me hates me and is currently fantasizing about hurting me—that could very well be used to inform a body-snatchers-style alien takeover scenario, or an espionage thriller where anybody could be a spy, or an action-drama involving racial violence, where any one of the hundreds of people I see every day might be a violent racist.

Or I could just go back to the source and write a transwoman protagonist.

And then: I’ve found sheer joy and amazement in watching my excruciatingly slow transformation into a woman and realizing my new body and confidence effect the people around me—seeing men feel attracted to me, having women say they love my dress, or that they’re jealous of my eyeshadow. I think it could translate to the feeling of, for example, psychically inhabiting an advanced android body, or realizing I’m developing incredible superpowers, or slowly becoming a werewolf, or something.

Something. Part of writing what you know is knowing and feeling where and when to use your memories to fill in your narrative. And in being transgender, I’ve collected some truly unique memories and advantages when it comes to WWYK.

You were in the military, both as military police and as a transportation coordinator in the Afghanistan theatre. Thank you for your service. Transgender folks serving in the military has obviously been a controversial topic under the current administration, but there’s a long history of anti-trans sentiment within and outside of the military (as I’m typing these questions, author JK Rowling has once again tweeted trans-exclusionary opinions on social media, for instance). I don’t seem to have a real question here, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the state of trans-visibility and acceptance and what needs to happen to improve the situation.

Well, as I’m typing this, Trump’s administration has just stripped transgender people of protections in healthcare, potentially crippling our ability to find medical care without being prejudiced against. I feel like there are two extremes: people that just outright hate our guts—sometimes literally—and people that accept us and to a certain extent love us.

Honestly I don’t know how to improve public perception and acceptance of transgender people other than to keep normalizing positive acceptance.

Normalize the hell out of it. Keep encouraging people—especially young people—to explore their own gender expression, give them safe environments to do so in, and help them find the resources they need to express their chosen gender adequately. Keep encouraging cisgender people to treat us with respect and compassion, and reward them for their efforts with love and acknowledgement. The more mundane and everyday that trans acceptance becomes, the harder it will be to antagonize and oppose it.

Switching back to your writing: what inspires you, and what does your creative process look like?

I’m inspired by all kinds of things, really: conversations with friends, dreams, daydreams. Mostly daydreams. It helps to be bored—we have some of our best ideas when we’re bored. Which is why our minds go into overdrive when we’re in the shower, or sitting on the toilet, or lying in the bed trying to fall asleep. That’s the creative side of our brain trying to get cranked up.

My creative process: when I’m drafting, I get up and shower and shave, put on some clothes, then putter around and eat breakfast until it’s time to start work. Then I turn off the internet, open my project, and get to work.

I’ll work until my timer goes off, several hours, then put it away for the day and I don’t touch it until it’s time to work again. I’ve found that holding myself to the rules only work during worktime, and do not work during downtime helps keep me from getting burned out, and maintains a certain level of anticipation and excitement for the craft. Also, I try to stop working mid-sentence so I have something to get me going when I come back.

The absolute biggest thing is eliminating distractions. Eat, poop, do all the chores on your downtime. If you have self-control issues, set parental controls on your internet router that kick you offline for a certain period of time every day. Put your smartphone in the mailbox so you won’t pick it up and start messing with it.

Editing is another matter entirely. Usually I don’t bother turning the internet off, I just sit and read the manuscript and listen to music. It’s the Chill Phase.

What are you working on now and what do you have coming out soon?

Outlaw King 4, Malus Domestica 4, and a scifi John Carpenter homage that takes place in a nuclear winter caused by a war in the 1980s, so everything is technologically congruent with that era. As for what I have coming out soon, Malus 2 (“I Come With Knives”) and Malus 3 (“The Hellion”) release in mid-July and mid-September, respectively.

And finally, where can people find you and your work online?

The best place is probably sahuntbooks.com.

S. A. Hunt is the author of the Malus Domestica horror-action series from Tor Books, beginning with BURN THE DARK (Jan 2020). In 2014, Samara won Reddit's /r/Fantasy "Independent Novel of the Year" Stabby Award for her Outlaw King fantasy gunslinger series. She is an Afghanistan veteran (OEF 2010), a coffee enthusiast, a fervent bicyclist, and she currently lives in Petoskey, Michigan.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEW: Matthew Bright

Today’s Pride Month interview is with author, editor and book designer Matthew Bright:

Hi, Matt! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during the current pandemic lockdowns. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

Initially: nothing! The first month or so of all this craziness I managed to write precisely zero, through a combination of gloom and a sudden boom in day-job work as a result of the virus. But the gay men's writing group I belong to made the switch to Zoom and so I clawed my way through a few thousand words as a result of deadline panic for one of their sessions, and something clicked—the few thousand words has turned into the first thirty thousand of a novel that I've been mulling on for years. I think it's very much happening despite the times though!

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being gay influenced or informed your writing, editing, and design work?

I studied writing at university and although it was a great course, study killed my desire to read and write (especially genre, the love of which had been stamped out of me a bit) for about three or four years after I finished, and I ended up coming back to it through discovering the Wilde Stories collection of gay speculative fiction, and when I started writing I was writing gay characters because they were what I knew. And mercifully I've caught the edge of the boom: the opportunity to write stories that include queer characters and be able to be published in high-profile magazines is huge. But to be honest I didn't really realise until putting together my collection last year how often I end up explicitly using spec-fic to explore parts of queer experience and history.

As for editing and design: for much of this it has been about professional opportunity, and over the many projects I've worked on I've found my way to what amounts to an ideology—which is pretty much: erotica is as valid a form of literature as anything else and I'm equally proud of my editing work on erotica anthologies as I am on my spec-fic ones—but I will never design a book that is just a naked torso on the cover!

You wear a number of different creative hats.  Let’s talk about your writing first. Your collection Stories to Sing in the Dark was released last year by Lethe Press. What’s your writing process like? Are you a plotter, a pantser, somewhere in between?

I'm a muller! I guess it's somewhere in between – I tend to have ideas in my head (and they can be a start-to-finish story) that will suddenly collide. Nearly every story I've written has come from two things that I had half-fleshed out suddenly striking off each other in the right way and realising together they now make a complete story. I don't always know quite how it'll all fit together when I start writing—so I guess I'm a pantser in that regard—but if I've managed to actually keep myself writing to the end of a story it's probably because I had some kind of idea of where I was going. (Whether I end up there is a whole different matter. I don't believe any writer actually ends up with what they thought they were going to write, it's the weirdness of writing that you can end up both disappointed and pleasantly surprised by your finished article at exactly the same time.)

I’m always a bit curious as to how authors decide the order of stories in a collection, especially when the stories were originally published over a span of years and the collection includes new work as well. What was that process like for this collection?

This is one of my favourite games! For both the collection and my anthologies before this I put insane amounts of thought into them (and post it notes to shuffle around help too.) Stories starts with 'The Library of Lost Things', a story that was originally published in Tor so it's both a practical decision (if you've heard of me, it's likely because of that story) and because it is an accessible story that completely sets out the stall for the kind of thing I write—a bit queer, a bit ironic, a bit meta, a bit sad and a bit hopeful. Also it has talking rats that only speak in forgotten words. You should always start with a story that is exactly on the nose of what the reader expects for a collection. Second most important to pick is the last story – in an anthology it's good to end on one that fits the theme to a tee but is also a barnstormer of a story; for my collection I actually went with No Sleep In Bethlehem because it's the longest story of the collection, practically a novella. I'll let readers decide if it’s a barnstormer, but I was pretty proud of it. And then for the rest, it's a case of balancing so you don't have similar stories back to back, so that if you have stories that are a change in tone or content (in stories that's my noir version of Wind in the Willows called 'Croak Toad' and a pulp romp set in Egypt called 'Antonia and Cleopatra'). A good collection makes sure the next story is always different, without being so different it gives you whiplash.

As alluded to previously though, it was strange putting together work from across so many years of writing, but more so in that I realised they had somehow become a unified piece of writing when I had only ever thought of them as individual things. (There was also one story in particular – “Nothing To Worry About” that was over ten years old and was essentially rewritten completely, though that's the only one I edited from its original form. It remains perhaps the oddest fit for the collection still.)

You’ve edited a number of anthologies centered on gay themes, and were nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Gents. What’s your process like for bringing an anthology of other authors’ work together, from concept to final ToC?

Be very clear on what you want—that's been the key with anthologies: and don't be afraid to spell it out in the call for submissions! For both erotica anthologies I've edited I was clear that I wanted stories that had characters. Yes, there would be sex, but I wasn't interested in just a who-put-what-where-and-how-hard story—I wasn't interested in, pun intended, nothing more than a blow-by-blow. With Gents I also knew I wanted to make sure that the historical setting was more than just set-dressing; the history of queers through that period is bizarre and fascinating, so I was looking for things that showed those. I rejected quite a number of good stories on the basis that they could have been set at any time in any place.

You've also  got to have variety with anthologies—with Gents and Threesome before it I made my final selections on the basis of having a mix of genres and tone – they both run the gamut from serious to frivolous, and that's intentional. You have to be prepared to cut good stories that are just too close to others. And if you're missing something—if there's a gap in the collection you need filling—go looking for it. Ask someone to write it. They usually say yes.

You’re also a book designer (Inkspiral Design). I’ve never interviewed a book designer before, so this may be too broad a question, but: what goes into designing a book? What’s that process like?

A shedload of luck and a lot of experimentation.

If I'm dealing with someone on a freelance basis for the first time what I normally do is ask them to show me five covers they like that are similar to what they want me to achieve. It's not copying—it's just that despite their many gifts I find most authors and publishers are hopeless at communicating something they want to be visual. That shortcuts a vast amount of work.

But when it's actually just me and my screen trying to figure something out, I start with a rough idea of what genre and market I want to hit, and then I experiment until I have something in front of me that I can imagine on a bookshelf; I start with either a colour scheme or a central image and build out. Most times, it works. Sometimes I end up binning the whole thing and having to start again.

Despite everything I've just said there though, my favourite pieces of work I've created have been the ones that just wildly ignore the rules of the genre and what would probably be considered marketable and produced something totally different. But I've only been able to do that thanks to having worked with a couple of publishers for years enough that they trust me to let me do that. I'm grateful for that.

What are you working on now and what do you have coming out soon?

For the first: a novel, though it's a long, long way from done. It's a little different from my usual—the story of a group of found-family queers starting as a coming-of-age tale with them as teenagers, then told in five more sections, each five years on from the last, and each a different genre. The last section is an apocalypse novel of a sort, so I'm trying not to think about writing that one at the moment.

And as for 'coming out soon'... tragically, nothing! The Lambda nomination for Stories To Sing In The Dark would have absolutely been the perfect time to ride the momentum and be submitting and publishing, but procrastination and the world got the better of me, unfortunately. I'll never learn!

And finally, where can people find you and your work online?

You can find me at matthew-bright.com or @mbrightwriter on twitter, and if you fancy a gander at my design work you can find that at inkspiraldesign.co.uk.

Matthew Bright is a writer, editor and designer who's never too sure what order those go in. His short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Nightmare's Queers Destroy Horror, Lightspeed, Glittership, Harlot Magazine, Clockwork Iris, Queen Mob's Teahouse and others, and can be found collected in the Lambda Literary Award Finalist Stories To Sing In The Dark (Lethe Press, 2019). He is also the editor of several anthologies, including The Myriad Carnival, Threesome, Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt and Lambda Literary Award Finalist  Gents. He also works as a book designer as Inkspiral Design.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEW: Hunter Martin

Today’s interview is with registered nurse Hunter Martin:

Hi, Hunter! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. As a nurse, you’ve been on the front-lines during the Covid-19 pandemic. I cannot imagine how stressful that’s been. What have you done to keep yourself motivated and at peace during all of this?

I picked up a per diem position to help with cut hours at my full time job, so that’s been filling some time. It has reminded me that I enjoy working on the frontlines of healthcare as you are there when those that are sick need care the most.

Outside of work, I’ve been working on all those house projects I have been putting off indefinitely now that I have the time. As a family we’ve been filling in our lawn with new plants like apple trees, raspberries, a lilac bush. My daughter helped relocate some “baby” pine and maple trees we found on the property. Basically, I’ve been spending a lot more time outside.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask about being openly bisexual in the medical profession. Like teaching, there was a time when it felt inconceivable to be out and be a doctor or nurse. What have your experiences been like in that regard?

I wouldn’t say I am open, but I wouldn’t say I’m not open, if that makes sense. It isn’t a topic that I’ve ever been asked at work and I’ve never felt the need to reveal anything to coworkers. What I would reveal to a coworker would be entirely based on who that coworker was. It has never felt like something I feel the need to make known at work just as I don’t know the orientation of 99% of my coworkers. I don’t think I’d share that information with a patient, ever, as it in no way affects the care I provide to the patient and I feel it could potentially complicate the patient-nurse relationship.

I would be really interested to hear your take as a medical professional on pandemic response, whether we really have flattened the curve, and what you think the near future will look like.

In my state, at least, I feel we have been quite successful in flattening the curve. There has not been a time when the number of beds and equipment could not meet the needs of the patients. It has been hard to watch places like NYC and imagine what it must be like to work in a situation like that. I’m thankful I have not had to deal with a situation anywhere close to that.

I have found being a nurse difficult during these times as protocols, policies, etc. have been changing weekly, if not daily at times. And the PPE shortage requiring all of us to preserve PPE in new ways has been interesting (such as reusing the same mask all day, placing it in a bag, and being able to use it again a few days later).

You and your wife are both bisexual. Bisexual erasure is sadly still a thing in the LGBTQIA community. Can you talk a little bit about your experiences with it?

The most memorable experience was in college on an LGBTQIA+ retreat and being told by someone else on that retreat that they did not believe bisexuality existed. I don’t know if I really felt hurt by that, but I definitely did not understand how someone who was part of said community could deny that another part even exists. I hope that person has come to change their views by now as it is no different than someone denying the existence of any other part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

What inspires you?

My current job for the past year or so and the patient population I work with has been much more fulfilling than the previous nursing jobs I’ve had. But most of what I do is to help create a good life for my family, especially my daughter.  

Hunter Martin is a pediatric and emergency department registered nurse, a husband, and father of a 3 year old daughter.

Review of THE GRAND TOUR

TITLE: The Grand Tour: A Jackson’s Unreal Circus & Mobile Marmalade Collection

AUTHOR: E. Catherine Tobler

202 pages, Apex Book Company, ISBN 9781937009816 (paperback, ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): Step right up! Come one, come all, to Jackson's Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade. The steam train may look older than your great-grandmother's' china, but within her metal corridors are destinations you have only ever dreamed. They're real, friends, each and every one—and yours for the taking.

Witness Rabi, Vanquisher and Vanisher Extraordinaire, who can make coins and the past vanish before your very eyes. Dare to visit the Beauty and the Beast, our conjoined twins who are terrible and tortured by turns. Sample Beth's marmalade, the sticky sweetness containing the very memory of the day you turned sixteen, and your beloved's lips touched yours once and never again. It's worth the price, traveler. Jackson's Unreal Circus is where you can be whoever or whatever you want. Whether it be a ride on the Ferris wheel, slipping inside a skin that is not your own, or the opportunity to live as you never have before—it is all possible on this, the grandest of tours. The train beckons you—come, come!

For the first time, E. Catherine Tobler has compiled a collection of her popular circus stories. With nine stories ranging from the first publishing within this universe to a previously unpublished piece, this is your ticket to her magical world. Welcome to The Grand Tour.

MY RATING: five out of five stars

MY THOUGHTS: The stories that comprise E. Catherine Tobler’s The Grand Tour are ethereal and luminous, delicately woven character studies that shine a light on the complicated nature of relationships. Found families and blood families, unrequited and requited love, past and present, mundane and magical, all can be found dissected and interrogated in these pages. But ethereal does not mean these stories lack weight and luminous does not mean they are sunny and happy. The nine Jackson’s Circus stories in The Grand Tour explore the dark edges of community and personal responsibility, the ways in which we act selflessly or selfishly and in which the universe responds.

The denizens of this traveling circus are a “found family,” cobbled together as people join and leave over the course of the stories. Some members stay only long enough to resolve whatever issues they are running from (for instance, Rabi and the little girl he befriends in “Vanishing Act,” which starts the collection) and some have been with the circus so long they seem to have forgotten – willfully or not – exactly how or when they joined up (Beth, the eponymous character of “Lady Marmalade”). But some members are actual family: the light-and-dark sisters Sombra and Gemma, for instance, or the aforementioned Beth and at least one sibling (the identity of who I will not spoil). What is obvious, even if he never directly says it, is that Jackson will never turn away someone who needs what the circus can provide: a haven, a respite, a place for self-discovery, a place to help others. The cohesiveness of the family unit is evident in the way characters appear in each others’ stories, sometimes in larger roles and sometimes smaller. Sombra and Gemma provide Rabi and the little girl emotional support in “Vanishing Act,” and Rabi’s woodworking and vanishing skills figure in “Lady Marmalade.” Gabrielle, the main character of “Artificial Nocturne,” plays a brief but pivotal role in “Every Season,” while the bird-woman Agnessa, who takes Gabrielle under her wings in “Artificial Nocturne” also appears in “We, As One, Trailing Embers” and “Blow the Moon Out.” Beth’s marmalade appears, if not the woman herself, in almost every story. Other circus folk appear in small roles without getting a feature of their own. I’d love to know more, for instance, about the dwarf Eammon (who appears in “Lady Marmalade” and “Every Season”) and the dog-man Dean from “Blow the Moon Out.”

Jackson himself appears more often in cameo or supporting roles than as a main part of the action. His history is hinted at a couple of times, and comes closest to being detailed in “Ebb Stung by the Flow,” but if you want to really know Jackson and learn how he came to run the circus, you’ll have to read Tobler’s novella The Kraken Sea (also from Apex Book Company). In these stories Jackson appears as a distant father figure (“Vanishing Act”), a controlling ringmaster (“Liminal”), and a barker/pimp (“We, As One, Trailing Embers”) and even as the character through home other characters see (“Lady Marmalade” and “Ebb Stung by the Flow”). He can be warm and inviting or cold and capricious (most notably in “Artificial Nocturne” and “We, As One, Trailing Embers”), often in the same story and always driven by his sense of justice for the outcast and downtrodden.

Whether Jackson is an active participant or not doesn’t change the effectiveness of these stories. The characters are often at crossroads (physically or metaphorically): confronting personal flaws, past bad decisions, what they’re running or hiding from. Being a part of the circus, or interacting with it, may help them come to terms with grief or find their way into their own identity or find the path from who they’ve become back to who they were (not necessarily regressing in personality so much as finding the good in the past and melding it with the present). With so much connectivity between characters’ past and present, I think it’s important that the structure of the collection is not chronological. The stories bounce between decades and locations, with more than one story strongly implying that the circus train itself is capable of jumping in time in space as it needs/wants to. And several stories take place primarily in locations outside the circus environs. “Artificial Nocturne,” “Blow the Moon Out,” and “Every Season” all start with characters in or near their homes making a decision to visit (or not visit) Jackson’s Circus; these stories focus on the lives of the main characters and how visiting the circus results in positive, if sometimes incremental, changes to those lives.

Like the members of the circus itself, these stories are hard to categorize. There are modern fantasy elements in many, but not all. There’s an SFnal tinge to several. There are call-backs to ancient mythologies (the fates, the Maenads, phoenix imagery, some Celtic imagery as well). My second favorite story in the book, “Blow the Moon Out,” reads as if it is Tobler’s all-girl urban-setting take on Stephen King’s “The Body” (four kids sneak out to go on an adventure, encounter a dead body and danger and learn a lot about themselves).

My favorite story in the book, “Every Season,” is about a gay couple, Sam and Harper, and Harper coming to terms with his past self while grappling with whether Sam could love him if he knew the truth. Harper is drawn to the circus despite knowing it has the potential to unveil his hidden secrets; the marmalade Sam buys from Beth every time the circus comes to town is dangerous enough in his mind. This is a story about closets, about memories (false and true), about internalized transphobia, about the ability of music to move us to take chances and to guide us towards healing … and I cried more than once.  It’s also the one story that has not appeared elsewhere and in my mind is worth the price of admission on its own.

Tobler has several more Jackson’s Circus stories that are not collected in this volume. I can only hope this volume sells well enough that Apex commissions a second volume with the rest of the extant stories and the two more that Tobler hasn’t had published yet.

I received an Electronic Advance Review Copy from the publisher without expectations.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEWS: Chloe Martin

Today’s Pride Month interview is with nurse Chloe Martin:

Hi, Chloe! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. As a nurse, you’ve been on the front-lines during the Covid-19 pandemic. I cannot imagine how stressful that’s been. What have you done to keep yourself motivated and at peace during all of this?

Things have been really busy and weird at work, and at home.  I’ve been missing my usual stress reliever (swimming) a lot since the pools closed.  But now that the weather is nicer I’m trying to embrace and enjoy my home by doing a bunch of yard projects.  Work wise it’s easy to stay motivated because I love my patients.  I split my time between my regular job (recovery room) and working in the ICU, which was a change but I enjoyed getting back to my roots even though it wasn’t an ideal situation.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask about being openly bisexual in the medical profession. Like teaching, there was a time when it felt inconceivable to be out and be a doctor or nurse. What have your experiences been like in that regard?

It’s funny because even though I’m fairly outspoken about being bisexual, most people probably don’t know because I’m married to a man, and he also works in the hospital.  Everyone knows we’re a couple so unless I outright say I’m not, everyone assumes I’m straight.  I currently work in a Catholic hospital and I was initially worried about it conflicting with my values, but they are actually very accepting.  My friend and coworker who invited me to apply is a lesbian who is very out, so that was a good indicator that I was going to fit in.  I try to bring it up whenever it’s relevant at work, even tangentially, because I want people to know that it’s okay, and hopefully it will let someone else know that they don’t have to hide behind being straight-passing if they don’t want to.  It doesn’t generally come up with patients, but if it does I haven’t noticed any changes in the way I’m treated.  My hospital hasn’t said anything to me about it either.  Because I didn’t become a nurse until 2015, I didn’t have to experience a time when it wasn’t so accepted to be out.

I would be really interested to hear your take as a medical professional on pandemic response, whether we really have flattened the curve, and what you think the near future will look like.

I’m definitely not an expert on this, but I don’t think it’s time to let up on restrictions yet.  We should still be masking, socially distancing, and avoiding unnecessary outings.  I am guilty of not being perfect at this, I have been to the hardware store more than is strictly necessary, but otherwise I’m limiting my outings to the grocery store or WalMart and takeout food places only.  We haven’t seen my parents but one time since February, which has been really hard on my daughter and me; we went on an outdoor walk one time a couple weeks ago but it was so hard to be so close to them and not be able to hug them that I’m not sure we’ll do it again until a safer time. 

I do think the curve has been flattened, but we can’t just stop flattening it now.  We’re lucky in where we live, our case rates are low and we haven’t inundated the hospitals, but we do still have COVID patients in our ICUs and there are only so many beds.

You and your husband are both bisexual. Bisexual erasure is sadly still a thing in the LGBTQIA community. Can you talk a little bit about your experiences with it?

I touched on this a bit before, but it’s frustrating sometimes.  Unless I actively insert the information into a conversation, nobody ever knows that I’m bisexual.  And it feels forced sometimes to get the info out there.  But I feel like if I don’t say anything then there are going to be other people in silence who think they are alone.  I have been fortunate to not experience much discrimination because of my straight relationship, but I’m still part of the LGBTQIA community.  I try to be outspoken BECAUSE I have this privileged platform.

Finally, what inspires you?

My kiddo—she inspires me to do better.

Chloe Martin is a registered nurse in a post anesthesia care unit, a family nurse practitioner student, and a wife and mother of a 3 year old daughter.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEWS: Craig Laurance Gidney

Today’s Pride Month interview is with author Craig Laurance Gidney:

Hi, Craig! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

I’m working on my serialized novel HAIRSBREADTH, which is being published by Broken Eye Books. Plus I have a couple of stories coming out sometime soon. The titles are “Sigilance” and “Myth & Moor.”

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being queer influenced or informed your writing?

It’s not a conscious thing, but queer issues seem to creep into my work. Most (but not all) of my characters are queer or black.

I’m also always interested in the intersectionality of our identities. The Stonewall Riots, which led to the Pride Month we now celebrate, started with a trans black woman and yet too often, people of color are left out of discussions on gay rights. Can you speak a little bit about where we are and what we need to do to make our rainbow truly equal?

The racism in the LGBTQA community is as toxic as it is in the mainstream world. The way it manifests in the queer community is through sexual stereotypes, which are very damaging to queer BIPOC, and White Fragility makes it difficult to talk about it. This will require much self-reflection and many uncomfortable conversations. The LGBTQA community is infected by white supremacy, so much so that there was a movie called Stonewall that whitewashed the riots.

Anytime I interview someone I haven’t interviewed before, I always ask: What does your creative process look like? Are a plotter, a pantser, somewhere in between?

For the most part, I’m a pantser. I’ll have some vague and formless plot points I want to reach but for the most part I do free flow writing that’s concerned with character and the rhythm of the language. Word choice and image -crafting are like catnip to me!

What are you working on now? Do you have anything coming out soon?

Hairsbreadth is my “black girl magic” novel, which riffs on the fairytale Rapunzel and black folk magic (aka Hoodoo). It’s set in the same “universe” as A Spectral Hue. It’s being serialized (every 2-3 months) and it will eventually become a book. “Myth and Moor” is coming out in an anthology of stories inspired by Hammer Horror films. My story features a fearless Emily Brontë vs a nightmare figure from British folklore. “Siligance” is coming out in an anthology of queer weird fiction, and was inspired by The King In Yellow and Jean Genet’s homoerotic fiction.

And finally, where can people find you and your work online?

My website craiglaurancegidney.com is the best place to find out about my literary adventures!

Craig Laurance Gidney writes both contemporary and genre fiction. He is the author of the collections Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2008), Skin Deep Magic (Rebel Satori Press, 2014), and the Young Adult novel Bereft (Tiny Satchel Press, 2013) and A Spectral Hue (Word Horde, 2019). Three of his books have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. He lives in Washington, DC.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEWS: 'Nathan Burgoine

Today’s Pride 2020 interview is with author ‘Nathan Burgoine:

Hi, ’Nathan! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

About a month before the lockdown began, my dog, Max (short for Maximum, his default setting) launched himself at a squirrel on a snow-drift behind me and to the left, pulling my left arm all the way around my body, suddenly and at a terrible angle, and blowing a bunch of my tendons. I was in physiotherapy, getting dry-needling, TENS, and so forth, trying to recover the use of my left hand especially (I still can’t quite type, or at least, not for long), so all writing kind of crashed to a halt, and is still pretty much at a halt.

But I like to remind other people when they’re stuck how much of writing is as much in your head as words on paper, so I am trying to remind myself of that. I’ve scribbled notes and scenes (I’m right handed, so I can at least scribble on paper), and I can accomplish little bursts when my hand cooperates. Mostly? I’ve given myself permission not to be creative on any sort of scale beyond what I can manage, at least until I can get back to physiotherapy.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being gay influenced or informed your writing?

The short answer: in almost every way.

The long answer: I approach writing from a “what if this is the first time someone queer sees themself?” most of the time, especially if I’m writing stories with a remotely heavy (and queer) topic. We all know the damage done by terrible representation, and while I’m not mister roses-and-sunshine, I do try very hard to make sure that even in darker toned stories there is hope, or at the very least a range of hopeful queer characters. Not that I write many dark stories at all. I’ve touched on horror only once.

Even in the happy stories, though—like romance—I also want to do my best to write characters who are facing down the realities of queerness without shying away from the impact of those realities. A few of my novellas have specifically been born from frustration in particular plot patterns repeating that shut the door on me as a queer reader with my own queer lived experiences. I think I had a lightbulb moment a year or two ago where I realized I couldn’t write an “everyqueer,” but I could write a specific person with experiences that mirrored the queerness I see all around me, and that’s been liberating even as it’s doubled down on the sense of responsibility.

You’re almost halfway through a really cool project on your blog: reviewing one short story per day for the entire year. What inspired you to take this project on?

It’s no secret that I’m a lover of short fiction, and also that I get frustrated at the short shrift it gets (no pun intended). I put a lot of the “I don’t like short fiction” attitude down to what we were forced to read in school (even I didn’t like many of those, especially the ones chosen for us in high school), and it colouring opinions even after graduation. Much like how when you talk about Canadian books and many readers kind of glaze over with “Oh no!” looks in their eyes because their only exposure to CanLit was the stuff forced upon them in high school.

Talking about a story I loved every day isn’t hard work (or, well, wasn’t until I blew those tendons, but I’m managing), and if even a couple of people decide to pick up an anthology or collection because of what I’ve said, that’s a win.

Also, as an author, I’m a slow producer to begin with, and completely stuck right now. I have almost nothing to talk to my readership about right now that’s from me, but recommending others? That I can do without blinking. You can take the bookseller out of the bookstore, etcetera.

How are you choosing the stories you’ll review? Is there any rhyme-or-reason to which authors, genres, etc. you’re featuring when?

A little bit of reason, but mostly not. In February I only spoke about stories written by Black authors, and in June I’ve been focusing on queer authors (and being conscious of not only talking about white-cis-male queer authors, especially). October will be horror (well, horror-ish. I don’t read a lot of horror, so…) Early December will likely be full of holiday novellas. And I try not to talk about the same book within a week, so if it’s an anthology or a collection, the “next” story won’t appear until at least a week goes by, so books where I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the stories are taking months to complete, and that’s kind of fun. I have a chart, and I write the blogs as I finish the stories, so sometimes I’m many days ahead with blogs to go, and then other times I realize I’ve got four more until there’s a day without a blog lined up, and I need to dive back into my pile of anthologies, collections, novellas, and magazines and put down the book I’m loving.

So… borderline organized chaos?

I know thanks to physical issues you’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from working on your next novel or short stories. How are things on that front?

I hate it. J

I talk a really good game with my author friends about being okay with low word-counts and taking time to recharge the creative batteries, but I honestly loathe this right now. That said, I did manage to tune up a trunked tale (it’s about nine thousand words long, so it never found a home), and I’m going to take this opportunity to attempt a self-publishing release given the stakes are so low. It’s a comedic and erotic story (which is another reason it never found a home), and we’ll see how that goes, but it’s giving me a project I can poke at with zero time limits.

That is one saving grace: I’m really lucky this happened before I signed a contract and had deadlines. As much as I’m hating not being able to type properly, at least I’m not having to force myself to do it through injury.

I absolutely loved Of Echoes Born, your collection of connected short stories taking place in The Village. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired The Village, and what keeps drawing you back there to tell more stories?

Linked short fiction is my favourite as a reader as well as a writer, so I think it just honestly comes down to being the sandbox where I like to play the most. Also, it allows me to build on what came before without the daunting task of plotting out a whole series ahead of time (it’s much harder to write yourself into a corner with linked short fiction, as you can shift to another character, or if I realize I’ve maybe given a character a bit too much magic or power or closed off plot avenues by giving them a specific gift, say, I haven’t wrecked future stories, just narrowed options for that specific character).

The Village is also my love-letter to the way the queer community was when I originally came out, and while I love so many of the changes that have happened in the past decades, I do mourn the strip/shops that used to be, and so having a dash of magic reinvigorate a fictional version of that place is as much homage as it is wish fulfillment, but also a way to talk about our history for some readers who maybe weren’t there for it and haven’t bumped into it yet, which was basically the whole point of Of Echoes Born, really.

And finally, where can people find you and your work online?

If you head on over to nathanburgoine.com, there’s a handy tag on the blog where you can find all my published work, with links even! But there’s also a tab for some free short fictions I’ve written if you wanted to take me for a test run first.

 ‘Nathan Burgoine grew up a reader and studied literature in university while making a living as a bookseller. His first published short story was “Heart” in the collection Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction, and was followed by dozens of short stories. His first collection of short fiction, Of Echoes Born, is now available through Bold Strokes Books, and includes six stories unique to the collection. Despite preferring the shorter fiction life, he’s also released three novellas (In Memoriam, Handmade Holidays, and Faux Ho Ho), co-authored a fourth novella (Saving the Date), and written three novels for adults (Light, Triad Blood, and Triad Magic), and one for young adults (Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks), all between walking his rescued husky a lot, usually alongside his husband, Dan. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

PRIDE 2020 INTERVIEWS: Dane Kuttler

Today’s Pride Month interview is with poet and activist Dane Kuttler.

Hi, Dane! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?

It’s been a struggle at times, no doubt about that. But luckily, I have a yearly practice of writing 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April, and that really helped carry me through. The other creative endeavor I’ve been throwing myself into is working on a book about food, with an artist and page designer. Collaborations have always energized me.

Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how do you identify, and how has that identity influenced or informed your art/craft?

I’m a big ol’ queer. I used to write a lot of poems about being queer, back when it was still something I was sorting out in the world. I also made the mistake of thinking it was the most interesting thing about me for a long time. Spoiler: it’s definitely not. Though now that I’m thinking about it, this year I’ll have been out for twenty years, and there’s something that feels good about that. I look back at the fears that people may have had for me when I came out as a young teenager – my teachers, my family – and being able to say, “No. None of that happened. I’m living a beautiful life, and I’m incredibly happy, and being queer hasn’t caused me any undue suffering,” is a powerful thing. 

You are a poet who has traveled the country performing on stage and who has won awards. This is the spot where I ask the generically broad question about your creative process. I’m not even going to try to narrow it down, because I really want to see where you go with this.

Equal parts rigid discipline and total anarchy. Every April and November, I write 30 poems in 30 days and post them on Facebook for accountability. During the rest of the year, my writing routine is haphazard and undisciplined, but having the raw material of those 60 days has shaped several books, which get completed over the rest of the year. Locking myself into April and November actually has had some really interesting constraints – for instance, there’s almost always a slew of poems about Passover in the April run, and November gets political, for obvious reasons. I’ve been doing it for over 10 years like that.

Like I said above, I love collaboration, and the projects I’ve been able to collaborate with other writers and artists have been, without a doubt, the most rewarding of my career. I don’t submit much to publication at all these days – I sort of gave up on that game – and delved into the things that seemed to resonate the most with people, which ended up being Jewish liturgical stuff. Stuff which is, it cannot be denied, very, very queer.

As part of The G!d Wrestlers, you’ve self-published The Social Justice Warrior’s Guide to the High Holy Days and The Book of Solace. They are beautiful inspirational works that, while rooted in your deep Jewish faith and upbringing, speak to readers across religious, ideological, and identity lines. I wish they had a wider audience than they seem to have. Tell me about the writing of each book what you hope people get out of them.

Oh hey, speaking of Jewish liturgical stuff! There’s also a third book in that trilogy, the stepchild of the bunch – Unlikely Victories: A Handbook for the Good Fight, which deals with the “historical holidays” of Chanukah, Purim, and Passover.

Anyway, the writing of these have been truly amazing experiences, religious experiences. They’re the closest I’ve ever come to feeling that kind of awe-filled inspiration where I don’t even feel like I’m writing the stuff – I’m just furiously transcribing it from Somewhere Else. Imagine the very best idea you ever head, an idea so good you felt consumed with the need to share it – it was like that. At least, the first one was. It helped that I was working with another writer, who was editing it with me, and we fell madly, dizzyingly in love over it. Falling in love with someone over a book can go one of two ways – you end up indulging each other, and your book becomes what Anne Lamott called a “self-indulgent sack of spider puke,” or you end up with something transcendent, something way better than the sum of its parts. I got lucky; we ended up with the latter.

The next two books, I was much more alone, and it did take away some of the magic, but the feeling of transcribing, rather than creating, was still very much there.

It never occurred to me to try to find a publisher. I don’t know that the publisher for these books exists. I have published one chapbook of poems on a small press, and it was a wonderful experience, but after that, the success of self-publishing (the GW books have paid for themselves, which is a rare feat in self-publishing) gave me no incentive to get back in that game.

The wonderful thing about writing books tied to holiday cycles is that each year, I reach new people. This past year, someone printed out a few quotes from SJW’s Guide and put them up on the wall of their synagogue, and that was absolutely mind-boggling. I was so honored, AM so honored that people continue to find value in it.

In the days I’ve been composing these interview questions, the world has taken a darker turn with the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing riots. Has this been inspiring you to write, or do you feel (as so many do) that being creative in such dark times is frivolous and that our energy is better spent elsewhere?

Oh dear Gd, no. It’s never frivolous. As white artists, though, it’s not the time to be taking the spotlight. I think now is the time to be vigorously reading and uplifting the works of Black writers and artists, and using our own creative pursuits to further our own understanding. Unfortunately, we’ve been here so many times before that it feels familiar, now. Book of Solace was written right after the Pulse shooting, and so I felt, as a queer writer, that I had something valuable to say about that – to speak to other queers about love, resistance, resilience, grief. This, though, these murders of Black people – I see myself as having a different role to play, one that’s much more about holding space for Black grief and creativity, much the way space was held for me after the Pulse or Pittsburgh synagogue shootings.

“Poet” and “Activist” are just two of the many hats you wear. You’ve written in several places about the process of becoming a foster parent, and about being parent to children who are transgender or gender-nonconforming. What do you wish more people would understand about foster children in general, and trans/gender-fluid children in particular?

I wish people understood that the work is hard, but 1000x harder on the kids. That no kid is “lucky,” in foster care. I get what people are saying when they say “X kid is so lucky to have you,” and it’s a kind thought, really, but it stings. Lucky kids don’t have to go live with strangers. Lucky kids get to stay home with their parents, who get the help they need in order to parent them safely. Lucky kids don’t get yanked away from their homes. I don’t expect my kids to be grateful for their situations – in fact, I fully expect them to resent the hell out of it. Even when I’m doing my best. My best is never going to be home, and that’s okay. That’s what I signed up for.

You know what I’d rather people say? “How lucky for you, that you get to know and love this awesome kid.” That’s more accurate.

Are you working on any new projects currently? New poetry, or perhaps a “Pantry Meals” cookbook? (For readers who don’t know, you regularly raid your pantry and create meals on the fly and then post about them on Facebook.)

Actually, I’ve been trying to tap into that sweet groove of liturgical writing ever since the rebellion broke out, and it’s finally starting to show up, in little bits around the edges. Right now it’s just called “Blessings,” and are short, one-sentence brachot. A bracha (singular of brachot) is a one-line prayer that Jews say before doing just about anything – Eating. Waking. Sleeping. Putting on a new pair of shoes for the first time. Even learning – there’s a bracha to say before you open your books. These are brachot for things like newly woke white people, and a bracha of protection for the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the chunk of Seattle that’s been turned into a momentary anarchist community, with beautiful results.

I’m also in the middle of working on a book about food – not pantry meals, but a book that’s a love song to my “queerfam,” my immediate chosen family community. In non-pandemic times, we get together for dinner once a week, and it’s some of the richest community I’ve ever been a part of. The book is partially about community building, partially about food, and partially about the wealth of showing up.

Finally, where can people find you and your work online?

www.danepoetry.com is my digital home.

Dane Kuttler writes poems and hates bios in Western Massachusetts.