I’ve taken pride in being the first openly queer Piedmont Laureate, especially this month, which 

is generally recognized as Pride Month commemorating the Stonewall Uprising that took place in June 1969. LGBTQ+ authors of all genres have helped us to witness and remember, to imagine and invent. (Some of my personal favorites include James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel, Larry Kramer, Pauli Murray, Essex Hemphill, Paul Monette, and Rita Mae Brown.)

To that list I can add some new favorites. With the assistance of Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina writers S. Jae-Jones and Arden Coutts joined me for a discussion last week of their works, identity, representation and normalization, and much more. We had a full room of very engaged readers and fans!

(A portion of all book sales were donated by Quail Ridge Books to The LGBT Center of Raleigh.)

This past Saturday, June 22, Flyleaf Books of Chapel Hill collaborated with the Chapel Hill Library (and me) to host another wonderful conversation titled, “We Write To Make It Better: The Need For Queer And Diverse YA.” Close to 50 audience members, most of them “young adults,” came out of the heat to listen to my fellow writers, Nita Tyndall, Sarah Van Name, Jeremy Whitley, and S. Jae-Jones. What an exciting afternoon for all of us.