The Lambda Literary Awards were Monday night, and I’m still coming down from accepting the Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award and as such, what was one of the most incredible experiences not only as a writer, but in my life as a whole. I got my start in writing as a queer punk zinester, not unlike many of the characters who appear in my stories. I started writing first to save myself, to make myself feel, even for a moment less isolated, and a little more alive. Then, I began writing as a way to connect with others: folks, other queer kids trying to save themselves would shove crumpled dollar bills into envelopes that wound their way through the USPS (and numerous change of address forwardings) and in return received zines in their mailboxes. We were writing the stories we had been told not to, the kinds of stories we had never seen on a library bookshelf, the kinds of stories that made everything hurt a little bit less.

I don’t have an MFA.  I am, at my core not only a community based writer, but a community educated one as well. As I said, I was a zinester; most of my writing skills have been picked up, or made-up along the way. For a while, especially when I was working on Kicked Out, this was something I was ashamed of, something I tried to hide. Somewhere about halfway through the Roving Pack manuscript I found the power in claiming that, and moved forward with the intentional decision to keep the raw and grittiness in my writing that I believe comes directly my creative roots. I write queer stories, explicitly with queer readers in mind, and as such I can think of no bigger honor at this point in my career to have received this kind of recognition from my queer literary community.

As I sit here looking at the beautiful blooming bouquet of flowers my partner Kestryl brought home as a surprise on Monday, my mindkeeps replaying snippets of the Lammys. From the moment I learned I had received the award, until the Lammys themselves I continued to use the word “shocked” to describe what it felt to know I was receiving such an award.  I still feel that way: the surprise that someone like me, from my writing background, could be at this place where the most important organization in queer literature believes that my work embodies “the future of LGBTQ literature” completely blows my mind. But, at the same time I walked away from the Lammys feeling like in one more way I’ve found a home, my queer literary home.

Nicola Griffith who (along with Trebor Healey) at the Lammys received the Mid-Career Award gave a beautiful acceptance speech where she talked about having always felt like an outsider be it because of her nationality, disability, and/or sexuality but that there, on that stage at the Lammy’s she felt as though she’d been welcomed home, as though she belonged within this queer literary world.  She said it far more beautifully than I am paraphrasing here, but her words resonated deeply with me.  This award means so much more to me than I have even fully understood, it’s a validation for the path’s that I have walked as a writer, and the stories that have come from that place.

We didn’t have long for acceptance speeches (with good reason these kind of award ceremonies are always VERY long) but I tried my best to pack in as many thanks as I could.  I discovered while writing the initial drafts of my remarks just how many people I had to thank, and how many seconds it takes to do that!  Most important for me was to thank Kestryl who for the past 9 years has stood by me and all of my creative projects, my chosen queer family, the authors that have in some way taken me under their wing – especially Kate Bornstein, independent feminist bookstores, the queer youth center that raised me up, and my first writing teacher Linda Hummer – who taught creativity and healing classes in the women’s studies department at my college (where I almost flunked out numerous times) she was the first person to tell me I was a writer, who handed me the books that have changed my life and shifted my career, who died right beforeKicked Out was published.  I also wanted to thank all of you who read my books and stories, who write me letters talking about how something I wrote really resonated with how you see and experience the world. You are my biggest inspiration to keep writing, and I wanted to say that from stage.

I’m so grateful that Kestryl was able to capture on video my acceptance speech so that I could share it with all of you

When I first began working on Roving Pack I conceptualized of the book as being outside of the general course of my work. I saw Roving Pack as a story that needed to be told, but in some ways separate from what I generally do. I thought of it as a fringe book, small project that would appeal to a small niche of the community. I didn’t expect the kind of widespread response that the novel and I received. I especially didn’t anticipate that I would fall so deeply in love with writing queer fiction. What began two and a half years ago, as a creative experiment has become my home, but also my future.

Now the work begins.  I’m so intensely grateful for the ways that my books have been seen and validated in such an official way. I never expected to be here, but now that I am I intend to take full advantage of every opportunity I’m given. This is not in anyway to say that prior to this award, or without this award I wasn’t driven to continue putting these kinds of queer stories into the world, I absolutely was. However, I would be lying if I said something hadn’t shifted within me as a direct result of receiving the Berzon Award from the Lambda Foundation.  This award is a validation it means that my work an I will be taken more seriously in the literary world, and as such I believe that with this award comes a responsibility. I must continue to be worthy of having received it.  I cannot be lazy; to write the easy story that is less threatening, or more comfortable (to me, or readers), and I must do what it takes to get those edgy stories out into the community and into the hands of the queers that need them. I see it as my obligation write the best and most dangerous queer stories that I can, and to continue to queer the future of LGBTQ literature in every story I write, and every book I publish.

It’s time to start writing……….

Literally the biggest thing that could happen to my writing career just happened. Lambda Literary named me a winner of the Berzon Emerging Writer Award!!!!!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – April 24, 2013    Contact: Tony Valenzuela, Executive Director (323) 366-2104 tvalenzuela@lambdaliterary.org    Nicola Griffith and Trebor Healey named  Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize Winners Sassafras Lowrey and Carter Sickels named Berzon Emerging Writer Award Winners   Los Angeles, CA – The Lambda Literary Foundation, the nation’s leading national nonprofit organization promoting LGBT literature and writers, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize and the Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award.  This year the Mid-Career Prize recognizes Nicola Griffith and Trebor Healey; the Emerging Writer Award recognizes Sassafras Lowrey and Carter Sickels.   The judges for the Mid-Career Prize were author and collections manager Jim Van Buskirk and co-owner of the St. Louis based Left Bank Books Kris Kleindienst.  Commenting on the 2013 prize recipients, they stated, ”Trebor Healey and Nicola Griffith are both writers who are unafraid to take risks in their writing, stretching the strictures of genre to ask bigger questions.  They use the lens of their LGBT experience as a prism through which universal themes of love, society, and the meaning of life are refracted, disassembled and reassembled in ways that are at once challenging and rewarding to the reader.  Their work deepens and enriches the tapestry of LGBT literature: worthy of a place in the modern canon of English literature while expanding the notions of what LGBT literature can be.”   The judges for the Emerging Writer Award were author Noel Alumit and co-owner of the Atlanta based Charis Books Sara Luce Look.  In choosing Sassafras Lowrey and Carter Sickels for this year’s awards, they commented, “Both of these novelists are well on their way to promising careers and truly represent the future of LGBTQ literature. While very different, their works both explore the fluidity of gender and sexuality, as well as issues of community, intimacy, and queer identity.Lowrey challenged us to revisit pronouns, the status quo and LGBT life.  Hir work deserves further investigation.  Sickels is exploring masculinity from a trans man’s point of view.  This kind of exploration is what makes queer letters exciting and interesting.  Beyond being emerging writers they are also committed to sharing their experiences, as writers and transgender people, with the next generation of queer writers, young and old.” The Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, made possible by James Duggins, PhD, consists of two cash prizes of $5000. To qualify, recipients must have published at least three novels or two novels and substantial additional literary work such as poetry, short stories, or essays. The Emerging Writer Award, made possible by former LLF Board Member, Teresa DeCrescenzo, and named after her late partner, the renowned author and psychotherapist, Dr. Betty Berzon, consists of two cash prizes of $1000.  To qualify, recipients must have published up to 2 books or 1 book and additional literary work such as short stories, essays or journalistic articles.   The awards will be handed out on June 3, 2013 at the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.   “The judges made excellent choices from among a field of strong candidates,” said LLF Board President, Dr. Judith Markowitz,  “The writing of both Nicola and Trebor pushes readers to leave our assumptions behind so that we might feel, think, and imagine in new ways.”  She continued, ”Sassafras and Carter are truly exciting new writers who are pushing the boundaries of queer literature.”   To learn more about the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize visit website. To learn more about the Emerging Writers Award visit website.     2013 Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize Winners   Nicola Griffith (photo: Jennifer Durham) Nicola Griffith is a novelist living in Seattle (dual US/UK citizen). Author of Hild(forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, November 2013), five other novels, and a multi-mediamemoir. Co-editor of the Bending the Landscape series. Essayist.Teacher. Blogger. Winner of the Nebula, Tiptree, World Fantasy, and six Lambda Literary Awards (among others). Partner of writer Kelley Eskridge (and co-owner of Sterling Editing). Currently lost in the 7th century (working on the follow-up to Hild) but emerges to drink just the right amount of beer and take enormous delight in everything.   Trebor Healey Recipient of the 2004 Ferro-Grumley and Violet Quill awards for his first novel, Through It Came Bright Colors,Trebor Healey is also the author ofFaun and A Horse Named Sorrow (a finalist for this year’s Lambda Literary and Ferro-Grumley Fiction Awards), as well as a collection of poems, Sweet Son of Pan, and a short story collection, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories.  He co-edited (with Marci Blackman) Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco, and co-edited (with Amie M. Evans) Queer & Catholic. He lives in Los Angeles. www.treborhealey.com.     2013 Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award Winners Sassafras Lowrey (photo: Syd London)   Sassafras Lowrey got hir start writing as a punk zinester in Portland, Oregon. Ze is the editor of the two time American Library Association honored & Lambda Literary Finalist Kicked Out anthology, and Leather Ever After. Hir debut novel Roving Pack was honored by the American Library Association and chronicles the underground lives of gender-radical queer youth searching for identity, community, and belonging. Sassafras has contributed to numerous anthologies and publications, and ze believes storytelling is essential in the creation of social change. Sassafras lives and writes in Brooklyn with hir partner, two dogs of dramatically different sizes, and two bossy cats. Carter Sickels   Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury USA), a Finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award, the Lambda Literary Debut Fiction Award, and the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Debut Fiction Award. Carter is the recipient of a 2013 artistic grant from Oregon’s Regional Arts & Culture Council, and scholarships and fellowships to the Hambidge Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is currently Visiting Faculty for West Virginia Wesleyan ‘s Low Res MFA Program. Carter lives in Portland, Oregon. ***   The Lambda Literary Foundation nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility and encourage development of emerging writers. LLF’s programs include: the Lambda Literary Awards, the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, LGBT Writers in Schools, and our web magazine, The Lambda Literary Review, at www.LambdaLiterary.org. For more information call (323) 366-2104or e-mail admin@lambdaliterary.org.

While everyone is thinking about marriage- lets put some resources towards the queer kids whose basic needs aren’t yet being met. a win in the Supreme Court isn’t going to help them, but you can.

Here’s a list of homeless queer youth serving agencies. Make a donation, give a queer kid a chance to live and grow http://www.kickedoutanthology.com/resources

One of the first things that stands out to people about Kicked Out are the hauntingly gorgeous photographs by Samantha Box that are scattered through the anthology. Sam is based in NYC and has continued to photograph LGBTQ homeless youth building a body of work she calls the “Invisible Project.”  I am thrilled to announce that she and I in partnership with BGSQD (a new popup queer bookstore) will be joining forces for an event this month!

Sam’s work is up in a gallery show at the bookstore this month, and on February 17th I’ll be there talking about Kicked Out and doing a reading from my new novel Roving Pack which is about homeless queer youth. I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Sam, and to help highlight her incredible photography. This event is also a particularly exciting opportunity for me to be able to combine my work with Kicked Out and Roving Pack , to in some ways put them in conversation with eachother, and most importantly utilize them to continue dialogue and awareness raising within queer community about the epidemic of LGBTQ youth homelessness!

Sunday February 17th – 7pm

BGSQD 27 Orchard St. NYC

I’m leaving today for Europe and am so excited about the entire tour – I’m going on tour with my partner performance artist Kestryl Cael 5 cities, 10 days  (full poster below).  Friday night, my first gig of the tour I’m going to be in Berlin and doing a show with several other artists in the local community all focused on issues of homelessness and created family!

For the past year and a half I’ve been on a bit of a touring hiatus in order to focus all of my time and attention on finishing Roving Pack. It was good to have the break, to be able to devote myself to getting this novel out onto the page, and then out into the world but I’ve  missed all of you!  With Kicked Out I had the incredible opportunity of visiting many many cities across the country to talk about LGBTQ youth homelessness, and facilitate storytelling workshops at colleges, conferences, homeless shelters, and community groups.

I’m available to do a variety of events from lectures and keynotes to readings and storytelling workshops. You can learn more about all my work/offerings at www.SassafrasLowrey.com but of my most popular lecture/performance offerings have been:

Roving Pack
‘Roving Pack’ the debut novel by award winning queer author Sassafras Lowrey is set in an underground world of homeless queer teens. Readers follow the daily life of Click, a straightedge transgender kid searching for community, identity, and connection amidst chaos. As the stories unfold, we meet a pack of newly sober gender rebels creating art, families and drama in dilapidated punk houses across Portland, Oregon circa 2002. Roving Pack offers fast-paced in-your-face accounts of leather, sex, hormones, house parties, and protests. But, when gender fluidity takes an unexpected turn, the pack is sent reeling. Get a short taste of ‘Roving Pack’ the book  Lambda Literary calls “Political, raucous, dark, and totally engrossing…”

Nobody loves you. Now what? Queer youth homelessness and creating chosen family
40% of homeless youth in the United States are LGBTQ identified and this silent epidemic’s impacts are felt by queer kids in the biggest cities to the smallest rural communities. In this engaging lecture Sassafras draws on hir personal experiences of queer teen homelessness and the stories of ‘Kicked Out’ anthology contributors. In doing so ze takes audiences beyond the shocking statistics to the tangible experiences of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth’s survival and created kinship networks. Designed to inspire action from allies and bring hope and belonging to outcasts of all stripes, this lecture facilitates audiences move towards building chosen family and kinship networks

LGBTQ Storytelling Workshops:
When we’re children we’re taught that some people are writers, and some people aren’t. What if everything we’ve been taught about writing is wrong? What if anyone can do it and have fun with it?! In hir storytelling workshops Sassafras breaks down barriers that keeps people from writing. Designed for folks who do not consider themselves writers as well as those comfortable with expressing themselves through the written word, these storytelling workshops are an opportunity for participants to discover the transformative power of storytelling. We will explore how writing can be used to gain a better understanding of our own journeys, as well as a tool for creating social change. You can see a complete list of workshops here and I’m always available to create something specialized for your group.

In November I’ll be on the road in Europe but am working on booking 2013 in the States (and maybe Canada!) If you’re interested in bringing me to your campus, bookstore, conference or community group please get in touch ( SassafrasLowrey@gmail.com ) and lets see if we can make something work!Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to talking with you about the possibility of working together in the Spring.

In Solidarity

Sassafras

There aren’t many things that surprise me when it comes to queer youth homelessness,  but sometimes even I am left furious and perplexed.  Late yesterday Ann Coulter tweeted “last Thursday was national coming out day. This Monday is national disown your son day.”

No doubt about it, Ann Coulter is an extremist and I don’t normally take her seriously. That said, when we live in a country where 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ identified I have a difficult time reading a quote like this and simply dismissing it as the rant of a right-wing nutjob. Every single day in this country queer youth are being thrown out of their homes and families. For anyone, let alone an adult who (for better or worse) wields a tremendous amount of cultural power to say anything to say this, to turn the epidemic of queer youth homelessness into a cruel joke is to me ethically incomprehensible.

Mostly today I’m sitting here stunned that a person could be so cruel.  I’m thinking too and most importantly about the youth I pray will never come across her cruel words.  The reality is that there are hundreds of thousands of Queer youth Who don’t know Where they will sleep tonight. The facts that are as cold and hard as a city street is that 26% of youth who come out experience parental rejection and are kicked out of their homes. I know for a fact that includes young people who heeded our community call on National Coming Out day and payed a heavy price.

Even though i know that Ann Coulter is a bully, I cant help but wonder how she could sleep last night after posting that tweet when thousands of youth don’t have the luxury of a safe and warm bed to call their own. I don’t have a solution for how to fight this kind of bigotry. I don’t know how to work with or communicate with  bullies like her. The only response I can think of is to keep talking, to hope that together as a community we make enough noise that any youth who might have heard her hateful speak also hear our messages of support and know that we won’t stand for anyone saying that queer youth homelessness  is never something to laugh about.

I can never ever forget how powerful it was for me to see out queer folks when I was a  closeted teen. They were risking safety and livelihood  to be out in that conservative county I was raised in. I fed on their bravery. Seeing them was food for my starving soul. I would count the long weekend hours until Monday morning when I would see the dyke teacher at my high school. Just seeing her swagger down the hallway in doc martins and faded jeans gave me hope enough to make it through another day.

Coming out for me, like so many others was incredibly dangerous. The price for queerness was extremely high – it cost me my home, family, and the community i’d grown up in.  And yet, queerness has given me more than I ever could have imagined in those dark closeted days.  Being out has afforded me a loving chosen family, work that I truly feel called to do, and so much more.  For me, there has been no greater freedom than being out, but I say that knowing that  I have and continue to be incredibly lucky. For far too many, coming out means falling through another set of cracks of  systems not designed to support our kids, and a community not ready to take them in.

Two years ago, when Kicked Out released for the month of October we started an online storytelling campaign called ‘Come Out, Kicked Out’ designed to provide an opportunity for folks in the community to write, draw, take a picture, or make a video coming out about their experiences with queer teen homelessness, and for allies within our community to stand up in solidarity with current and former homeless LGBTQ youth to talk about how they have seen this epidemic impacting their community.   Every day of October a different story was shared on our website with the idea of putting more faces and stories to this epidemic and to break down the profound stigma that still exists within the LGBTQ community about owning a history of teen homelessness or biological family disownment.  You can find all of last year’s incredible stories here.  If you find yourself inspired by the incredible stories shared last year we’re always looking for guest posts. Email your stories to kickedoutanthology@gmail.com

The thought I’d like to end with on Coming Out Day is the hope that when we as queer folks shout COME OUT! COME OUT!  we must be sure that we as a community are prepared not just pay lip service to welcoming those youth into our “family”  we must truly be prepared to open our  homes, wallets, ears and hearts to ensure that the youth who pay a heavy price for heeding our call are not abandoned by the very community they have lost everything to be part of.