1993: Our pastor swayed slowly under the cover of a park pavilion — the kind rented out for graduation parties and wedding showers — and the rest of us stood on muddy grass to look at him. It was our church’s annual sunrise Easter service, held in a small park […]
Read More
On a cloudy March evening, Roxy von Teddy stands in front of what used to be the altar of a Disciples of Christ Church in downtown Athens, Ohio. The former church is now home to the Southeast Ohio History Center, which purchased the building in 2017, but vestiges of the […]
Read More
Neema Avashia’s book points to contradictions resulting from a sense of belonging and identity informed by place as complicated as Appalachia. I want to be Neema Avashia’s new best friend. That was the feeling I came away with after reading her memoir Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a […]
Read More
Seven years before my dad was born and six years before my mom, the Stonewall Riot took place in New York City. My parents were two and three years old when Pres. Ronald Reagan’s press secretary laughed off the AIDS epidemic and referred to it as “the gay plague.” Decades […]
Read More
“Happiness is Homemade,” the dangling sign to the bakery reads in bold, bright letters as I walk down the sidewalk, contemplating. Everything on Main Street seems so welcoming – pastel colors and invitations to enter and the annual Strawberry Festival already being planned. Kids carry hand-dipped ice cream cones past […]
Read More
As Matthew Thomas-Reid grew up in the shadows of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina, the difference between being “queer” and “quar,” as it was pronounced in that thick, Southern dialect, was obvious to him. “Older folks would look at me and say, ‘boy, you’re quar,’ and I got that […]
Read More