Full event title: Relatively Queer: Creative Archival Approaches to Recovering Concealed Queerness in Families of Origin
The Relatively Queer workshop series offers an interactive overview of strategies for recovering and narrativizing concealed traces of trans* and queer history in families of origin. Cohering around themes of (Re)Situating, Archiving, and Imagining, these consciously non-hierarchical techniques scaffold our cumulative engagement with occluded elements of our family histories and seed an evolving virtual community to nourish and sustain this reparative work. This reading will feature five readers who have participated in past iterations of the workshop (including project founders K Angel, Lloyd Meadhbh Houston, and Erica Rivera), allowing them to showcase work that they have generated through the workshop, as well as answer questions about upcoming projects, publications, and events. This event will also include a short open mic (10-15mins) to give participants doing similar work a chance to showcase their voices as well.
This event will take place on zoom. The link will be sent to registered participants the morning of the event by email.
Jack Giaour (he/him/his) won the 2023/2024 BOOM Chapbook contest from Bateau Press with his manuscript hunting the bugs. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from Nixes Mate Review, Sonora Review, and 14 Hills, among other journals.
Morgan J. Sammut is a nonbinary interactive fiction writer. A recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College where they studied English and computer science, Sammut strives to further the idea of what “literature” is in our evolving digital world. Their passion is interactive literature (digital and physical): exploring the relationship between narrative & form and writer & reader.
K Angel (they/them) is an autistic, kinky, trans/non-binary writer, performer, and researcher from the American Midwest, now based in London. Their projects across genres play with myth, consent, chosen community, and metamorphosis interruptus. Recent projects include The Road Again: a post-apocalyptic queer cowboy musical, CLUSTERFLUFF (an immersive circus exploration of queer nightlife history and lineages across the UK), and the poetry collection Another double text, forthcoming from kith books in 2024.
Dr Lloyd Meadhbh Houston is a non-binary academic, journalist, and gender consultant from the North of Ireland, specializing in the cultural politics of sexual health, queer history and culture, the history of censorship, neurodivergence, gender-diversity, and trans inclusion.
Erica “ERN” Rivera (she/they) is a performance writer, editor, and collage artist. She is the author of The Girls from Pasadena, a collection of short stories, available now on Itch! The collection brings together 15 twisted, transfeminist modern fables that peel back the skin on a technocolonialist hellscape that's just around the corner. Her short fiction, including two stories that appear in the collection (“Platformer” and “Assignments”), can be found at riveraerica.com.
