Queer Voices

Poetry, Prose, and Pride

Editor Andrea Jenkins, Editor John Medeiros, Editor Lisa Marie Brimmer

Minnesota Historical Society Press (May 1, 2019)

Forty-four LGBTQIA+ voices provide a vibrant, necessary, and dazzling component of Minnesota's cultural and historical fabric.

Description

Since its beginnings in 1993, the Queer Voices reading series has featured both emerging and established Minnesota-based writers of the LGBTQIA+ community. With a track record of more than twenty years, the series has become a national model and one of Minnesota's most important literary institutions. It is reputed to be the longest-running curated queer reading series in the country.

In this volume, series curators John Medeiros and Andrea Jenkins and facilitator Lisa Marie Brimmer present the finest poetry, fiction, and nonfiction pieces by the presenters. Their work, generated and performed in a powerful space of understanding, explores the material of life without internal or external censorship. Living, loving, working, learning, playing, reflecting, knowing, inventing, and being—these magnificent queer voices affirm the importance of civil literacy and the power of vulnerability.

Contributors: Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, Cole Bauer, Ryan Berg, Stephani Maari Booker, Lisa Marie Brimmer, Kimberly J. Brown, Nate Cannon, Anthony Ceballos, Stephanie Chrismon, James Cihlar, Venus de Mars, Jay Owen Eisenberg, Kelly Frankenberg, Ben French, Julie Gard, Christina Glendenning, Rachel Gold, Molly Beth Griffin, CM Harris, Andrea Jenkins, Kristin Johnson, Bronson Lemer, Raymond Luczak, Catherine Lundoff, Josina Manu Maltzman, John Medeiros, Nasreen Mohamed, Michael Kiesow Moore, Ahmad Qais Munhazim, Gary Eldon Peter, Junauda Petrus, Trina Porte, William Reichard, katie robinson, Dua Saleh, Lucas Scheelk, Erin Sharkey, Christine Stark, Vanessa Taylor, Bradford Tice, Ann Tweedy, Morgan Grayce Willow, S. Yarberry, Ariel Zitny

Author information

Andrea Jenkins, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, is a writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist.

John Medeiros is a writer and immigration attorney living in Minneapolis.

Lisa Marie Brimmer is a writer, performance artist, and cultural strategist living in Minneapolis.

Reviews and news

WATCH: Minnesota Historical Society Storied Video Series
Part I: Lisa Marie Brimmer
Part 2: Nate Cannon
Part 3: Andrea Jenkins
Part 4: Erin Sharkey

Star Tribune feature with Andrea Jenkins

Lavender Magazine

KFAI's Fresh Fruit (begins at 20:03 mark)

KUMD with John Medeiros

Star Tribune

KARE 11 interview with Andrea Jenkins

Essence interview with Andrea Jenkins

Advance Praise:

“Queer Voices radiates with the diverse truths, struggles, and ecstatic genius of Minnesota’s LGBTQIA+ community. The warmth cast from its pages will melt any preconception you might have had, leaving you with new and beautiful wisdom in its wake.”
Stewart Van Cleve, author of Land of 10,000 Loves: A History of Queer Minnesota

“This is a living document. A live place where love is recalled, the dead are remembered, and the varied vibrancy of the LGBTQIA+ writers of Minnesota comes to join your life and remind you of the texture, the tension, the trouble of being who we are and accepting whoever we are becoming. This work should be taught locally and nationally, used in groups and programs for people of many ages and with many missions.”
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of M Archive: After the End of the World

“This beautiful and vivid collection of prose and poetry offers real insight into the complex realities of LGBTQIA+ life in Minnesota in the twenty-first century. Queer Voices also stands as a testament to the power of a creative community to foster talent and advocate for social change.” Kevin P. Murphy, co-editor of Queer Twin Cities

“This splendid collection, by writers hailing from one of the nation’s most enduring queer reading series, is broadly diverse and soaringly intersectional, establishing the depth and excruciating beauty of the Minneapolis–St. Paul LGBTQIA+ community. Open these pages for the radically clear and queer-eyed words we all need to keep on reading.”
Barrie Jean Borich, author of Apocalypse, Darling

Related resources

MNHS LGBTQ Resources

Queer Voices Community Poem (May 2019)

queer voices feel like
you have everything you need
resolution a thing resolved in spite of

home

a cacophony of gorgeous song that draws my heart near
a tingling delight
invisible in plain sight
the most colorful noise

my father asked me to live with a woman
and the brick wall released years of dust

sometimes muffled
sometimes loud and friendly
hidden loud but also fierce
spring robins and frogs
crashing waterfalls and crank male lions

shades of rainbows breaking into new shapes
together each of us
covered

This poem was written in exquisite corpse style at the book's official launch party with support from QV Contributor Erin Sharkey.

• This title is also available at your favorite e-book vendor.
• 288 pages
• 6 x 9 inches
• ISBN: 9781681341224