The beauty of queer-centered spaces

Hello from the end of a beautiful week 🥺

I don’t know where to start.

It’s Saturday evening, and I got home about an hour ago, just in time for the skies to open and the rain to pour. New York City appears to be, like me, mourning the end of the Lambda retreat. Oh, I have so many thoughts and emotions running through my mind and heart. What a magical, transportive experience.

Also this past week, the team over at the Quillers mentorship program announced the mentors for 2024, and should you scroll through that page you might find a familiar face (me, it’s me, I’m the familiar face)! I’m so delighted to have been accepted as a mentor for this program, and hope any unagented SWANA authors who hear of the program will consider applying, whether they’re submitting their work to me or to the other (fabulous, incredible, soso talented) mentors.

If you know of any SWANA writers who don’t have agents and may be looking for a mentor — send them to the site!

From the heart 💗

I was falling asleep the other night when I had to reach over, grab my phone, and type out the words, “the beauty of queer-centered spaces” as a reminder for what to write about for this section today.

There was something utterly life-changing about the week I just spent. The Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices — I’ve been familiar with it since 2019, have wanted to attend since 2022, and finally applied and was accepted this year. I was, I will not lie, a little sad to learn it would be virtual this year; in fact, when I was originally waitlisted, I thought — “that’s fine, I probably won’t go even if they do let me in, cause it’s virtual.”

Lol. Lmao, even.

Obviously that was a lie I believed to make myself feel better. And holy moly, am I so grateful it was a lie. I am so grateful I was accepted. I am so grateful for the virtual space that the retreat team opened up for us over the past week. There was magic in the air, from the West Coast to the East Coast and in all the countries where fellows zoomed in from.

Back to my original point. I haven’t spent a lot of time in queer-centered / queer-only spaces. I haven’t known I was queer for that long, honestly, and I have so much impostor syndrome about not being truly queer, not being queer enough, not being the right kind of queer, that sometimes I get nervous. Sometimes I worry that I won’t measure up. I worry that the other queers in the room will take one look me at, scoff, and say, “get out.”

I should’ve known that’s not what would happen1.

There was so much unfettered joy and freedom exhibited during this week. People read their work and it featured BDSM, it featured horniness, it featured frank discussions of sex, and it was thrilling2. People cried at readings and during their own readings. We laughed and lit up the chat in every call with support and jokes and love.

That’s the beauty of this queer-centered space. Not just being free to be horny on main, but being free to cry in front of others, to show your whole heart to a group of relative strangers and have them say — I see you. I recognize myself in you. And you are welcome here.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that only queer spaces are welcoming like this. But I am queer and this space was healing to me, and being around people who all exist in a world that frowns upon queerness as queer people was monumental. There were inspirataional quotes and moments, yes, but there was also rage and heartbreak, a shared understanding that life is unjust but we — our stories, our voices, our words — can change it, even if that means ripping it apart and building it brand-new.

A queer-centered space, in my opinion, is a welcoming one and one in which each member should feel free to be themself entirely and unflinchingly. It’s one in which there is grace given when call-ins or call-outs are needed, and one where the praise and encouragement is abundant. It’s a space just like the one I just existed in, and I miss it already.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

I’ve posted this a few times on ye olde social media, but I’ll say it again here — this week was revitalizing for my flagging creativity. If you’ve been here a while, you’ve likely heard me mention that I was feeling creatively burnt out; that I took July off writing because I needed to recover; that I’m setting aside HEX, the book I hoped would be next to go on sub, in favor of drafting a brand-new adult romance because I still need space from my witchy bisexual disasters3.

I have second-guessed my decision to take this month off writing many a time over the course of the past 30+ days, but this past week at Lambda honestly proved how right I was. More, this past week did some really and truly magical work when it comes to revitalizing my joy and creativity and passion for writing.

Credit, of course, goes to the workshop4. Here’s the thing: I did a lot of workshops over my two years at VCFA, even more during my Creative Writing undergrad degree. And no offense to any of those, but they do not compare at ALL to the five days of workshop the Darcie Little Badger led us 11 queer writers through last week.

You know the usual talking points about workshop; you know they say the giving feedback is almost more important than the receiving feedback portion, because there’s so much to learn about your own writing by critiquing others’. That is still true, but I can’t lie — I gained a lot from having my work in the hot seat on Wednesday.

The pages I brought with me were about 4,500 words of a short story that I was determined, at the start of the workshop, would remain a short story. I just needed to know how to make it better, how to make it shine, how to make it, in my own heart, decent at all.

So hearing from my peers and Darcie that they liked the story as it was? That they thought the writing was solid, the storyline complete, the characters compelling, and that they wanted me to make a few small tweaks here and there but otherwise it was nearly good to submit? And THEN, hearing them wax poetic about the possibilities of turning it into a longer work (a novel, my precious!), and getting ideas from them about how I could do that?

Y’all, it was like getting an injection of adrenaline straight to my creative core.

I was absolutely buzzing with ideas and excitement at the end of workshop. My brain hasn’t stopped subconsciously working out the kinks since Wednesday. As I was writing this section, I had a little epiphany of “omg what if??” and now I need to run to our newly-minted Discord to ask the crew what they think. Brb.

I’m back.

This workshop this week was a game-changer for me. I’m not excited, not just about this story, but to dive into drafting my adult romance WIP starting tomorrow. I’m ready to be writing again. I’m ready to be creative again. My brain and body feel rested and delighted and I am so so forever thankful for the workshop that got me there. <3

Alla prossima 👋

On the last day of the Lambda retreat, we did a “writing toward liberation” talk / generative writing session that did wonders toward helping me recenter/restabilize/clarify some of my thoughts about writing as a tool and means of liberation. There is a lot of work to be done. There is still so much growing that I can and must do. But this workshop was eye-opening.

Friends, there is still a genocide in Gaza, and Palestinians are still not free. Israel is committing atrocities daily, backed up and cheerleaded by the US. We cannot forget. We cannot let up the pressure.

Meanwhile, in the US, book bans and challenges continue apace. Utah recently banned 13 titles across the state in a shocking and stunning and horrifying attack on freedom of the press. Police continue to kill Black and brown people with impunity, sometimes in their own homes. Cop cities continue to progress. These are all interconnected struggles and attacks on our freedoms.

Do what you can to fight back. Do what you can to organize, build community, and activate others.

Love y’all.

— Karis xoxo