The day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, I was on the train leaving work. The car was uncharacteristically packed because...
It seems that suicide is spilling into our headlines more than ever before, with another gay teenager falling victim to this tragic trend a couple weeks ago.
Kenneth Weishuhn Jr. of Iowa took his own life at the age of 14, after being tormented by classmates for his decision last month to come out. His mother told The Washington Post that Kenneth quickly became the target of threatening cellphone calls, voicemails, and online comments.
Kenneth was a popular kid in school, but only when classmates thought he was straight. Once they learned his truth, Kenneth’s peers quickly turned on him and that rejection led to his death April 15.
Collin Kelley is a writer. He writes for his job as editor of Atlanta INtown newspaper, he writes poems, he’s a prolific Tweeter, he helps organize the annual Atlanta Queer Literary Festival and, well, he’s also written two novels. This guy loves words.
His new novel “Remain in Light,” was released in October and is the second in a trilogy (the first, “Conquering Venus,” was published in 2009) that takes readers on a suspenseful murder mystery through Paris and America.
Kelley, 42, was born in Atlanta, raised in Fayetteville and now lives in the Old Fourth Ward.
Queer writing has come a long way since the scholarly secrets of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Walt Whitman’s naked bathers, and the scandalous behavior of bad girls like H.D. and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Post-Stonewall, post-AIDS, and post-big-box bookstores, the changing landscape of queer lit offers perhaps the greatest diversity of writers, audiences, and venues ever.
It is in this context that this year’s Atlanta Queer Literary Festival shows signs of real growth.
Like New Orleans’ Saints & Sinners litfest in May, Atlanta’s AQLF in October has offered both local and national queer literary audiences a strong forum in the Southeast — something that had been missing until less than a decade ago.