Today, I want to explore the invaluable benefits of writing retreats and programs specifically tailored for LGBTQ+ writers. These safe and inclusive spaces offer a nurturing environment, supportive community, and opportunities for personal and artistic growth.

Creating Safe and Inclusive Spaces

Writing retreats and programs dedicated to LGBTQ+ writers create safe and inclusive spaces where individuals can freely express themselves without fear of judgment or discrimination. These environments foster a sense of belonging and understanding, empowering writers to delve into personal narratives and explore their identities in their work. 

By eliminating the need for self-censorship, LGBTQ+ writers can fully explore their creativity and push boundaries, resulting in more authentic and impactful storytelling.

Building Supportive Communities

Retreats, communities, and guest writer programs can provide a unique opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and build supportive communities. 

Sharing experiences, challenges, and triumphs with others who understand and empathize can be immensely empowering and inspiring. These communities offer a network of support that extends beyond the duration of the retreat or program, providing ongoing mentorship, collaboration opportunities, and lasting friendships. 

Connecting with fellow LGBTQ+ writers not only strengthens individual voices but also fosters a sense of solidarity within the wider community.

Nurturing Personal and Artistic Growth

Attending a writing program or retreat offers a nurturing environment that encourages personal and artistic growth. Through workshops, seminars, and one-on-one feedback sessions, participants can hone their writing skills, learn new techniques, and gain valuable insights from experienced mentors and facilitators. 

Additionally, the focused time and space away from daily distractions allow writers to delve deeper into their craft, exploring new genres, experimenting with different styles, and pushing their creative boundaries.

Amplifying LGBTQ+ Voices

Representation matters. Writing retreats and programs for LGBTQ+ writers play a vital role in amplifying underrepresented voices and diverse narratives. 

By providing a platform specifically designed for LGBTQ+ writers, these initiatives enable stories and perspectives that are often marginalized or overlooked to reach a wider audience. 

The power of storytelling lies not only in its ability to entertain but also to educate, challenge stereotypes, and foster empathy. By supporting and encouraging LGBTQ+ writers, we can contribute to a more inclusive literary landscape.

Overcoming Challenges and Finding Validation

LGBTQ+ writers often face unique challenges in the literary world, including heteronormative expectations, the need to educate readers on LGBTQ+ issues, and the pressure to conform to mainstream narratives. 

In an age of increasing calls for censorship and book bans, LGBTQ+ programs and communities help writers navigate challenges by offering a platform where their voices are not only accepted but celebrated. 

The validation and affirmation received within these spaces can be transformative, instilling confidence, resilience, and a sense of pride in one’s identity and work.

Programs to Consider

Retreats and programs tailored for LGBTQ+ writers provide invaluable opportunities for personal and artistic growth, fostering a sense of belonging, support, and validation. 

By creating safe and inclusive spaces, these initiatives amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ writers, empowering them to tell their stories authentically and contribute to a more diverse and inclusive literary landscape. As we continue to strive for equality and representation, it is crucial to recognize and support the unique contributions of LGBTQ+ writers. 

Here are some LGBTQ+ programs to consider and perhaps even apply for if you’re an LGBTQ+ writer in search of support and community.

Lambda Literary’s Writing Retreat

The Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices has been in service since 2007. It is the nation’s premier LGBTQ writing residency. It is the only multi-genre writing residency devoted exclusively to emerging LGBTQ+ writers.

The Loft’s Writer’s Workshop

This program has moved online, offering much more opportunity for LGBTQ+ writers from all around the country. They provide an excellent resources section as well, so writers have options as to how involved or independent they want to be.

Contests

There are also some amazing writing contests hosted specifically for LGBTQ+ writers. 

Examples include those hosted by Dunlop (the PFD YA Queer Fiction prize and the PFD Adult Queer Fiction Prize), Saints and Sinners (short story and poetry contests), Queer Sci-Fi, Lambda Literary (Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction; J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50; and the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers, just to name a few!), and the Lumiere Review Writing Contest (poetry and short stories).

DIY MFA

Join us here at DIY MFA! While this community is open to all writers in all genres, it is an inclusive group where you will find support from ally and LGBTQ-identifying writers as well. Build your own community within the community!

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft. You can find Adam on his website or follow him on Twitter.

The post Nurturing Creativity and Amplifying Voices with LGBTQ+ Writers’ Contests and Programs appeared first on DIY MFA.

About Magic’s Pawn

Magic’s Pawn was written by Mercedes Lackey and published in 1989. As a scholar of LGBT literature, I have to say this is remarkable. Not only is this an openly gay text with positive representation, but it’s also mainstream and was printed by a large fantasy press. It’s not surprising that it was written by a woman, as that was rather typical of accepted (“acceptable”) gay fiction up to the 1990s, when it began to be more and more common to see gay men writing and publishing their own stories more successfully (although—well, never mind, that’s a rabbit hole I won’t go down here.) 

Lackey even mentions in her wonderful new introduction to the trilogy that she and her agent had serious discussions about the likelihood of this story ever seeing the light of day. Fortunately, they both took the courageous steps to get it out there, and it worked.

The Plot

The story follows young Vanyel, a beautiful but different noble person and heir to his father’s throne. At home, he is constantly bullied, persecuted, and abused because he is beautiful and soft, the opposite of what a leader is expected to be. His father, his tutor, and his brother all seem determined to grind Vanyel down; only his sister and his overbearing mother show him any love. 

Eventually, Vanyel’s inability to grow into the masculine noble that his father demands is met with punishment: exile to Haven, where he will be tutored by his hard-as-nails aunt, the Herald Savil.

Surprisingly, however, this punishment turns out to be the greatest blessing. In Haven, Vanyel learns a lot about who he really is, what makes him different, yes, but also what makes him great. He finds companionship that develops into true love; he learns the secrets of his once dormant magical abilities, and he earns grudging respect from the most judgmental family and teachers. But all of this comes at a cost.

When Vanyel’s lover is drawn into a terrible battle and suffers a loss beyond consolation, Vanyel immediately rushes to his aid. The choices these two young, talented lovers make will bring about the end of their relationship, but also a great and painful transformation in Vanyel.

While Magic’s Pawn might not include as much wizardry as readers might expect from a “fantasy novel” with a wizard in the leading role, what it does provide is a unique and sensitive representation of a young gay man’s coming-of-age experience, including the difficult pillars of coming out and of falling in love. The very human elements of family and friendship, grief and loss, are also crucial to the story.

A Final Note

At the end of the introduction, Lackey describes the readers who have written to express their appreciation to her for this story. She mentions that many have called her a hero for daring to do that work, and for helping them to see themselves and understand themselves for the first time, through her fiction. It even encouraged young and older readers to come out. And here is her response:

You are the real heroes. I am proud and thrilled to have been part of your journey, but you began the journey, and you kept up with it until you came out on top. It was all you. I’m just glad to have been a part of it.

Mercedes Lackey

Now, remember, Lackey wrote and published this trilogy in the late-1980s/early-1990s, at the height of the AIDS crisis. Here she is, reaching out to a devastated, terrified community, giving them hope, a sense of place, and purpose. This is the power of writing and writing well.

Gay male writers in the United States who know their history will be forever indebted to the women who got them through one of the most devastating epidemics in human history. These women—including ally writers—were, and will forever be, heroes indeed.

Tell us in the comments: Have you read Magic’s Pawn? Do you have any other recommendations for LGBTQ+ high fantasy books?

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft. You can find Adam on his website or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post Magic’s Pawn: A Classic of LGBTQ+ High Fantasy appeared first on DIY MFA.

The course was essentially a study of novels by and about peoples and countries that had once been ruled by the British Empire. Some of the selections included Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Julian Barnes’s England, England, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. 

It was these last two that really piqued my interest in a postcolonial and eventually queer approach to literature: Jack Maggs is the re-telling of Dickens’s Great Expectations but from the perspective of the criminal, and Wide Sargasso Sea is a kind of prequel to Jane Eyre that gives voice to the infamous “mad woman in the attic,” Bertha.

I remember finding something so profoundly powerful, and right, about these contemporary novels that revisit classics and give voice to voiceless characters, particularly the marginalized ones whose real-life counterparts, in historical perspective, had been equally silenced. It was perhaps this singular exploration of postcolonialism that led me to queer theory and the queering of fiction.

The Queering of Fiction

When we talk about queer fiction, we typically mean stories by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual, aromantic, and other non-heteronormative persons. Those who are, in other words, not heterosexual and cisgender. But when we talk about queering fiction, what we mean is looking at the existing work from a lens that allows us to consider whose voices and stories are being left out, minimized, or marginalized. 

A classic example is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, which is now often read for homosocial or homosexual perspectives on the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. Similarly, The Great Gatsby can be queered to review the relationship between its narrator, Nick Carraway, and the titular antihero, Jay Gatsby.

There have been a great number of postcolonial and queer texts published in recent years, but even more compelling to me are writers who are “writing back” to our LGBTQ+ foreparents and reimagining the stories and fictive futures that those LGBTQ+ writers offered to us so courageously, if much more subtly than is required today. One of the best of these published recently is William di Canzio’s Alec.

Alec by William di Canzio

Alec is an inspired tribute to E.M. Forster’s iconic gay novel, Maurice (1971). In it, di Canzio gives the two lovers—Alec and Maurice—not only riveting back stories, but a beautifully articulated origin for their romance, all of which is wrapped up in the historical context of World War I, which was such a monumental time for Forster himself.

E.M. Forster’s Maurice

Forster wrote Maurice in 1913 and then significantly revised the novel at least twice, in the 1930s and 1950s. Unfortunately, due to censorship and legalities, Forster chose not to publish the work until after he died. To me, this is one of the most heartbreaking events in literary history, as what Forster created was one of the bravest and most significant same-sex love stories in literature to that time, and it would have been groundbreaking to see it published even sooner and during the author’s lifetime. 

That said, Forster was certainly right that it likely would have ruined his career. As anyone who has read my book knows, plenty of gay writers were publishing gay stories in the first half of the twentieth century—even happy ones! But there were always stipulations, such as publishing anonymously, publishing with small presses, etc. And indeed, no one of Forster’s stature, save perhaps Charles Warren Stoddard, was attempting it. And what happened to Stoddard when he finally decided to publish his openly gay romance in 1903? His reputation was ruined.

A Story Left Untold

It is for this reason, then, that di Canzio’s Alec, which openly and lovingly gives Alec & Maurice the story they deserve, as well as the ending Forster likely wished for them, is such a moving experience. In addition, it’s a superb accomplishment in its own right. Di Canzio’s style and language are rich and provocative, his descriptions resonant and vivid, and his almost defiantly open descriptions of the lovers’ sexual experiences enthralling. Significantly, I think di Canzio does a remarkable job of fleshing out a story left untold, of a particular time, that reminds the reader both how far we have come but also how fragile progress is.

Alec isn’t just an updated love story for Alec and Maurice, it’s a love song to E.M. Forster, filled with respectful gratitude to a tortured pioneer and with a hopeful eye on the horizon. This is a worthy homage and simply one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Literature is and always has been a conversation, and the conversation that’s now happening between contemporary writers and their LGBTQ+ forerunners is a welcome and remarkable one. As di Canzio has shown, it takes not just great skill as a writer, but detailed and efficient work as a historian and researcher, to do this well.

And what a gift it is when it happens. 

Tell us in the comments: Have you read William di Canzio or any other novels that “write back” to LGBTQ+ foreparents?

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at the College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft. 

You can find Adam on his website or follow him on Twitter, and Instagram.

The post Writer to Writer: William di Canzio and E.M. Forster appeared first on DIY MFA.

“But Adam,” you’re thinking, “surely there are those who wrote without critique groups and writing circles, and who managed to write brilliantly without any feedback!” 

Well, maybe, but I tend to doubt it. 

Even notorious recluse Emily Dickinson would send her poems to trusted advisors via “snail mail” to get their feedback, though she published almost none of her poetry during her lifetime. 

The truth is, while there might be one or two writers who can accomplish their very best work in total isolation, that’s going to be the exception, not the rule.

The Benefits of a Writing Community

Writing communities help us see what we otherwise couldn’t see in our own work, from the smallest errors in mechanics or dialogue to the bigger issues of theme and structure. They inform us from the audience’s perspective, which is invaluable in the early stages—even if we’ll never make every reader happy—but they also provide expert, practical advice from those who are engaged in our craft.

In addition, writing groups composed of LGBTQ+ writers and readers are especially important to those of us writing from that perspective and with those readers in mind. For example, most of us in this group acknowledge that we can’t possibly know everything about every experience, and while our imaginations and invention strategies can take us very far indeed, there are some things that we don’t know and might make mistakes without help. 

Writing groups that are made up of diverse members can help us illuminate our blind spots and make us aware of where we might be stepping out of bounds or getting something wrong.

Tips for Finding Your Writing Community

As this year is ending, community of many types might be on your mind. If you’re an LGBTQ+ writer who hasn’t yet found an LGBTQ+ writing community, why not make it one of your goals of the season to do that for yourself?

Perform Google search for “LGBTQ+ writing groups” 

You’ll find several excellent online and local/in-person groups to choose from through a simple search like this one. 

If you tend to be the shy type, it might be a good idea to start with the online groups and see if you can search the rosters for active members, and even ratings/reviews of critique partners. 

Just as you might research publishers to submit to, or agents to query, you should also do your due diligence in seeking out a writing group that will work for you and that has a good reputation.

Check out Lambda Literary

This group is devoted to all things LGBTQ+ literature and there are resources for readers, writers, and teachers. 

You’ll also find things like writer’s retreats, resources in specific genres, and even book recommendations. Reading in your genre is crucial to growing as a writer and to understanding the conversations happening amongst your colleagues right now, so this is a good place to start for a few reasons.

Search for Local LGBTQ+ Centers

Locally, you can search for your nearest LGBTQ+ centers to see what sorts of writer’s programs exist, if any. There might be book clubs or creative writing groups hosted at or by the Centers themselves, or through their affiliates, like local community colleges or universities. 

You can also suggest one or offer to host one if they don’t have it, yet!

Look for Your State or Federal Arts Council

Another local or regional option is to search for your state or federal Arts Councils (places like Arts Council England, the National Endowment for the Arts, or state-level Arts and Humanities organizations; for example, the Nevada Arts Council). 

Research the Major Writer’s Publications

Check with major writer’s publications to see what kind of sub-groups or independent communities are available to their members. Many of these are already well-established, such as LGBTQ Voices at Poets & Writers magazine.

If All Else Fails…

If you can’t find anything online that seems to fit, or if there’s nothing local to you, or if you’re just the more adventurous type, you can always consider starting a writing community of your own! 

Items to consider are: 

• Do you want to conduct this online or in-person?
• How many members do you want and must they identify openly as LGBTQ+?
• If you’re meeting online, what platform will you use to meet, to share work, etc.?
• If you’re meeting in-person, can you secure a location?
• Will you require dues or other contributions in order to rent a space or purchase technology?
• What are the operating rules and etiquette guidelines for your group?
• Will you establish a reading critique format and rubric for discussions/responses yourself, or will this be something the group puts together at an early meeting and revises occasionally? 

You can find many more tips on starting your own group in Gabriela Pereira’s DIY MFA book or on the DIY MFA Community Resources website.

Remember, as uncomfortable as it can be to share our work and face critique, it is ultimately going to help us strengthen our writing, ensure we are being sensitive in our work, and allow us to grow personally and professionally.

So, the only question now is, what are you waiting for?

Adam W. Burgess is an English Professor at College of Southern Nevada. He has a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing a post-doc writing certificate at the University of California, Berkeley. He loves engaging in all topics related to LGBTQ literature and craft.

You can find Adam on his website or follow him on Twitter.

The post Want to Write Your Best? Find Your Writing Community! appeared first on DIY MFA.