In an age of nonstop information and misinformation, we know that the messaging can be just as important as the message when it comes to telling our stories as LGBTQ+ people. That’s why the Leonard Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation has been honored to support a very important initiative aimed at developing and supporting storyteller voices in our community.
The first annual Writers and Artists Grant from The Gay & Lesbian Review is intended to help bring new, diverse perspectives, ideas, and voices to the literary marketplace by encouraging and supporting emerging and unpublished LGBTQ+ writers, thinkers, scholars, and artists. After a rigorous application and evaluation process, three amazing graduate students have been selected for this first cohort.
Cait N. Parker (she/her) is a Ph.D. Student in American Studies with a concentration in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Purdue University, whose project is titled “Don’t Let Them Bury Us: Lesbian Revolutionaries in the Prison Abolition Movement.”
Gervais Marsh (they/them), pictured above, is a PhD Student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, and their project is titled “Intimate Notes: Patric McCoy’s Archive of Black Gay Life in Chicago.” They will focus on artist Patric McCoy’s photographic archive as a meditation on the histories of Black queer life and intimacy in Chicago from the 1970s to 1980s, while also grappling with the impacts HIV/AIDS had on Black communities and the contemporary Black artistic landscape.
And Lucas Belury (he/him/él) is a PhD Student in Geography at the University of Arizona, and his project is titled “Queer Survival in 20th Century South Texas.” He is interested in centering the lived experiences of communities on the margins. His research projects include environmental racism along the U.S.-Mexico border, knowledge co-production, and queer archival research in South Texas.
We hope you join us in congratulating these three scholars. No doubt we’ll be learning much more about their work very soon!