Growing up, Nisenan spokeswoman Shelly Covert’s birthday Oct. 10 often fell on the second Monday of October, the same day the federal government christened Columbus Day.
Consider the wide variety of LGBTQ fiction books published this year that showcase our diverse lives, and our diverse forms of storytelling, from mysteries to Young Adult, fantasy and classics rereleased.
Sex With Strangers: Stories (University of Wisconsin Press), the first short story collection by gay novelist and educator
Michael Lowenthal (
The Paternity Test and others) is populated with characters, gay ( Over Boy, Thieves, The Gift of Travel ) and straight ( You Are Here, Uncle Kent, Stud ), with sexual goals in common.
Canadian Y/A fantasy author
Ashley Shuttleworth makes their debut with
A Dark and Hollow Star (Margaret K. Elderry Books), an urban fantasy tale featuring four queer teens tasked with preventing a serial killer from revealing the concealed faery realm to humans.
Submitted to The Union
On a mission to teach their students about descriptive writing while guiding them to impact their community, student teacher Alicia Frost Vandevorst and teacher Michelle Litton Ogaidi organized “The Mirror Project.”
They challenged their students the sixth- through eighth-grade PACE program at Forest Charter School to set a scene through a piece of descriptive writing, which 26 local artists then used as inspiration for pieces of art meant to reflect the students’ writing as closely as possible.
Ogaidi said that, after asking the local artists for their help, she and Vandevorst wanted the project to support the local artist community in return.