Budding Identities: Growing Up Queer

Wednesday, October 16, 2024 10:30 AM EDT
Wilkins Plaza, Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center & Horizon Hall, George Mason University

In her debut poetry collection, In the Cosmic Fugue, Jocelyn Heath attempts to portray the complexities of the speaker’s sense of self as she emerges from adolescence into a budding queer identity. Author Julie R. Enszer says, “Jocelyn Heath’s poems shimmer with wonder at the night sky and shine, illuminating cosmic mysteries and truths.” Willie Lee Kinard III’s debut poetry collection, Orders of Service, portrays the everyday lives of Black queer people living in the American South – underscoring the strong counterculture created by social media in a land of gospel traditionalism of the Bible Belt. Publisher’s Weekly says, “Drawing on a diverse array of mythological figures from African and Western traditions as well as Black- and Southern-inflected Christian ritual, Kinard’s poems form an intricate cosmology that transcends the personal to reflect on a close-knit, complex community.”