This week on Queer News, Anna DeShawn and her special guest Amanda W. Timpson, the queer public historian, delve into the complexities of Matthew Shepard’s tragic story. They discuss the commonly known narrative of his death and unveil the deeper layers, including issues of drug culture, homophobia, and the misrepresented nuances of his life. This episode is part of a series celebrating LGBTQ History Month by uncovering the histories you didn’t know you needed to know. We will cover the:
- Known Story of Matthew Shepard
- Nuances and Complexities
- Role of Media and Misrepresentation
- Intersecting Issues
- Unheard Connections
- Concluding Thoughts and Legacy
Follow Amanda for More LGBTQ History
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Transcript
Family, it’s your favorite queer radio personality Anna DeShawn and this is Queer News. Your fav weekly news pod where race & sexuality meet politics, culture, and entertainment.
Click here to view the full transcript
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[00:00:00] There’s no place like the Qube
family. It’s your favorite queer radio personality. Anna DeShawn, [00:00:30] and this is Queer News. Your favorite weekly news pod where race. and sexuality meet politics, culture, and entertainment. They’re fighting for their own personhood. They’re fighting for their own voice. They’re fighting to like live their own particular journey in a way that maybe nobody else might choose to live it, but feels right for them.
And we need to give that to them. Like, I don’t want our rights to be contingent on the fact that we’re all the same. Yes, what Nico said, okay? Now, if you’ve been tuning in, you [00:01:00] know, that I had the pleasure of interviewing Nico about their new book, American Teenager, how trans kids are surviving hate and finding joy in a turbulent era.
Now I was planning on dropping Nico’s interview here on the pod feed on Friday. Give y’all a couple of things to listen to this week, but instead life was lifin Yes, it did. Life, life tonight. And outside of our home, [00:01:30] someone crashed through our gate, crashed into our fence, hit our car and turned our lives upside down for the last two and a half, three hours.
This is the time I work on the podcast. And so, alas, I’m going to drop the interview today on the pod because family, I got nothing left for tonight, but we did have some wonderful stories to share with you. So I’m going to give you those headlines and then I’m going [00:02:00] to give you the interview with Nico Lang.
I think you’re going to really enjoy it. Nico traveled the country interviewing eight trans and non binary teens and their families. These families are coming from different parts of the country, different ethnicities, different religions, and all different perspectives on their identity and how their humanity is being demonized today in legislatures across the country, [00:02:30] through social media.
It’s a wonderful take, and I got to talk to Nico all about it. Now, before we get into the interview, I am gonna give y’all some headlines, some quick headlines, cause Chile, I ain’t got much left, but I think it’s worth sharing here, and I’m gonna figure out a way to share these in a more in depth way, because you deserve to know, About these stories because they affect us and they matter to us.
And that’s why we do the pod.[00:03:00]
Family. Let’s get into these queer news headlines. Our top story for today is about Diana Portillo. I’m not sure if you heard about this story, but she’s a Latina trans woman who was working at McDonald’s and started this story started back in 2011. Okay. Yes. And then shortly after she transitioned, she began to experience all this discrimination, all of this hate.
She couldn’t even go to the bathroom in peace. So in 2016 she decided to file a [00:03:30] lawsuit. It’s taken eight years to get to this point where she actually was victorious against McDonald’s and secured the bag. Okay. She secured the bag at 930, 000. Because of that harassment, she said, when you are sure of what you have experienced, no matter how much time passes, the truth will come to life.
Our truth is the best weapon to achieve justice. It is [00:04:00] truth, justice, and faith in God that have helped me get here. Come on, Diana, you better say it. You got a life changing sum of money and I hope you live life and make all your dreams come true. Okay. All your dreams, your friends dreams too. The ones you really like.
Next in politics, we are 28 days away from election day officially. Officially less than a month away, I had the opportunity to [00:04:30] join Q force, which is an org that got started around the election to mobilize folks in Chicago, to support folks in Michigan and Wisconsin, because we know that those are two purple states that are going to be critical.
Right, come November 5th, especially as it pertains to the electoral college. And so last Saturday, the wife and I, along with some friends, went to Racine, Wisconsin and canvassed for the Harris Walls ticket. You know, canvassing is [00:05:00] not something I’ve done probably since Obama. It’s been quite some time, but it was so much fun to be part of the democratic process in this way.
People wanted signs in their yard. We put signs out. People were so kind. And because of social media. And I will use I statements here. I can be very disconnected from people. Yeah, but there was something about being on the ground and talking to people and knocking on doors and hearing how people were feeling that just felt so good.
It just felt good. So I’m glad we [00:05:30] did it. Racine, Wisconsin. We had a good time and it’s going to be close. I’ve never seen it this way. There will be a house. with these huge Trump signs and all the Republican candidates. And then their next door neighbor would have all the Harris signs, all the Democratic candidates, and then it would be Trump and then Harris, Harris, Trump, Trump, Trump.
I’ve never seen it so evenly divided. It really will come down to two or three votes per County in Wisconsin and in Michigan, it’s literally [00:06:00] that close. In culture and entertainment, a huge moment here in Chicago, the warehouse Okay, has been dedicated as a landmark. The, the warehouse is where Frankie Knuckles house music live was born, was cultivated right here in the city of Chicago.
There was a huge party at this dedication. I saw the footage. It was amazing. It was a moment. And so often we hear about Frankie Knuckles, we [00:06:30] forget that he was queer. He was family out here running house music, doing the thing. Laura Branch, one of the. the legends of house music. Chicago DJ also family said this, this building and the memories it holds was an important and consequential part of queer Chicago history.
I feel so lucky to have experienced the warehouse as a queer teenager. I feel deeply honored to perform for its dedication today. Yo, It looked like [00:07:00] a party. I was in Racine, Wisconsin. No canvassing. So we didn’t make it back in time, but I saw the party and it Beyonce is the first time you ever heard that Chicago was the home of house music, Chile.
If he was in Chicago this weekend, you saw it in real life. Okay. It was pretty dope. And our last culture and entertainment headline for today, I wanted to give you an update about Boosie, right? We talked about him last week because he made comments when he was being interviewed by Kareem. [00:07:30] world about his lesbian daughter and how he really didn’t want her around to contaminate the kids, uh, his other children.
And then his lesbian daughter went on the internet and did a 12 minute long video about how much that hurt. Right. And Since then, Boosie came out and has apologized, and I wanted to give that update because so often it’s very easy for us to do the first report that we feel is the worst report, [00:08:00] but I think it’s also important for us to acknowledge when there is an apology, when there is an update.
And he did. He issued a public apology on Instagram. He said, I said some things and I didn’t know that it’ll hurt you. Your daddy truly sorry. And I hope you can forgive me. He captioned the post by saying live in your truth and just know that you always my baby, no matter what, 100, 100, except my public apology [00:08:30] with two praying emojis.
Daddy could have said it in a better way. Praying hand emoji, you my baby, and we’ll always be that. Hashtag daddy baby. Hope we can talk with a broken heart emoji. And I think that if you say something publicly that hurts somebody and that’s harmful, then you should be able to do a public apology in the same way.
And he did, he did. And in her video, she also [00:09:00] talked about how he didn’t support her art. Didn’t support her rapping. Never shared her work. And then he also followed that apology up by actually sharing one of her videos of her rapping. And let’s be clear. She got bars. She got bars. Okay. And so he did that.
So I just wanted to provide that context. I am not a Boosie fan. Okay. He is about as homophobic as they come. And, and this was something, um, that was worth telling and sharing because sometimes what we want from our [00:09:30] parents is to be reminded that we are loved. No matter what your personal beliefs may be, do you still love me?
Hmm? I hope he got that message. All right, that’s all for our Queer News Headlines for today. Like I said, I’m going to figure out a way to get more in depth stories across to you this week. Because these are important stories and they are deserving of amplification. Okay. And so we’re going to jump into the interview now.
I really hope that you all enjoyed [00:10:00] Nico Lang and learning about this book. And before we get into that, we’re going to take a quick break. Yes. Cause we’re going to pay some bills. As they like to say on the radio. And when we get back, I hope y’all really, really enjoy the interview with Nico and decide to pre order the book.
Okay. Because, because what we are all we got till next week, family, peace,
family. Have you been thinking about starting a podcast [00:10:30] or do you have a project that needs an editor? But you can’t find one. I got somebody for you. Hemlock Creek Productions. Hemlock is an award winning post production studio. They do podcasts. They do video games. They do films. They do all the things.
And they are Black owned. They are Queer owned. And they are really good. So I want you to go visit hemlockcreekpride. com. [00:11:00] That’s hemlockcreekpride. com. Hit contact and get a consultation today. Okay. And tell them Queer New sent you.
Welcome to Joy in the Breakthrough, a podcast where we’ll be talking to a wide range of leaders from different generations and backgrounds, leaders who have found power in being broken open. I’m Connie Lindsey. We’ll And I’m Anna Valencia. We are your host and we believe that our challenges can lead to breakthroughs and we want [00:11:30] to share these insights with you.
We hope these stories will inspire you to find the I’m possible in you. Listen to joy in the breakthrough on Thursdays and follow them on social media at joyitbpod. Listen inside the queue or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you’re listening to this, it means we didn’t sell this ad space. If you’re listening to this, it means running ads on our podcast can actually work. You see what I [00:12:00] did there? Do you need some promo? A little amplification. Hit us up at info. com. At E3Radio. FM that’s info at E the number three radio dot FM.
We have a platform. You should use it. If you’re a trans kid, you get to decide what your future is. You get to decide how you identify, how much you identify with your transness and who you get to be in the [00:12:30] world. I don’t want our rights to be contingent. On the fact that we’re all the same. Like I want to be able to make different choices than you and still have the ability to make those choices.
Like it’s our differences that make us beautiful. And it’s our similarities that make us beautiful too. Family. It’s your favorite queer radio personality, Anna Deshawn here with another exclusive interview for the queer news podcast. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, as I know you have, right. Uh, you heard me tell the story about Nico Lang’s new book.[00:13:00]
American teenager, how trans kids are surviving hate and finding joy in a turbulent error. Okay. You heard me talk about it, but now I get to talk directly to the author, Nico Lang. Welcome Nico to the show. Yeah. Thank you. It’s so good to be here. You are so professional. I have to say the way you were able to just rattle the name off, like right off the top of your head.
Come on. I’m like, you are good at this. Thank you. I try to be good at this. I try to bring [00:13:30] my best to the craft, which you have been known for doing and being and embodying. Family. Nico is an award winning journalist. Yes. Nico has written from some for some of your favorite publications and we could be here forever.
So I’m only going to do a little okay. Rolling Stone, Esquire, New York Times, Time Magazine, Vox, LA Times, Out Magazine, Chile. Nico has written for absolutely everybody. And in this moment, Nico has decided to also write [00:14:00] a book. So did I do it? All right. Do your bio some justice? Yeah, no, that was great. It always makes me feel like a character actor that like Melissa Leo or like Margo Martindale, who’s just like taking bit parts and things to pay the bills.
And then you look at their IMDb and they’ve got 300 credits. That’s it. That’s it. That’s how we do it. Yep. Yeah. That’s about right. Character actress extraordinaire. That’s me. And you brought all of you to this novel, this book where you followed eight [00:14:30] trans and non binary folks in their lives across the country.
You’ve been working on this for now, two and a half years. Chile, you almost there. October 8th is the date. How did, how are you feeling in this moment? Oh God, that’s a loaded question. I keep referring to this as like my pre partum depression era. Uh, And that it’s like, I am about to give birth. I’ve been pregnant for two years.
It’s horrible. You have this like giant baby inside you. Because it’s, if it’s been growing in you for two years, you’re like, that’s an [00:15:00] elephant, you know? So it’s like, I’m about to give birth and it sucks. No one tells you that it’s really hard to release a book. It’s not easy, but I am so excited for people to get to share in these stories soon.
Because it’s been like, I’ve been keeping a secret for a really long time of not getting to really like it. Talk to people about this or, you know, go deep into the book the way that we’ve, that we’re about to do. Um, and it just feels so cool and special that in a couple of weeks, like everybody’s going to get to know about this incredible experience that all of us [00:15:30] had together writing this book.
I’m just so geeked out about that at the same time, my ankles are swollen and I’m screaming all the time. We’re balancing. Balance. Isn’t life all about the balance? And I do want to dig, I do want to dig into the book. You followed eight people who are living as trans and non binary folks out here in a world that has been demonizing.
Politicians have been using this as a weapon, and using our siblings as a weapon. For their own political [00:16:00] gain. It is not easy out here for our trans and non binary siblings. And you have decided to take on this narrative and to tell their stories. You got to tell me why, Nico, you decided to go about it in this particular way.
Yeah, I wrote this book because I knew that I could do it. Like I knew that I had the access to write a book like this. And if I had. that kind of network already in place to put something like this together, I felt like I just had the [00:16:30] responsibility to do it. That this book was important and needed to be written, and if I could do it, I should do it.
It really was that simple, that you look at what’s happening right now in our political discourse, what’s happening to trans kids across the country, and you see how dire the circumstances are. And we need as many moral interventions right now as we can get. We don’t need just this book. We need a thousand more books like it.
So if I can help contribute to that in some way, I’ll do it. And it really just came down to that for me. It was, it [00:17:00] was that simple. And I had conversations with. Families across the country to see if they would have an interest in it. And it just seemed like everybody really recognized the importance of this the way that I did, and they were all brave enough to do this with me.
So it’s like, at that point, we all just have to do it. And we did, and it was scary. Um, and very hard sometimes. I think I cried with every single one of these families, but it’s one of the most rewarding things I think I’ve ever gotten to do, and I hope they would feel the same, it just feels like one of [00:17:30] those once in a lifetime things.
I feel that. Tell us what cities that you travel to. So I went to, I’m going to do this, try to do the states in order. South Dakota, Alabama, West Virginia, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and California. I always get tripped up. And my goal was, Was to focus on like geographic diversity and that we’re really hitting like all these like different areas of the country.
So you’re getting a wide span of just like the American experience and like these different ways [00:18:00] of being in the world, but also like the families are so different economically in terms of their religious backgrounds. They’re like racial and ethnic backgrounds, just every way. that they can be. They were so different from each other.
And I loved that because I didn’t want to just tell one kind of story. I wanted to tell like a wide expanse of kinds of stories. I wanted to show just how incredibly diverse these communities are because it reminds people it’s not just one kind of family that’s affected by these, this issue. All kinds of families [00:18:30] have trans kids, right?
But I think it. Only a certain kinds of story, only certain kinds of stories historically have gotten to be told, but it’s often families with the most access and the most privilege. But some of the families in this book are really struggling. They’re struggling with homelessness. They’re struggling with putting like food on the table.
They’re struggling with the anti trans attacks that have been like lobbied at their children. And they’re really going through a tough time, but there’s just so much like love. Um, and joy and affirmation in there, too. So it was [00:19:00] really important to just make room for all this stuff, because you get so much more of a rich narrative.
Like, to me, that’s what makes a book like this so special, is that when you present all these different things alongside each other, when you make the narrative so dense with just life, It feels like you’re really just getting to connect not to the trans experience, but to the human experience. And that felt so powerful and so, so cool to me.
Yeah. I like to say that storytelling gives us a [00:19:30] window into somebody else’s humanity. And it sounds like that is exactly what you’re doing with this book. I love the diversity in geographic locations because That is an intersection that we don’t often talk about. Chile. Yes. Black queer woman. Yes. All of those things.
But also let us not forget I’m from the South side of Chicago because that alone says so much about who I am, where my family is from, the things I love. And I. [00:20:00] Love that. Okay. So you got to tell me maybe what was your most interesting. Okay. I don’t want to get you. This is probably, you having a baby check.
I’m going to get you in so much trouble with even going down that road. Okay. How about this road? Give us a sneak peek, maybe into one of the stories. I know all of them are compelling, but could you give us a sneak peek into one story in particular that you want to highlight in this moment? Sure. You were about to make me pick my [00:20:30] favorite child.
I will take that to the grave. That’s never happening. If Anderson Cooper himself asked me to do that, I’d be like, sorry, Andy, I can never tell. But I will talk a little bit about the Chicago story because I feel like that might be the most germane to some of your listeners who might also be like, Locals listening to the podcast the family there.
They’re a muslim pakistani family. That is surprisingly a tongue twister They live in the chicago suburbs and the kid there clint He was so interesting to get [00:21:00] to write about because we had this kid Who didn’t really identify with his transness at all He often says that his goal in life isn’t to be seen as a trans boy It’s to be a boy and he doesn’t think about being trans very often if at all Because he insists that if he were to do that Like that’s really bound up with gender dysphoria for him And he doesn’t want to think about being trans because they’ll think about his gender dysphoria and then he’ll be So he, throughout his daily life, tries very [00:21:30] diligently to never, ever think about being trans.
Here, you’ve got this reporter who’s suddenly like, Oh, let’s talk about you being trans. So I was surprised, in a sense, that he did that. But I think his goal in being part of the book was to tell kids that you can lead any kind of life you want. If you’re a trans kid, you get to decide what your future is.
You get to decide how you identify, how much you identify with your transness, and who you get to be in the world. With Clint. He doesn’t really identify with his transness very much at all. Not [00:22:00] that as a comment against the trans community or anything, it’s not like a personal thing, but what he does identify very much with this is, is his Muslimness.
Like he still is like a practicing devout Muslim, who like, who does Ramadan, Who, who like listens to prayers with his dad every day. Like they’ll listen to prayers when they like drive, like on the radio, he reads the Quran and he does all those things that one would expect, like a devout Muslim boy to do, he just happens to be trans.
And he’s also never felt like that’s a conflict of interest in any way [00:22:30] that I think there are a lot of queer religious people who maybe have some strife on the subject who are really fighting for like space for themselves in their own religion. But I think for Clint, he doesn’t really feel like he’s had to do that.
He’s been relatively accepted by like his like local religious community by his family. Like his grandparents initially had a little bit of a hard time, but they’ve come a long way. His parents from pretty much the minute he came out have accepted him exactly his, who, who he is. And that story, his [00:23:00] story was just so complex and it was a story I’d never really heard before with this book.
I really wanted to do that. I wanted to give readers stories that would maybe challenge their way of thinking, or deepen their understanding of the trans community, or just give them a story they’d never heard before. Like, I felt like I was craving a story like Clint’s. And if I wanted that so badly, I imagine that readers really wanted that too.
So it just felt like such a pleasure and a privilege to be able to give them that. [00:23:30] I want this book right now. I want to know more about Clint because in that story, what I’m hearing are all of these myths and assumptions that people may make about trans folks, just being debunked one story after the next.
Right. And especially when we talk about religion and religion being wrapped up. into so many of our lives. Gosh, I can’t wait to dig it. Okay. I love that. [00:24:00] I love that you had that experience, Nico. I wasn’t expecting that. Okay. I’m processing. No, you’re allowed to process while you process. Why don’t I tell you a little bit more about Clint’s mom too?
Cause I think that’s another sort of interesting wrinkle that you don’t often get to hear about. Because what I loved with these chapters is that they always bristled against whatever you thought it was going to be. That my worst thing with a book is that if I can figure out where it’s going, I immediately lose interest.
I will stop reading, like, that [00:24:30] page. Right? Even like great books that I know everybody I loved. I stopped when I figured out where it was going. I just quit two thirds of the way in because I’m like, I know it’s I know what’s going to happen. So with this book, I always wanted it to keep surprising you.
And I wanted their lives to keep surprising you. I wanted it to never be what you expected it would be. And with Clint, what I loved about his story is that there’s often this narrative about Muslims and about Islam that That like, they just don’t accept queer people. And if you’re a queer Muslim, you should [00:25:00] leave your religion because it’s just this people that like, that hate you and want you to die.
And there’s all this stuff like bound up in that, like Orientalism, racism, just these millennia long tropes. But. In his case, his grandparents have a harder time with the fact that his mother is like a free spirited woman than they do with the fact that he’s trans. Because his mom is just like this really cool person who’s carved out a space for herself in Islam to be like a very, like, again, a free [00:25:30] spirited woman who just lives her own path.
Like, she’s decided who she’s married, she’s decided the way that her life would go in ways that her parents didn’t really want for her. They wanted to tell her what to do. And for her to say, okay, thank you, but that’s just not her. She was going to be the one who made the decision about who she was going to be.
And they’ve had a really hard time with that. And she’s now in her years old and they’re still like fighting about this stuff. It doesn’t end. And they’ve been estranged for a number of years. There’s all this like strife there. And that was such a complex [00:26:00] story to get to tell for me because it was about intergenerational trauma, but it had nothing really to do with being Clint being trans.
It had to do with the fact that families are going to be families. They’re going to fight about stuff like pretty much no matter what, like with my family, I love the fact that they’re for the most part, all liberals. So we don’t really have to fight about queer stuff. They’ve been pretty cool. Like getting the stuff that they’re like, not like.
great on. It’s not because they’re like bigoted. They just aren’t great at language or things like that. They don’t always use the right words for things, but they [00:26:30] like, they get it right. And they’re trying and that feels important to me. But all this stuff that we fight about has nothing to do with queerness.
It’s the fact that. Pardon my french. We’re all fucking crazy. Like my my aunt and my grandmother fought for nine months over a hamburger They literally had a nine month fight over a hamburger So we will fight about anything else other than being queer and I love that for us And I love that for clint’s family, too It felt like it’s if that’s my story and that’s clint’s story then that’s going to be other people’s stories, too So it [00:27:00] felt just really valuable to add that to the discourse.
Obviously. I hope that they You Get to a point where that where Clint’s mom is able to be embraced and accepted by her parents as like the woman that she is and the woman that she wants to be. But like, in the meantime, it can be really humanizing, not only like for Clint’s mom to know that there are other people out there who have those kinds of similar experiences to her or might have similar family dynamics.
But if you have that kind of family dynamic to now, you know that you’re not alone. There are families out there like [00:27:30] yours. And I think that’s what. like we really need right now. We need a world in which we feel a little less alone. It can feel lonely, a little less alone. And I think we’re all on a search also to find our people.
And I think that sometimes that can show up in so many different ways, but it sounds like what you’ve done with this book is be able to make these stories as people may not feel like relate to them, make it relatable. Because some stories are just human stories, and this applies to [00:28:00] trans kids, too. And I think, given the fact GLAD’s research, right, the data continues to tell us that 70 percent of folks say that they’ve never met a trans person, that they don’t know a trans or non binary person.
And so any way that we can tell these stories, Humanize our siblings, make it relatable so that people understand that we are all the same in so many ways. We’re going through so many of the same things and struggles and there’s other things to be concerned about in the world other than [00:28:30] how I want to show up.
Yeah, it’s weird. It’s like we’re the same, but we’re different. And that difference is one of the ways in which we’re the same. I wanted with this book to really focus on these things that make us like universal, right? These universal experiences that everybody goes through. Everyone has a family. Not everyone has a family.
That’s a broad brush. You could be like an orphan or something. I don’t really have parents. So I understand there are people who might have diverse configurations of families, but there are these like universal, Situations and experiences that we all [00:29:00] go through and that we all face in our lives, but then there are things that make us unique that are are true about Anna, but not might not be true about anybody else on the planet, and I wanted those to sit alongside each other where you can talk about the ways in which.
These kids are the same as you, but the ways in which they just get to be their own person, because that’s really what they’re fighting for. They’re fighting for their own personhood. They’re fighting for their own voice. They’re fighting to live their own particular journey in a way that maybe nobody else might choose to live it, but feels [00:29:30] right for them.
And we need to give that to them. I don’t want our rights to be contingent on the fact that we’re all the same. Like, I want to be able to make different choices than you and still have the ability to make those choices. Like it’s our differences that make us beautiful and it’s our similarities that make us beautiful too.
So I think that in this book, like it presents all of those things as being like valued, like valid and valuable and interesting. And yeah, I like, I know that there was this time where we went with the same love idea that in order to get our rights [00:30:00] to marry people that we love, we had to pretend that our relationships were the same as everybody else.
But I think I’m at a point politically where I don’t want to have to be the same in order to have rights. I want to get to be me and me deserves to have rights because I’m me and it’s the same for these kids. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is so good, Nico. This is so good. I’m so glad you decided to go on this journey, right?
For the last two and a half years, you’re, you decided to undertake one of the hardest things so I’ve [00:30:30] heard out here in the world of writing a book. As you put it, birthing this two and a half year old baby and doing the work to bring it to the people. And so we’re going to do our part here. So you got to tell it for good people where they can go preorder and get your book.
Sure. There are a lot of places that you can order this. You can go to bookshop. org on that supports like local independent booksellers. That’s that’s a great website. If you’re looking to do it in person and you live in Chicago, women and children first I know is carrying it. They’re [00:31:00] at. Fantastic, independent, feminist, queer bookstore.
They’ve been doing great work in the community for a long time. Other than that, there’s, if you want it, Barnes and Noble, I really, I don’t know if that’s a popular opinion anymore, but I have a lot of nostalgia for Barnes and Noble. I basically grew up in the Barnes and Noble and there are only like two of them left.
So if you want to go support, Those two Barnes and Nobles by buying one off their website. I think that’s great if you’re absolutely desperate. And for some reason you can’t Google any other way to get this book in the world. It is technically available on Amazon. Just don’t do it because [00:31:30] they’re destroying the planet.
So support somebody else, but nonetheless, you could give Jeff Bezos more money if you really wanted to, but yeah, it should be just about everywhere books are sold. That’s the hope we were in IndyNext and in Indy’s introduced pick, which uh, gets a sort of built in distribution with Indy booksellers across the country.
So I hope that means this book is where you are, like fingers crossed. I love that. Of course it is. And then is there going to be an audio version, an audio book version? There is it’s a good thing you asked that viko [00:32:00] ortiz from our flag means death who’s a fantastic actor and Non binary drag king is the narrator for the audiobook.
I’m sure certainly i’ve done a wonderful job. I haven’t gotten to listen to it yet I am excited Um, to listen to it along with you. It might be like, honestly, like publication day when I finally get to hear this gosh, darn audio book, but I’m so excited, like Vico. I’ve heard is an incredible narrator and I’m sure just brings so much depth and humanity to the audio book.
So you can do that too. Um, you can also Kindle, right? Do [00:32:30] people still Kindle? I don’t know. I don’t Kindle. I audiobook. Because Kindle is supporting this book in some way by offering it to people, I should not say whether I do or do not Kindle. Uh, pretend that I am the biggest Kindler who has ever Kindled.
I love Kindle. It’s the best. Please tell people about my book, Kindle. That part and everybody tell everybody about this here book. This is what we have to do. We all we got. And so when somebody part of our community is doing something like this, we go out and support [00:33:00] because we all we got. So Nico, thank you so much for joining me on the show and for doing this work.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, this is so great. Absolutely. Family, you already know go pre order the book and we’ll be back with more. This is Queer News Done Right.[00:33:30]
If you’ve enjoyed what you heard, rate and review us inside your favorite podcasting app. This podcast is written and produced by me, Anna Deshawn. Podcast editing by Ryan Woodhull. And brought to you by E3 Radio and distributed on the Qube. We are Queer News Done Right.
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