Category Archives: Late night thoughts (dear emily)

Coming In (updated zine)

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Updated zine! I started this zine while sitting in a pub across the street from an LGBTQ+ youth center. I had just dropped off a teen and they had asked me when I first came out. I didn't have a good quick answer at the time, so I sat andined up a rainbow of pens at the bar. It's easy enough to explain how coming out isn't a one-time-thing, but what I really wanted to explain was how coming out can be an act of coming in to your self and into a beautiful constellation of queerness. 🖤🤎️🧡 #nationalcomingoutday #peppermintalleypress #zine #queerzines #zinemaking
Updated zine! I wanted to get this updated for National Coming Out Day.

🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

I started this zine on a Spring evening in 2019.  It was cold and sleeting as I parked myself in a pub across the street from an LGBTQ+ youth center. I had just dropped off a teen (who was staying with us) and they had asked me when I first came out. I didn’t have a good quick answer at the time, so I sat at the bar and lined up a rainbow of pens. It’s easy enough to explain how coming out isn’t a one-time-thing. I wanted to tell them that I don’t remember specifically “coming out” so much as a continual process of trying to be true to myself.  It sounds cliche. What I really wanted to explain was how coming out can be an act of coming in to your self and into a vast constellation of queerness. 🌌

hello from 1999

A dear love dug out this yearbook find from 1999. This is me both then and now and there is comfor in that. I was not worried about the future and I think I took things a day at a time. Even still, I wish I could have told that person to keep better notes, to speak their own truths with boldness, to let themself dream even more fully. But more than looking back, I want to look forward. What would you tell yourself twenty-some years into the future?