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Gulfport fest shines a light on gay literature

Bill DeYoung

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Author Brian Broome is Sunday's keynote speaker. Photo provided.

Book banners, hatemongers and woke-deniers won’t have much interest in ReadOut 2023, taking place Friday through Sunday at various venues in Gulfport.

It’s the sixth annual ReadOut event, subtitled A Festival of LBGTQ Literature, and along with author readings (nearly 80 scribes are participating), it features published and emerging authors from across LGBTQ+ and allied communities as part of panels and workshops.

“We live at a time when the State of Florida is trying to erase LBGTQ people,” said Susan Gore, president of the LGBTQ Resource Center of the Gulfport Library. “History, educational opportunities and the support for young people who may be at a very difficult point in their lives, trying to understand how they fit in.

“And ReadOut tells those stories, so there is no more important moment.”

Lesbian icons Radclyffe (romance novelist) and Ann McMan (author of numerous novels and short story collections) kick off the free event at 5 p.m. Friday with a “long view” of lesbian/feminist publishing – past, present and future.

Keynote speaker Brian Broome (Noon Sunday at the Gulfport Casino) is a Washington Post reporter whose memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction as well as the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir or Biography.

Raved the Kirkus reviewer: “Beautifully written, this examination of what it means to be Black and gay in America is a must-read.”  Punch Me Up to the Gods was named a New York Times Editor’s Pick (2021), a Stonewall Honor Book (2022) and a Best Book of the Year (2021) by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Amazon and Apple Books.

Broome will sign books following his talk.

Additional authors scheduled to participate include Becky Bohan, Penny Mickelbury, Elle Ire, Cheryl Head, Elizabeth Sims, Ann Aptaker, Maria Ingrande Mora, Aaron Aceves, Racquel Marie, Jamison Green and Zander Keig.

There’ll be a benefit performance of the Moises Kauffman play The Laramie Project, Saturday evening at the Catherine Hickman Theatre, produced by the Ghostlight Young Company.

ReadOut was launched in 2018 by a special committee connected to the Gulfport Library. In time, it became its own nonprofit independent organization, “but we’re still tied into the library in a lot of good ways,” according to Gore.

In the beginning, “it was a passion of some Gulfport women who are authors, and readers. It started as a very organic local event – and we were the last live event at the library, in February 2020, before Covid shut everything down.”

(There were 15 authors at the first ReadOut, and 150 participants. “We thought that was extremely successful.”)

Out of necessity, ReadOut went viral in 2021 and ’22 – and, to organizers’ delight, the numbers kept rising.

“Last year, we had 954 computers registered from 22 countries,” Gore said. “What we discovered, of course, is accessibility is the key. You don’t have to have to have the time and money to come to Gulfport – you can Zoom in from anywhere.”

The 2023 ReadOut is both live and viral; it’s free, but pre-registration (here) is required.

Here’s the complete event schedule.

 

 

 

 

 

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