T161.
Removing the Camouflage: Queer and Trans Military Voices Speak Out
Thursday, March 9, 2023
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Recent creative nonfiction storytellers speak out about being queer and/or trans in the military and how sharing their stories has helped shape public perspectives of LGBTQ+ people in the armed forces. Panelists discuss the challenges with sharing queer and trans stories, contributions of queer and trans voices to military literature, film, and storytelling, and strategies in creating social change through advocating for more diverse voices in the writing and documenting of military experiences.
Participants
Bronson Lemer (he/him) is the author of The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq. His work has appeared in Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of Minnesota Rochester.
Katherine Schifani is an Air Force veteran who spent seven years on active duty as a maintenance officer and instructor of English. She currently spends the winters skiing and climbing in Colorado and the summers guiding in the Cascades.
Anthony Moll is the author of Out of Step: A Memoir, (winner of a Lambda Literary Award and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize) and You Cannot Save Here (Winner of the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize). They hold an MFA in creative nonfiction, and they are finishing their dissertation for a PhD in English.
Máel Embser-Herbert, veteran and professor of social justice and social change at Hamline University, is coeditor of With Honor and Integrity: Transgender Troops in Their Own Words and author of "'Welcome! Oh, wait…’ Transgender Military Service in a Time of Uncertainty" in Sociological Inquiry.
