Country Queers

About halfway between Santa Barbara and Bakersfield, California - on the ancestral lands of the Chumash people - lies a remote and strikingly beautiful high desert valley named Cuyama. The Cuyama Valley finds itself in the middle of a tense and complicated battle over water rights. A battle where all of the residents, farmers, ranchers, and even the rural underfunded school district, have been pit...

Q: What happens when you bring a gaggle of country queers together for a weeklong audio workshop and retreat in rural coastal Maine? A: Rural Queer Maine Audio MAGIC! In November 2024 a group of rural and smalltown LGBTQ+ folks from across the state of Maine, spent 5 days together in Passamaquoddy territory / Washington County on the coast of Maine at a rural queer audio retreat. The retreat was o...

Country Queers: A Love Letter   arrives October 8, 2024 from Haymarket Books! Listen to Rae multitask morning goat chores while telling you about the book and the fundraiser we've launched to support the costs of book tour travels. Featuring: ducks, goat bells, goats chewing, Rae walking through tall grass, and rambling without a script in the milking shed! You can preorder the book here and pleas...

In 2023 state legislatures across the South and Midwest have introduced over 400 bills attacking trans adults, trans kids, and drag queens. This legislative session in West Virginia saw the introduction of more than 15 anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills. On Thursday March 9th, 2023 trans organizers held a rally at the Capitol Building in Charleston, WV in protest of House Bill 2007 which would enforc...

Dorothy Allison is a 73 year old, white, feminist, working class story teller, who was raised in South Carolina and Florida and now makes her home in California. She is the author of many books including novels, short stories, a poetry collection, and a memoir. In this interview, recorded by Rae Garringer in August 2018, Dorothy talks about memories of growing up "a poor kid in love with language,...

KD Randle (they/them) is a Black, southern, queer, genderfluid person currently living in Jackson, Mississippi. They're a lifelong learner, visionary, creator, their mother's youngest seed, a friend, partner, dog parent, and former farm apprentice at Sipp Culture . This episode weaves together audio diaries recorded on KD's commutes to and from the farm, and an interview with their mother: Reveren...

Dana Kaplan (he/him) is a white trans person and the Executive Director of Outright Vermont and he's on a mission to make Vermont celebratory and affirming for all LGBTQ+ youth. When not working, Dana spends time making music, fermenting food, people watching, and hanging out with his spouse and their two kids. In this episode Zach Henningsen interviews Dana about living in Vermont as a NYC kid, m...

Miguel Mendías is an interdisciplinary artist living in Marfa, Texas, occupied Jumano and Apache lands.  He is Chicanx, Mexican-American, or Latinx (a term he dislikes). He is mestizo ; of Czech, Basque, and Rarámuri (Tarahumara) descent. His father's family has lived in Marfa, Texas for five generations. In this episode Kūʻiʻolani Cotchay (she/they) interviews Miguel about his work to restore the...

Sharonna Henderson is a mother, an activist and a burlesque performer. She is a fat, Black, queer, woman who believes in liberation through rest and art. Her life is full of love and beauty and it's her mission to share it with as many souls as possible during this lifetime. In this episode Toviah DeGroot draws from Bhanu Kapil's "The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers" for a dream-like conversat...

Sam Gleaves is a white gay man who was born and raised in Virginia and now lives in Kentucky. Sam is an old-time musician, educator, singer/songwriter, and a banjo, guitar, and fiddle player. This episode features Rae's 2013 interview with Sam where he talks about musical traditions, family, and finding a sense of belonging within the word "Fabulachian." Then you'll hear a phone call between Sam a...

Adria Stembridge (she/her) is a goth, neurodivergent, white, queer, trans woman who was born and raised in Georgia where she still lives. She has been in bands like: The Endless, The Girl Pool, Vomit Thrower, Tears for the Dying, and more. Adria loves watching anime, roller skating, changing piston rings on her dirtbike, and operating heavy equipment like hydraulic excavators. In this episode Tomm...

Kūʻiʻolani (she/they) is a queer, mixed-Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) living in their ancestral lands in Mākaha, Hawaiʻi. She is an educator, learning experience designer, musician/creative and plant person. In this episode Miguel Mendías interviews Kūʻiʻolani about Hawaiian history, lands, language, color theory, queerness, colonization, belonging, being of mixed Indigenous ancestry, and living...

In this episode HB Lozito of Out in the Open and Rae Garringer of Country Queers welcome you behind the scenes of our collaboratively produced, rural-lgbtqia+ made Season 2 adventure! Our fellow-travelers and co-producers in this Season, who you'll meet along the way, include:  KD Randle, Kūʻiʻolani Cotchay, Miguel Mendías, Tommy Anderson. Tovi DeGroot, and Zach Henningsen. Our sound designer is H...

We're back with another season full of rural queer oral histories, but with a twist! In Season 2 we teamed up with our friends at Out in the Open and invited 6 rural and small town lgbtqia+ folks to join us in an experimental adventure in creating a collaboratively produced season:  by us and for us.  You'll hear participants - many brand new to audio work - in conversation with each other about i...

In this episode you'll meet Tash Terry who is Diné and shares memories of spending time with her grandmother on a sheep camp on Black Mountain in the Navajo Reservation.  Then, you'll meet Elena Higgins who is of Maori and Samoan descent, and shares memories of spending time with her cousin and uncle who managed a huge herd of sheep in rural New Zealand.  Tash and Elena are musicians, partners, an...

In this "sheep-adjacent" episode, we're diving into the some of the ways in which we relate to and communicate with animals. You'll meet Pony Jacobson - a white, queer and trans sheep shearer - who shares stories of training his border collie herding dog and working and living in conservative rural spaces. And you'll meet Penelope Logue - a white, queer and trans rancher - who talks about raising...

In this episode, we'll hear sounds of sheep and some queer and trans humans who love them.  Host Rae Garringer shares memories of growing up on a sheep farm in West Virginia, Maja Black shares an audio diary of lambing season in Iowa, then we'll hear an interview with Grayson Crane who raises a flock of Icelandic sheep in western Washington, and finally we'll meet Wesley Godden who grew up in Sing...

This episode features audio from a webinar hosted by the Women's and Gender-Non-Conforming Center at Berea College in October 2020 as a part of their virtual pride series.  In it, Rae Garringer is joined by the Editorial Dream Team: Sharon P. Holland , Hermelinda Cortés , and Lewis Raven Wallace .  We talk about how we came into story-telling and narrative-shifting work, who we are accountable to...

Robyn Thirkill farms on Monacan Territory in Prospect, VA where she raises goats, ducks, turkeys and pigs on land that's been in her family for 100 years. In this 2016 interview Robyn talks about her commitment to her family's heritage and history on the land, her adventures in beekeeping, and how Prince Edward County closed their public schools for 5 years after Brown vs. Board out of a refusal t...

Silas House is a nationally best-selling author of 6 novels, 3 plays, and a book of creative nonfiction. Silas grew up on Adena, Yuchi, Cherokee, and Shawnee land in Laurel County, Kentucky. In this interview - recorded in July 2018 at the Hindman Settlement School - Silas talks about growing up in the evangelical holiness church, how meeting his now-husband inspired him to come out at age 34, the...

The next episode is in the works, but in the meantime, we wanted to tell y'all about a new favorite podcast. It's called Transcripts and it's about how trans people are remaking the world, from the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project. The production team is entirely queer and trans and the first episode features interviews with trans organizers all over the U.S.   Check it out at : https://an...

At the time of our interview, Kody Kay was 52 years old and he lived on Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, & Sioux land in Longmont, CO where he ran a heating and cooling company. Kody is trans and he's an announcer on the International Gay Rodeo Circuit. In this interview, recorded at the Rocky Mountain Regional Gay Rodeo on July 13, 2014, Kody talks about coming out as trans in his 50s, building community...

Elandria Williams identifies as a Black, southern/Appalachian, disabled, genderqueer, pansexual, Unitarian Universalist, "auntiemama" to 3 nieces and nephews and 4 god kids.  E grew up on Cherokee land in Knoxville and Powell, TN. In this interview - recorded at the STAY Project 's summer gathering at Highlander in 2013 - E talks about organizing, their complicated feelings about "country," how yo...

David Rodriguez grew up on Karankawa land in Wharton, Texas in a family whose roots reach back to before TX was a state.  David was 26 and living on Tonkawa and Sana land in Bastrop, TX at the time of our interview in June 2014. He shares stories of raising livestock for the FFA as a kid, his mom kicking him out of the house after coming out at age 17 and their journey towards reconnection, his fr...

Tessa grew up in Cookeville, Tennessee - which was built on Cherokee and Shawnee land. At the time of this interview, in November 2017, Tessa was 22 years old and studying chemical engineering at TN Tech. In this interview she talks about coming out to her parents, her work with Cumberland Gender Advocacy to support other trans folks in rural middle TN, the struggle to find trans affirming healthc...