The Queer Love Podcast

You never knows what to expect upon entering a production featuring Taylor Mac. I’ve seen Taylor play a hermaphrodite sea creature, a bedazzled lovelorn flower, as well as Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Shen Te in Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan . My first encounter, 20 years ago at a now-defunct arts space in Williamsburg, was Taylor solo on stage playing a ukulele while singing a song, “Th...

In her memoir Sinkhole: A Personal History of Loss and Land , Juliet Patterson examines generational trauma, family legacies, and the ways marginalized identities offer alternative perspectives on lineage and memory. In particular, Juliet investigates the tragic suicides of three generations of men in her family, including her father, while utilizing the environmental sinkholes of Pittsburg, Kansa...

Rashad Ali Muhammad is a multidisciplinary artist whose work brings together Blackness, queerness, spirituality, ancestry, gender, HIV advocacy and healing. I only recently learned about him and was intrigued by how he uses his art practice to interrogate questions of survival, stigma, and what it means to imagine a future rooted in ancestral resilience. He’s preparing for a February 2027 exhibiti...

As you know, I’m always interrogating radical, transformative power of LGBTQ+ relationships. So, I was excited to talk to two absolute icons of queer art, activism, and love, who have been partners in life and creativity for over 20 years: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle! We gathered together to focus on their joyous new documentary, Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency , which is currently...

I don’t remember how I first stumbled upon the Substack for La | queer, non-binary author and began reading the “Queer Old Me” series. It’s one of those serendipitous realities of Substack that I’ve come to cherish. I soon learned that La lives in Madrid, has a tumor they’ve named Bruno and is an incredible writer who is hurtling through life with joy and passion. I recently shared an essay on my...

You probably know Ryan O’Connell’s work by now. The writer, actor, and creator who has spent over a decade systematically dismantling how the world views queer and disabled lives—usually while making us laugh until we cry. He’s the Emmy-nominated mastermind behind the groundbreaking Netflix series Special —which contained some of the most honest and realistic portrayals of gay male sex and dating...

Before I recap this fantastic conversation, I want to make sure you know about our next live reading event taking place September 20th in the Boston area to celebrate our 2-year anniversary. It is taking place at All She Wrote Books, a queer-owned bookstore in Somerville, Massachusetts, and it will include readings by Lynette D'Amico , Michael Lowenthal , Anthony DiPietro , Jingo Mante and myself....

Lisa Stephen Friday makes theater out of music, memory, gender, and desire. Bernie Wagenblast has spent decades giving public spaces a voice—as a transportation journalist and the familiar voice of New York transit. Now, in A Musical for Henrietta— which was created as part of Joe’s Pub New York Voices commission — their voices meet in a rom-com about a trans woman’s love story and the unexpected...

When I decided to start The Queer Love Project two years ago, one of the first people I reached out to was Zachary Zane. He’d written for publications I ran over the years—including several very important reported pieces over at Rolling Stone —and I saw how successful he’d been with his Substack platform. Although we love reading your personal essays that reveal heartbreaks, happiness, secrets, re...

Last week, the world mourned two pioneers of radical self-expression: Tim Curry , who has been beloved for his role as Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show for decades, and at the same time, country superstar and national treasure Dolly Parton . The latter spent her career using a hyper-feminine, towering, glittering flamboyance as both a superpower and an emotional shield. Dolly was...

I met Valena Beety earlier this summer during a reading event at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division , a cultural space and bookstore located at The Center in New York City, when she was promoting her groundbreaking book, Pink Crime : Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity . It’s a fascinating read and many of the cases and case studies will sur...

I had a great time getting to know Wyatt O’Brian Evans during our recent chat. Wyatt’s a radio host and a powerful voice in the LGBTQ+ community (you can check out his show on YouTube as well ). He’s the author of the Nothing Can Tear Us Apart series , which explores the deep complexities of romance, resilience, and survival among same-gender-loving men of color. Since his brand-new erotic psychol...

When I read Jeremy Atherton Lin’s debut book, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out , I was blown away by his ability to map queer identity onto disappearing nightlife spaces. Then, with his second book, Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told , Jeremy shifted from public dance floors to domestic, cross-border romance under the shadow of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Both books—which braid personal nar...

I was excited to finally chat with Katrina Anne Willis about her memoir Hurricane Lessons : A Memoir of Betrayal and Becoming . It’s a gripping story of late-in-life queer awakening, institutional gaslighting, and the devastating cost of finally choosing personal truth. Katrina, thanks for joining me. Last year, we published an essay by Katrina titled “ I Was Gay, and He Was Understanding ,” which...

I have a theory that pop music is a major contributor to our internal blueprints for romantic relationships. Let me put it more bluntly: It messes us up! Over the past couple of years, I’ve talked to authors and creators, including musician Roddy Bottom —and we even published several essays focused on the power of music in our love lives. But I had yet to zero in on one of my passions—to analyze h...

I spoke with with Claybourne Elder , a performer who many may know from his breakout role as John Adams on HBO’s The Gilded Age and his roles in Broadway revivals like Company. Most recently, he has channeled his journey from a Mormon upbringing in Utah to fatherhood in New York into his debut solo album, If The Stars Were Mine . You can stream it on the platforms and it’s now on vinyl from Center...

I met Lindsey Danis while in Baltimore during the annual AWP conference . She told me about her forthcoming book, (Out) on the Road , and I was excited to discuss the idea of “queer travel” and how that intersects with our search for love, opportunities for discovery and celebration. We published Lindsey’s essay “ Lost in Apalachicola ” last week, which is an excerpt from the book, and details a t...

Hi, this is Jerry Portwood, host of the Queer Love Podcast. As you know, I’m always curious about how we put ourselves together as we navigate our time on the planet and the stories we tell ourselves as we try to do it. So I was eager to talk to our guest, a journalist I’ve long admired and who has spent a good deal of his life writing and thinking about sexuality, gender and identity—among many o...

It’s been nearly a year since we hosted our first QLP Book Club . Over that time I’ve been thrilled to talk to so many talented authors about their novels and how they intersected with various topics of queer love. But I have to admit, I was disappointed that I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to focus on female-bodied desire. So I was thrilled to have author Mac Crane as our latest selection. In A...

By now you probably know I’m a big fan of archives, histories, biographies and exploring the queer past that has remained obscured for far too long. During my latest Sunday chat, I invited Ben Egerman to join me to discuss his “ gay little history zines ” and other historical work. We talked about the sapphic love stories that more people should be aware, a transgender horse thief, the Black drag...

I’ve enjoyed Mark Addison Smith ’s daily drawing project for years (you can follow him via Instagram if you’re curious), and I was thrilled that he agreed to collaborate with me on Vol. 2 of The QLP Quarterly zine. Mark is a queer artist and educator who specializes in typographic storytelling. His work focuses on using illustrative text to create visual narratives through printed matter, artist’s...

In this episode of The Queer Love Podcast , we tackled one of the topics that continues to confuse and trouble so many people: religion. Our guest, Dr. Harry Tanner , has written a fantastic scholarly book, The Queer Thing About Sin , that will get you thinking differently about so many of the myths and misconceptions that persist—from ancient Greek and Roman beliefs to Christianity and our curren...

With a title like Men I Hate , Lynette D’Amico’s gorgeously written memoir in essays, you know people are going to raise an eyebrow. So when I invited her to join me for a chat recently, we definitely discussed the provocative title—and all the expectations that come with it. As she explained, many people imagine it will be about right-wing enemies or other detestable people, but the reality is mu...

For those who may be too young to recall how weird the 1980s and ‘90s were to be gay, you’ll definitely want to read Roddy Bottum ’s debut memoir, The Royal We . In it, the musician details what it was like growing up in Los Angeles before moving to San Francisco and forming the band Faith No More. And, believe me, it’s a really gay book! He recently joined me on The Queer Love Podcast to talk a l...

Michael Lowenthal is the author of a story collection, Sex With Strangers , and four more novels. His writing has appeared in a slew of prestigious publications, including Tin House , Ploughshares , The New York Times Magazine , The Washington Post , Guernica and The Southern Review . Plus, he’s taught creative writing at Boston College and Hampshire College and, for more than 20 years, he was a f...