Art of a masc-presenting person with curly hair, cane, and a lesbian flag wrapped around their neck holding the hand of a fem-presenting person with an aromantic and asexual badge on their cardigan. They are moving in front of a crowd behind them. There is text above them that reads, “All of my friends turned out to be queer.”
Poetry

All of my friends turned out to be queer

An illustration of a pride flag flowing on a flagpole with an American flag flowing behind it on the same flagpole. The flagpole is shaped like a spear. The flags have soft pink lighting on the exteriors of it. Behind both flags is a black star shape. There is black text beneath both of the flags that reads “Defy, Protect, Celebrate.” The background is a gradient fading from white to pink.
Art & Illustration

Defy, Protect, Celebrate

Digital illustration of an androgynous person covered fully in flags from countries around the world with a yellowish tone tiny on top, and with minimal features outside of downturned eyes gazing upwards. The person is surrounded by and is holding monarch butterflies, and is also surrounded by yellow birds in flight. There is a blue sky with clouds in the background, with text that reads "Protect Our Migrants" in curly, free-flowing lettering.
Art & Illustration

Protect our migrants

Chest up depiction of a white man in reflective white rimmed ski goggles with the letters POC on the side, a black ski helmet, a dark blue jacket, and a purple and white Olympic jersey on a light blue background. He is facing 3/4s to the left with a focused expression. Colorful lines and other textures flow off of him to the right, indicating movement.
Art & Illustration

Elis Lundholm: The first (out) trans athlete in the Winter Olympics

A guy with short, black curly hair and tan skin has a determined, angry facial expression. His hands are curled up in fists and he's in a fighting or kicking stance. His brown boot is extending towards the screen. The word "ICE" written on the bottom of the shoe and the word "OUT" spanning out underneath it. The background is off-white and there is a gray shadow behind him, as well as a red outline around him. He is wearing a cream colored shirt and blue jeans.
Art & Illustration

Step on ICE

A room with a lamp shining on a vinyl record, with sheet music scattered around it.
Arts & Entertainment

Between the lines: utilizing music to shape mood in fiction

Featured

Art of a masc-presenting person with curly hair, cane, and a lesbian flag wrapped around their neck holding the hand of a fem-presenting person with an aromantic and asexual badge on their cardigan. They are moving in front of a crowd behind them. There is text above them that reads, “All of my friends turned out to be queer.”
All of my friends turned out to be queer

Kaden / OutWrite I plead guilty to perpetually falling in love With the ritual of her hands weaving Watercolor sunsets into the shapes of women; With their voice, always the loudest in…

Arts & Entertainment

A room with a lamp shining on a vinyl record, with sheet music scattered around it.
Between the lines: utilizing music to shape mood in fiction

Music is woven into our everyday lives. It starts our mornings, softens our nights and sustains us through the difficult moments between. A single song can brighten a day. A familiar melody can feel like coming home. It is no surprise, then, that music plays an equally vital role in the stories we tell. Music doesn’t merely sit in the background of our favourite movies and television shows; it shapes how we feel, what we notice, and what we understand about the characters before they even utter a word. Sometimes, music whispers secrets to the audience that even the story itself is too timid to reveal. This rings especially true in queer stories, where music expresses desire and intimacy and evokes emotion that the narrative might otherwise leave unspoken.

Opinion

a black and white drawing of Marsha P. Johnson with a feather in her hair and a trans pride color necklace and trans pride colored flowers in her hair. The words trans power are above her shoulders.
What Trump’s gender manifesto says about trans power

As you read this article, the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite history by erasing evidence of transgender Americans’ existence over time. At the start of 2025, the Trump administration released an executive order defining the parameters of sex and gender titled “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,” also called Executive Order 14168. This order aims to limit the government’s ability to advance the goals of what Trump terms “gender ideology” (or the belief in the fact that sex and gender are two separate identities) by requiring government agencies to acknowledge sex and not gender, defunding gender affirming healthcare and excluding transgender resources from mental health agencies, prisons, schools and more.

Welcome to OutWrite!

Established in 1979 at the University of California, Los Angeles, OutWrite Newsmagazine is the oldest queer college publication in the United States. OutWrite strives to build a growing educational platform through a multi-media approach that uplifts and empowers the often silenced voices of the incredibly diverse queer community. We aim to challenge dominant cisheteronormative narratives through an unapologetically anti-queerphobic, anti-racist, and progressive lens.

A map of Asia over the progress flag
Politics & News
Asia’s Steps Toward Queerness in 2023

Towards the end of October 2023, Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that their long-held legislation requiring transgender citizens to undergo medical sterilization and have “no functional reproductive glands” to legally change their gender is in fact unconstitutional. Even with this change, they must be unmarried and have genitals that present as the “gender” they are trying to identify as. Though there remain some obstacles, this court decision will allow for a life without legal violations of physical autonomy. In the spirit of this queer legislative win for Japanese people, we’d like to highlight how queer folks in other regions of Asia have also witnessed victories and an expansion of dedicated space within the past year.

A digital illustration of a rainbow folding fan which reads "Rest In Peace." Surrounding the fan are a variety of roses in the colors of the nonbinary pride flag: black, white, yellow, and purple. The image's background is lilac.
Politics & News
The Loss of Jesús Ociel Baena, Mexico’s First Nonbinary Magistrate, and What it Means for the Community

On Monday, Nov. 13, reports of the death of nonbinary Mexican Magistrate Jesús Ociel Baena sent shock waves through the LGBTQ+ community. 

A photograph of a smiling Alex, a Latino man with light brown skin and black hair wearing a gray suit and American flag socks, sitting on a couch with a smiling Henry, a white man with blonde hair, wearing a black suit, blue slash, and Union Jack socks. The photograph reads, "Love who you want. It's good foreign policy."
Arts & Entertainment
What “Red, White & Royal Blue” Gets Right About Being Queer in Politics — And What It Doesn’t

“I am the First Son of the United States, and I’m bisexual. History will remember us.”

Casey McQuiston’s debut romance novel “Red, White & Royal Blue” has recently been adapted into an Amazon Prime movie, bringing the love story between the American First Son and the Prince of England to the big screen. The film is a winding tale of controversy and copulation, but ends happily with Alex Claremont-Diaz (played by Taylor Zakhar Perez) and Henry Windsor (played by Nicholas Galitzine) stepping into Alex’s childhood home to start the next chapter of their lives together.

A digital illustration of a young masc person with tan skin and dark hair wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. They stand in front of a weapon rocket that has a rainbow ribbon tied around it. Behind them, a city is burning. They ask, "This makes it ok, right?"
Politics & News
Rainbow-washing Genocide

Every June, corporations unabashedly participate in rainbow capitalism by putting out rainbow logos and pride product lines without taking any meaningful action to support LGBTQ+ causes. We have grown quick to call out such corporations for their performativity, so why don’t we call out other forms of rainbow-washed oppression — especially when it comes to justifying the mass murder of an entire populace?

Formal group photograph of the Supreme Court as it was been comprised on June 30, 2022 after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the Court. The Justices are posed in front of red velvet drapes and arranged by seniority, with five seated and four standing. Seated from left are Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito and Elena Kagan. Standing from left are Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Credit: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
Politics & News
The Supreme Court on Queer Rights: A Checkered Future

In June 2023, six out of nine Supreme Court justices ruled in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that a Colorado graphic designer could legally discriminate against same-sex couples by refusing to make websites for their weddings. The case expands the narrower precedent of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a 2018 decision which ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission could not compel a bakery to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. Both rulings used the First Amendment’s provision for religious freedom as a bludgeon against the LGBTQ+ community’s right to access to public life.

A digital illustration of a black-haired, light-skinned femme in white tanktop, jeans, and black boots in a wheelchair, an older black-haired, light-skinned femme in a green vest holding hands with a brown femme with blonde hair and wearing a blue shirt, a lounging brown masc with glasses and an asexual heart t-shirt, a lounging femme in a pink dress and draped in a progress flag, a black femme child in a pink dress holding hands with a bald black person in a green bikini top holding a progress flag, a white masc with white hair wearing a harness, and a white person with a white undercut mullet kissing a brown person with blonde hair. The background is a pastel rainbow gradient.
Community
Why Pride This Year?

Picture this: it’s June 28, 1970, nearly a year after the monumental Stonewall riots, and you’re attending the first Pride Parade in New York City. Except it’s not a parade, and it’s not entirely about Pride: it’s the Christopher Street Liberation Day March. Here, we recognize the familiar names of Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and the lesser known names of the march’s organizers Craig Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, Linda Rhodes, Brenda Howard and many more. Unlike today’s Pride Parade, this march in New York was dedicated to Gay Liberation in the forms of political speeches, demonstrations, and gay visibility.

illustration of three women of color wearing face masks and holding violet flames
Opinion
to live, not just to survive: the queer indomitable spirit

Queerness is often about survival. While Torres is alluding to a space free from discrimination and violence, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, queer survival is being threatened even more. As much as we want to create a “safe space,” there is no true safe space as long as people are dying and becoming disabled from COVID-19. COVID-19 is being swept under the rug by our government despite clear evidence that repeat infections can leave lasting damage in almost every organ in the body.7 Currently, there is also a resurgence of anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and anti-free speech rhetoric and legislation. When queer people are denied the chance to exist, we must find a way to live. By critically examining our past, we can shed light on the present.