Collage by Charis/OutWrite This collage was originally published in our Winter 2023 print issue “Culture.”
Creation and Recreation
In the era before the internet, queer communities were localized, each one unique to its geographic area. When the AIDS pandemic spread throughout the world, killing an estimated 1 in 15 gay men in America by 1995, it not only came with a horrific loss of life, but also decimated communities and networks of queer people across the country.
Marigold Memories
Illustrated by Mieko Tsurumoto/OutWrite This piece was originally published in our Winter 2023 print issue “Culture.” Your Love Lives On Willi Ninja Chavela Vargas Stormé DeLaverie Ernestine Eckstein Jackie Shane Ifti Nasim Amelio Robles Avila Lorraine Hansberry Gladys Bentley Marsha…
Performative Pride, Capitalism and Conservative Hate: The Downfall of the Target Pride Collection
“What do you mean they’re out of stock in all sizes? I’m wearing it,” I grumbled from the confines of a Target fitting room. My girlfriend was trying to find me a different size of the bright green Pride jumpsuit that has circulated TikTok, but, as we looked for more of the Pride collection items in different sizes, it became evident that many weren’t available online for pickup, delivery or shipping, despite being available in very small quantities in Westwood’s City Target.
Araki and the Apocalypse
It’s not every day that your new gay crush climbs through your window, confesses their love, and then promptly explodes in a shower of blood “Alien” style, leaving behind a cockroach-like extraterrestrial. But it happens in Gregg Araki’s surrealist sextravaganza “Nowhere.”
Queer Fashion Staff Features
Photos by Zoë Collins/OutWrite Interviews by Min Kim/OutWrite This series was originally published in our Winter 2023 print issue “Culture.” Min Kim (They/Them) “Trends never really do dictate whether you’re dressing fashionably or not.” “[Fashion] enables me to put into…
Letter From The Editor (Winter 2023)
Dear Reader, OutWrite was founded 44 years ago as an underground beacon for community in a hostile world. We are far from hunky gay daddies taking out ads in our paper and dozens of “Homo Happenings” gracing our pages like we did in the 80s and 90s (unfortunately). We are far from cruising in the third floor Ackerman bathrooms, where queers were desperate to skirt anti-gay sex laws that weren’t repealed until 2003. We are also far from being a publication that excluded transness from its collective identity until the mid-2000s.
Demonic Domesticity
Illustrated by Steph Liu (She/Her) This illustration was originally published in our Fall 2022 print issue “Satanic Panic.“
Ellos Quieren Sangre
Her shoulders drooped with the weight of her Catholic guilt as the statue of white Jesus stared down at her, telling her, I know what you’ve done. His dark eyes seemed to be in perpetual melancholy as her own peered into them. That statue always scared her, always seemed to follow her home from church; it was the first thing she’d see in her grandmother’s kitchen, a miniature version of the statue hung up in her room right in front of the doorway. She had always accepted that Jesus would be a permanent part of her life, just as she had accepted that she bore responsibilities, as the eldest daughter and the first grandchild, to fall in line with what her family expected from her..
What the Devil is That Racket?!
On March 26th, 2021, Lil Nas X dropped “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name),” the lead single for his album “MONTERO” and a passionate declaration of queer love and desire. The single by itself would likely have received a largely positive reaction, as Lil Nas X already had considerable recognition. However, “MONTERO”’s music video featured Lil Nas X as an angel who rides down a pole from Heaven to Hell and gives the Devil a lapdance.
