When I started researching queer history, I began to see and understand myself in a way I’d never experienced before. It’s our predecessors who provided the bricks for us to fight for our future and right to exist.

Sharing stories of queer experiences is essential to building community and understanding identity. These accounts provide connection and affirmation, inspiring us to keep thriving.

Queerness is political. Laws against our existence impact every community, and we must take a radical stance against hate.

So often, we first find ourselves and eath other in fiction. These stories construct worlds that make queerness more visible and so intimately human.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” Queer love is poetry.