We’re Queer, We’re Peers, We’ve Literally Taught Here

One thing about being queer in a country that won’t see or accept you for who you are is that, for the most part, you’re called to be your own mentor. Or parent. Or hero. Or all three.

A turning point in the lives of so many of our writers, editors, and staff was finding the author that spoke to them, even through the distance of the page. And while it's beautiful, every time, to read someone’s work and make it a part of who you are—

It’s lonely too.

So, while we leverage the LGBTQ+ web contributors, staff members, and instructors all month (and all year) long, create scholarships for the community, and donate proceeds from book sales on Catapult.co made June 22-24th to the Ali Forney Center, we’d also like you to meet our instructors, who give us a few more heroes, and make us just a little less lonely.

Amy Feltman

Remember Amy Feltman’s name because next winter, you're going to be hearing a lot of it. Her debut novel Willa & Hesper is forthcoming from Grand Central in February 2019, and it's a total knockout of a book. It’s written with such intimacy and grace that by its final page you’ll feel like Willa and Hesper are as close as family. Their voices are distinct, thorny, and relatable, and their love story is deeply moving. Add this one to your TBR now, and in the meantime, sign up for Amy’s Catapult class this fall. The six-week course combines workshop with craft lessons, honing in on the art of character and voice. You couldn’t have a better guide than Amy, who's a master of the art of making characters come alive.

Who do you claim as a queer ancestor? (Can be living or dead)

This is such a hard question! Let’s see . . . Like so many literary types, I’m obsessed with what Virginia Woolf can do with language. The style and rhythm of her sentences is a constant inspiration to me. I remember reading Orlando in high school, and underlining an entire page, thinking: You’re allowed to do this?! I also admire so many performers, like Carrie Brownstein, Janelle Monáe, the one and only David Bowie, for their confidence and vision. But in my heart, I’m a relatively twitchy introvert, so their influences are subtly visible at best! I’ve also been watching Take My Wife recently, which is amazing, and I really feel a kinship towards Rhea Butcher’s sense of humor and love of hoarding tiny impractical things.

How does your own relationship to queerness impact the way WILLA & HESPER talk and think through their desire?

Parts of the book borrow from some of my own experiences. I love writing about the early stages of infatuation. I think it’s such an opportunity to get into a character’s point of view because you’re feeling all the things. The scene in which Willa and Hesper first hang out, when Willa’s trying to figure out whether Hesper’s also queer, and she’s fixating on every hint of body language and word choice to suss it out, was definitely drawn from life. A lot of what they’re dealing with is tightroping on that line between being interested and being too interested.

I wanted their relationship to feel really rippled with emotion early on, to have the prose itself be very bouncy and intense. Willa is Hesper’s first girlfriend. When you finally let yourself explore this thing that you’ve been ignoring for a long, long time, it’s really special and mesmerizing. I wanted every sentence to be imbued with that kind of wonder and surrealism.

What kind of books about the LGBTQ+ community would you like to see more of?

I’d just love to see more stories from all parts of the queer community, particularly from authors of color, trans authors, neurodivergent authors, and authors with disabilities. And I want to read happy stories! I can’t write a happy story to save my life, but I think we deserve stories that highlight joy in the queer community rather than suffering.

What brings you JOY?

Right now, on one of the first miserably hot days of summer, I have to say: air conditioning. Otherwise, I love croissants, peonies, Bjork (her voice, her fashion, really everything there is about Bjork), seeing strangers forge a connection, witnessing empathy in general, LGBTQ+ representation, live music, Rifle Paper Company’s designs, watching my grandmother dance, Gustav Klimt, baking, gold trinkets, Tori Amos, those chocolate-covered graham crackers from Trader Joe’s, modernism, brunch. And I love when people who have been trying and trying and trying finally make it. That’s one of the best things.

Rumaan Alam

Our students raved about Rumaan Alam after his eight-week novel workshop with Catapult last fall, describing him as “extremely smart and funny.” He’s one of the kindest writers we know (and one of the best on Twitter). If you’re looking for something to read, start with his first novel, the delicious Rich and Pretty, and once you finish that—most likely it in one sitting—snag a copy of his latest, That Kind of Mother, which has been praised by everyone from The Washington Post (“an outstanding depiction of motherhood”) to Entertainment Weekly (“laced with humor and remarkably rich in detail”). Rumaan has recently joined the team at the New York Times Book Review, and we couldn’t be more proud to have had him on our roster here at Catapult.

What brings you JOY?

The news these days reminds us that joy is hard to come by, or that possessing it means you’re pretty lucky. Demanding your own measure of joy is important; if you are lucky it is everywhere. If you feel unlucky, look harder and you may well find it. What is joyous? The way my children wake up so hungry, sleepily requesting bacon and eggs, the silly pictures they draw me, the way they sing in the shower, the excitement they feel about the most quotidian things, like a passing fire truck, its lights flashing. But more, too: my husband’s joking text messages, the smell of an old book, a sentence by Saul Bellow, eating cereal for dinner because I feel like it, watching Mary Tyler Moore while I fold the laundry and think about nothing.Who do you claim as a queer ancestor? (Can be living or dead) Once, ages ago now, my husband and I were out somewhere I can no longer recall, and we saw a quite elderly gay couple, and he said to me, “Our forefathers.” I love that, and think it all the time, when I spy older queer people out and about. Our forefathers (and mothers, of course) existed; their existence and insistence and activism yielded a world in which I can enjoy a pretty square suburban minivan-and-kids existence. So many of those forefathers and mothers are gone; AIDS destroyed an entire generation. They’re all our ancestors, even if we can’t see them.When did you know you would dedicate your life to storytelling? That’s a grand way of talking about what I do! Writing is a habit more than anything, one I’ve had since childhood and am hopeful I never break.

Where and how do you find great new writing?

It’s everywhere. But let’s parse that—there’s so much I have never read that everything old can feel new. Anyone who claims to have nothing to read is incredibly lazy.