Queer author, Dudgrick Bevins, organizes Kudzu Crossroads, a panel discussion on identity and aesthetics

Southern Queers have taken up the fight against what Jack Halberstam named metronormativity; that is, the believe that queer people cannot be liberated in rural areas. An upcoming panel discussion, Kudzu Crossroads, seeks to examine the narrative possibilities of leaving and staying in the rural south, the aesthetics and ethics of each, and the spiritual haunting unique to those both Queer and Southern.

Artists will share both their personal experience and their creative work in a dialog that addresses the responsibility of the Queer Southern artist to contend with a traumatic past and how we situate ourselves as transplants or natives from a troubled place, in a troubled country, during a troubled time.

The panel is free, but registration through Eventbrite is required. A small donation when you register to the hosts of the event, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, is greatly appreciated. While the Bureau is not able to run the physical space during the pandemic, the Bureau continues to host virtual events like this one and to sell books on their new online store.

For more on Kintsugi Books and the organizer of this event, Dudgrick Bevins, see dudgrickbevins.com/kintsugibooks

Participants Include:

Jill Fredenburg (Panelist) is an author and filmmaker from Memphis, Tennessee. Her first book, LGBTQ+ Revolution 2.0, is a celebratory collection of narratives from queer-identifying individuals who have yet to see adequate representation in traditional media. She now runs A Sign on the Door, a digital publication by and for folks who want to share in productive cultural critique. You can find her book in stores and online and reach out to @JillFredenburg on most social media platforms

Marie Hinson (Panelist) is an artist cultivating care and insurrection in poetry, performance and documentary cinematography. Her recent chapbook, Please Remit My Qubits (The Operating System, 2020), shakes at the lines between her trans embodiment and extractive technologies in placemaking and imagination. In 2019 she debuted her first full length, site transformative performance, Stop on the object / move on the image, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her verite documentary work focuses on portraits of artists and places. Marie’s upcoming directorial debut, Frank Bey, was supported by the 2019 IFP Documentary Lab and the 2019 Chicken and Egg Nest Knight Fellowship. Her first documentary feature as a cinematographer, Queer Genius, premiered at Frameline43.

Kyle Jackson (Panelist) is a writer, actor, stage director and creative teacher originally from New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2014, his original play, BOY, was presented at the Fresh Fruit Festival in New York City. In 2015, he directed the Baltimore Annex Theater’s production of Robert O’Hara’s Insurrection: Holding History, which won Best Play of 2015 at the Baltimore City Paper’s Best of Baltimore Awards. Currently, he serves as Deputy Editor of Bear World Magazine, an online lifestyle magazine for the larger, more hairy members of the queer community, and he is also the host of the Bear World Podcast. He received a BA in Theatre Arts from Morgan State University, an MS in Arts Administration from Drexel University and attended the British American Drama Academy’s Midsummer in Oxford Program in 2017.

Jeff Mann (Panelist) grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including Arts and Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, and Appalachian Heritage. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; five full-length books of poetry; two collections of personal essays; three novellas; five novels, including, Salvation: A Novel of the Civil War, which won both a Lambda Literary Award and the Pauline Réage Novel Award; a book of poetry and memoir; and three volumes of short fiction, Desire and Devour: Stories of Blood and Sweat, Consent: Bondage Tales, and A History of Barbed Wire, which won a Lambda Literary Award. In 2013, he was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Karlié Rodríguez (Panelist) is a writer, translator, and theorist from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Their work has appeared in American Book Review, Rogue Agent, Sabanas Magazine, and a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, and is also forthcoming in El humor es cosa seria, a Puerto Rican anthology of humorous writing. Their geographical time is split between Georgia, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

Dudgrick Bevins (Moderator/Organizer) is a queer interdisciplinary artist who infuses poetry into all other forms of art, including film, fiber, painting, and publishing. He is an MA candidate at Kennesaw State College in American Studies and an MFA candidate in Poetry at City College of New York. He is the author of the collaborative chapbooks Georgia Dusk with luke kurtis (bd studios), Pointless Thorns with Nate DeWaele (Kintsugi Books), the books Vigil (bd studios, forthcoming) and Route 4 Box 358 (bd studios), and the solo chapbook My Feelings Are Imaginary People Who Fight for My Attention (Poet’s Haven). You can follow his endeavors at www.dudgrickbevins.com.