LGBT stories at Key West Literary Seminar Writers Workshop
Who: Lara Lillibridge, author of Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home [Skyhorse Publishing, April 2018] She is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA program in creative nonfiction. In 2016, she won the Slippery Elm Literary Journal’s Prose Contest, American Literary Review’s Creative Nonfiction Contest, and was a finalist in both Black Warrior Review’s Nonfiction Contest and Disquiet’s Literary Prize in Creative Nonfiction.
What: The Writers’ Workshop Program at the Key West Literary Seminar
When: January 15-19, 2018
Where: 717 Love Lane Key West, FL. 33040
Why: Interview “queerspawn” author who penned one of the first literary accounts of growing up with lesbian moms. As a child, Lara Lillibridge found that in other people’s eyes, the most interesting thing about her wasn’t about her at all; it was about her parents. The way she was parented shaped and scarred her at the same time, but not in the ways that people assume. While unconventional barely scratches the surface of describing Lillibridge’s upbringing, the strange and scarring aspects of her childhood have nothing to do with her mothers’ sexual orientation. It is rather her step-mother’s mental illness, her father’s “off the grid” lifestyle and serial divorces, and the fact that none of the adults in her life are equipped to raise a well-adjusted child.
Lillibridge can speak to:
- How legalizing same-sex marriage protects children
- Her advice for same-sex parents based on her experiences growing up in a lesbian home
- Growing up in the 70s/80s with lesbian parents
- As someone who resists labels and gender/sexuality stereotypes, Lillibridge can discuss trying to fit in to her heteronormative, suburban lifestyle
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