The Lavender South

Jensen Smith is the Events and Communications Coordinator at Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA), an LGBTQ+ rights organization based in South Carolina.  I was too little to recall, but I hear there were yellow butterflies …

I woke up to an obscure link from my partner to a website reminiscent of early Internet Explorer. It read “A BILL TO BE ENTITLED / AN ACT.” A bill was introduced in my home …

Growing up as a Black girl in the South, I was forced to understand the experience of marginalization and intersectionality. There was no getting around discrimination on all fronts. Once I came out as a …

Content Warning: anti-trans violence and hate. My name is Renae Green, and I am a Black trans woman from Jamaica currently seeking asylum here in the U.S. I was born and raised in St. Ann’s …

Growing up in North Carolina, I became acutely aware of my own and other’s identities at an early age. To endure the climate in the South, we are socialized to self-surveil as a means of …

I allowed myself to release a violent, joyous sound as I drove the pick hammer through the glass plate. Shards flew around, bouncing off my goggles and thick work gloves, and a camera shutter clicked …

Andy Reeder (she/her) is the Communications Coordinator for the Harriet Hancock Center in Columbia, SC., and a communications contractor for the Campaign for Southern Equality. She is a queer veteran dedicated to advancing the rights …

You have heard it said that ‘art urges voyages.’ These words from the late poet-prophet Gwendolyn Brooks responding to an interview question on a public art installation. Yet, as I consider the ways of surviving …