 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that All Things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hi, I'd like to introduce Bill Mathis to our interview show of All Things LGBTQ. Hi Bill, how are you today? Good afternoon, I'm fine. Good. Snow out where you are? We got about a half inch. We have a dusting. So I'm going to read your bio so that our audience will have at least an idea about what you do and what you're writing. So Bill Mathis is a PK, which I've never heard, a preacher's kid from Clarksville, Michigan. He directed YMCA camps in Illinois and Illinois and Michigan for 23 years and helped open and direct a foster care agency until he retired in 2013, after which he began to write. Bill is the writer. Bill is the winner of the Chicago Writers Association 2019 First Chapter Contest and the recipient of the 2009 Pencraft Runner-Up Award for Literary Excellence. He currently lives in southern Wisconsin with his partner, where he volunteers with hospice and enjoys traveling, reading, and photography. So I see from your background the photography might be another interest of yours. Yes. Yes. I'm going to have a book of photography at some point or is it for a hobby? Okay Bill, your recent book is Revenge Is Necessary. So could you give us a little bit of an introduction to the book and perhaps read a small part so the audience can get an idea about the book you're writing? Sure. I'd love to. Revenge Is Necessary is set in southwestern Minnesota in the farm fields, the corn and soybean fields. It involves a large farm family of a very successful farmer who wake up one morning to the beginning realization that their father, husband, father is not who they thought he was and I'll read the first chapter which really sucks you in but the idea is sort of of realizing you've lived your life with a psychopath and didn't know it. So there's family secrets that just keep unrolling and the wife has won and she thought that's what this was about but it wasn't it turns out that he had many secrets and he'd known hers and was seeking revenge very patiently and then it gradually unlayers into the fact of how he acquired the amount of farms he owns and the land he controls. So he wasn't who they thought he was and the guy was 73 years old or something like that but it deals with several things. He chooses to allow a gun injury to die from it rather than have his leg amputated so there's all kinds of choices that are made that are interesting but the LGBTQ part is there's several characters the farmer's son the youngest kid of seven is gay and his friend and they're involved and then the there's two adults men who meet so there's a little bit of a romance side story to in it but it's mostly kind of a psychological thriller and surprises that just keep unfolding. So let me read the first chapter here as revenge is necessary chapter one junior and the book is written in viewpoints of five or six characters. So junior is Shah Philip Skogman Jr. he's 17 almost 18 it's Saturday March 26 2011 and it's in a fictitional town of Midville Minnesota which is near the real towns of Worthington and Marshall. Junior ran faster as bare feet churning sinking into the dirt drive already muddy from three days of rain and now top to three inches of heavy wet late March snow the grainy flakes whirled around him pelting his skin nearly blinding him he didn't feel the cold yet where was he headed where could he go in a sprute of the loom white t-shirt and tidy whitey's at seven on a Saturday morning his net his dad might come after him at his dad might come after him if he headed toward his boyfriend beanie's house the image of his father with a double barrel shotgun bursting in on him and beanie and junior's bed pulsed with every heartbeat beanie's words as junior raced toward the door still echoed run forest run the same words the same words his mother screamed at his track meets she loved the movie forest gump he knew beanie escaped down the back stairs as junior flew down the front ones beanie would be well on his way home he was a fast runner too at least he had a place to go to for sanctuary damn beanie sneaking into junior's bedroom in the early morning or middle of the night still dressed crawling into junior's bed ignoring the twin guest bed in the room the bed his mother moved in over 10 years ago when beanie started showing up in the middle of the night coming in the unlocked back door slipping up the narrow back stairway and into junior's room without making a sound what caused his father to lose his marbles completely lose them it's not like beanie never slept over before right junior duck right his mother screams sounding from the front porch broke his thoughts made his heart thump harder how could he be thinking about his bedroom and beanie when his father at this very second must have the shotgun aimed at him he dodged right closer to the overgrown shrubs that lined the quarter mile driveway he heard the shotgun bellow and felt sharp stings on his left buttock along the back of his upper leg he ran faster tried to crouch lower birdshot at least it was birdshot it's smarted but he was far enough to realize it couldn't go deep he must have it must have caught the edge of the pattern he dodged into the middle of the drive and quickly back to the right did that several times why he wasn't sure maybe zigzagging would make it harder for his dad to focus on a moving target he knew what was in the other barrel of the gun a slug that would more than sting if it hit him it would kill him his dad was a good shot his mother scream again tore through the wet thick air no words it was followed by the shotgun blasting his kin and his dad bellowing was he in pain did he still have the gun did he have more shells junior threw himself into the ditch and lay in the cold sloppy mud and snow hearing nothing no sound of a thud or a slug whistling by he stood turned and took several cautious steps toward the house his mother's voice floated toward him through the heavy swirling snow it was less shrill but still urgent her don't mess with me boys you're safe for now keep running don't come home what the hell did that mean you're safe keep running but don't come home he turned length and just dried and settled into the 800 meter pace he ran for track he sensed the front of a soaked t-shirt invading his nighttime warmth but still he didn't feel the cold he stayed to the right of the dry on the edge the grass slippery beneath the snow at 127th street he wanted to turn left run court one quarter mile the millicom road and go left a half mile to beanie's house however if he figured he figured if his dad was still capable he might jump into his truck and head toward beanie's house down their millicom road driveway if he shot at him once wouldn't he shoot again junior remembered his father's words in the bedroom as in the shotgun adam you're not my son what did that mean junior turned right onto 127th street a half mile further was the small lutheran church and cemetery where someone might be around and let him in why didn't he hear his dad's diesel pick up starting up his dad must have ignored beanie he was probably home by now would he or his mom call 911 would his dad show up at beanie's looking for him his feet began to sense the cold and the occasional small stone he was glad the road was mostly dirt not all gravel how long did it take to get frostbite he was approaching the fence of the cemetery when he heard a vehicle slowly splashing behind it he glanced back it wasn't his dad's pickup junior slowed to a walk as the old pickup eased to a stop beside him he glanced in and saw jen's hansons motioning for him to climb in there was a tarp covering something in the back end it was shaped like a casket junior opened the door and slid into the warmth he grabbed the blanket and the seat and pulled it around him like it was the last one on earth that's the end of first chapter that's great so i'll have to get my order in so i can read um it really does pull you in um and is this it so you would consider this like sort of thriller um yeah i call it kind of a psychological thriller it uh-huh thrillers have you know lots of really scary stuff and this isn't so much that it's more the psychological it's of what would cause a man and a husband to go after his son and tell him he's not his son and then the you'll learn in shortly that he turned he turned the gun on his wife and said you're next um so oh the beginning so i can't imagine what goes on oh it just kind of like it's in layers it just unravels are your other books in the same vein no no my first book face your fears is actually a coming of age book by a disabled quadriplegic cerebral palsy kid who comes out as gay and eventually meets somebody um and falls in love as as an adult but it's uh it's the story of the two lives of the two men who eventually meet later in the book but it's it really is dealing with the fact that disabled people can be gay or queer and so it kind of shatters a lot of stereotypes um and then the the second book my second book the rooming house diaries life love and secrets there's always secrets um is it is actually historical fiction and it's the story that centers around an old rooming house on the south side of chicago near the stockyards and it actually is five or six their diaries are really stories are found with a with a lot of photographs in this old rooming house and it covers the story of the original owners lives in starting in poland in the 1880s and coming to chicago and then their family and the families that lived in the rooming house um and and so it's a cast of characters um and then the the rooming house gallery it doesn't continue the stories but picks up with the young gay couple that inherited the old rooming house and their attempt at converting it into a gallery and in starting a family and all kinds of things so great and we'll have that your website and everything under the interview so that and also on our um webpage so that anybody who wants to buy your books they'll know where to look for them right uh and and um so you started writing a little later in life than maybe some people do um were you always interested in writing did you write as a youth well I was interested as a youth in high school I was interested in journalism and so I went to college originally just to get an associate's degree in journalism and then go become the next great life or look magazine photojournalist and travel the world when you grow up in a town of 365 people you know you dream big um and and along the way that burned out in the vietnam war so I stayed in college and got a degree in business and then fell into the ymca um so I had the journalism background I have one of my degrees as an associates in journalism and um so with the camps and the nonprofits I wrote brochures and flyers and took our publicity pictures but that that was about it I didn't think of writing a book or writing much um and then when I retired uh um full disclosure I was married and divorced twice I'm a late learner that's why I started writing late I came out as gay in my early 60s and um I met this guy about the time I retired and ended up moving in with Amir and Beloit Wisconsin and after a couple months he says well you just can't follow me around um go find something to do and so the Beloit college which is across the street from us um offered a writing class for old people for senior citizens and so I signed up and took it and was hooked that that was the start of it um and so I didn't start writing a book right I did start writing short stories and then tried to do a memoir and then kind of got frozen on that and switched to fiction and realized I can make up a lot of things with fiction so in any of your stories I know you're from the Midwest right we were a farm family in addition to being ministers or a preacher's son yeah PK preacher's kid yeah my my parents actually farmed I was born when they were still farming but then they got saved and were born again Christians and went to bible school and became a pastor and my dad is 94 almost 94 and he's pastoring with a nursing home now as soon as they let him back in after covid um so he he now stands outside the windows talks to him on the phone and prays with him or whatever but um so they were farmers my mom's family was farmers I used to spend time doing at my grandparents farm the town we grew up in Clarksville Michigan is a tiny town surrounded by farms and so I've bucked ales I've shoveled manure I've cleaned out stalls driven tractor trucks um enough to know it wasn't for me but I sure respect farmers um so so I have a good a lot of my a lot of the kids I grew up with at high school kids uh all a lot of many of them came from farm families so and so what's next for you in terms well as what's next um I have a book in process that that is at the publishers and it's called memory tree and it actually deals with a mixed race couple in Michigan um rural Michigan and uh it's near partly narrated by the stardust I call stardust the spirit of the little girl who died and uh was murdered and so it's um I think it's interesting but I think everything I write is interesting so it really is dealing with um racial issues but but also um not life after death but it kind of takes a different look at that too so okay um and I imagine you're just gonna keep going you're going until you well I kind of I've hit a low right now I I was 22 or 23 years ago I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and so my energy level rises and lowers and I don't know if it's been due to the pandemic or everything but man those last six months it's it's been really hard to write anything new so I've been revising stuff and trying to do some promotion and but I have I have I have another book in progress um that I'm just going very slowly on and then idea for for another one that's been off from the the memory tree so I think it's you know for me writing or doing anything it's it's even reading it's harder to concentrate during the pandemic I think this is and of course the presidency in the country and but um you know this is sort of overlay that's really hard to pull yourself out of sometimes so I totally get it um so what do you enjoy reading besides I mean are you a thriller reader or do you read romance or I'm I'm very I'm very eclectic once you get into writing you you meet all these other authors that are writing and so I think half of writing a book and selling books is just selling them to other authors and reading theirs but it kind of becomes a cult you know so I'm fairly eclectic and what I read I used to years ago I've always been a reader read lots of biographies um different things I read a little bit of Stephen King but but it varies some the the author I'm really into right now is Kazuo Ishiguro Ishiguro I'm not sure how to pronounce it right but I'm on this on a book one of his the third book and he's written many now and and he he just creates these seemingly logical normal worlds and they're not and and some of them are historical and some of them are more current and and but I've really enjoyed reading him lately and he's been somebody I can read all the way through but other books you know stones from the river by Ursula Hage and and the paying guests and and some of those have all been favorites so I keep a stack up here on my bookshelf on the top of the bookcase if it makes it up there it's I've loved it and then I read a lot on Kindle also so and so I have one last question for you before we go and that's like you know just sort of a fun question of like you're sitting in a bar and you having a beer and everything's really cool and if you could imagine three living or dead people writers coming or anybody poets musicians coming in to sit down with you and have a chat who would they be well I'll tell you the the first one of this is simply because it's so prevalent in my mind is Ishiguro Ishiguro I would love to pick his brain and how he writes the way he does because his style of writing is just very different but but it's marvelous so that would be one person let me look at my books oh the other one I would love to talk to a little bit would be Carol Rifka Brunt and she wrote it it's more of a YA book but it's certainly for adults tell the wolves I'm home and and it's another story that just layers I love these stories that come at you in layers as you read deeper so those would be a couple people I'd like to sit in a bar with and chat with so great um so Bill thank you so much for coming on the show and when you get your new book coming out which I'm sure it will let us know we'll have you on to discuss that book great and um take care be safe and we'll talk to you soon great thank you take care as people may have noticed on recurring interviews on all things lgbtq we've taken this opportunity with the option of using zoom to visit those parts of our state that we might have been overlooking you know there is a lot of organizing that is happening here in Vermont and we want to ensure that people realize what's happening in their backyard so for today we're going to Rutland and I want to introduce Carly who is one of the primary organizers in Rutland right now welcome Carly thanks for having me Keith nice to be here oh and and we're very thankful that one for the organizing you're doing in Rutland and you could make time to join us so I want to start with Rutland how did you happen to come to be in Rutland well I'm a native Rutlander I was born in Rutland and went through elementary and high school here in Rutland um I've been living in Vermont the majority of my life so um after going to college in a couple different places I came back to Rutland 14 years ago and been here pretty much ever since um I just that's how I found my way to Rutland so just you know I'm near and dear to my heart my family's here and I'm a I'm a Rutlander heart all right so but we have a lot of people who are sort of natives but they don't become activists they don't become organizers in their communities what prompted you to start organizing within the LGBTQ plus community in Rutland and what were the challenges you encountered trying to do that well just a little tiny background about me I've always worked in volunteering and organizing all throughout starting in college and then moving on into my adult life I've always been a volunteer I I decided to start organizing in Rutland when people just seemed like there was a need for it and when I joined the LGBTQIA need-up group that was back in 2017 I started to see that you know the need for LGBTQ community and socializing was really important to this area because I'd meet a lot of people who said I don't I'm not finding anything here so um I think that's just how I decided to start working for Rutland and trying to get Rutland Rutland community going so this was an extension of your personal sense of connection with the community meetup that's a social network yeah meetup.com it's a it's a place where people can log on and make different social groups to do these things called meetups that's what they call them and just basically social events we did lots of different things we you know meet up at a bar for drinks one night we would have recurring a social event called social Sundays where we'd all get together for coffee once a month at a local coffee shop we had some pancake brunches we went through the corn maze it was mainly social but it's just a way to connect LGBTQ community in the Rutland area so if I was somebody who had joined versus meetup would I have been also participating in creating those social networks making making the suggestions that oh I would like to do this or or or how did those events come into being? I planned a lot of them myself to be honest with you Keith um I um you know I'd have ideas I got a lot of input from we had a great meeting um back in um 2018 uh there was a large group of that came together at that time and we really found the need for um LGBT community in this area so we did a lot of brainstorming about what people would like to see in Rutland and so from that list we had compiled I would work from it and create things that people seem to be interested in doing in the Rutland area so how many people did you end up bringing in via the meetup social app? Well we finally we were on the meetup social app for um two years and um the that group grew to grew to about 285 people um when we were still in meetup so that became quite a big group of people who um you know enjoyed our group and not saying that you know there was a tremendous amount of participation in the events I did and that was one of the challenges is and as a as a leader you create events and then you see who will come but I didn't meet a lot of interesting people over the years and um it was just really great just that you know people would say and especially people who come from uh different locations that were far away people came from white river junction I people coming up from um near Albany up to Rutland just because that lack of community in the central you know sort of central southwest Vermont and even into New York was very um very much lacking so I had people from all over come to my events. Okay you're talking about it in the past tense so I'm taking it that the meetup process has ended even no longer utilizing it. I'm no longer utilizing meetup we're mainly a Facebook group right now and um now we're connected with queer connect so that's a whole another chapter in this organizing that I've been working on for the last couple months and um that's a real exciting thing that we're doing right now queer connect so um this is a whole new chapter for the Rutland group. I was going to say and and that takes me right into where I was going to go next which is okay so if if meetup is no longer the venue what has replaced it so you have a Facebook page and it and it's publicly listed so if we put the Facebook address up people would be able to access it. They will be yep um yep it's uh the what I'd like to announce today just so we can get get this out here is um you know Rutland the Rutland LGBTQIA group which is what I've been calling my group over the last couple years is now officially the Rutland branch of queer connect yay so um that's the great partnership that um I've tried to cultivate over the last six months um I met Lisa Carton from queer connect last spring um one of her pride training meetings and um we've just been working together closely and um now um we're going it's going to take a little time for us to get everything ironed out but we're now the Rutland branch of queer connect so it's very exciting I think it's going to be a great step to be part of the nonprofit and um work together just to create community in southwestern Vermont. Okay so you're going to benefit by some of the work that queer connect Bennington has already done and what I'm going to ask you next is what are the unique events that you want to or that the new organization would like to create specifically for Rutland? I mean Rutland has its own challenges I mean I know there's a lot I mean there's been news about Rutland over the years I mean we had some trouble with um the problem of the problems of addiction in Rutland City um but there's a lot of great community organizations here that have done a lot of strides to make sure make our community more safe and you know make our communities a place where people want to be and not afraid of Rutland so um I'm striving to make queer connect Rutland a community organization not only just for social events so this is where I'm kind of transitioning a little bit to something different but not just for social events but a real community organization to have resources um we make connections with outright Vermont and different community organizations in Rutland um whether it be project vision um and we're just making all sorts of different connections to really make this a true community organization going forward. So I will tell you and and I shared some of this with you prior to we are starting the actual taping is that if somebody who had grown up here in Vermont that Rutland's always seemed to be a difficult community for LGBTQ plus people to break into what has and from having grown up there your your experience may have been slightly different but what has been the community response to the organizing and the public events that you've already held? Well I mean things have really I mean things have really taken off in the last year Keith I mean this has been the most growth year for our group in many different ways I mean the word of mouth is um really taking off um there's been a couple of people that have been really instrumental in helping me with this Lisa Carton being one of them but also um Jeanette Langston she is a local community organizer and she and I have been collaborating on um you know just reaching out to community organizations and making this a really great place for you know queer people in the Rutland area. That that all sounds incredibly encouraging and reaffirming that the work we started way back in the 80s to try and create a a social environment where LGBTQ plus people would be welcomed and would field included sounds like it's happening. Now you're you are collaborating with QueerConnect so if I go on to the QueerConnect website there will be a Rutland and a Bennington listing all on the same site. Yes you can reach us through the the the QueerConnect the QueerConnect page through Facebook there will be a separate Rutland group under the you know the main QueerConnect page but there'll be a separate Rutland QueerConnect group um it's in the works so I think by the time this airs it'll be it'll be live for everybody so we'll have that information and you can log on to our group um and you can also reach us through our email address which will also be provided to anyone watching out there who wants to get connected with the Rutland group and the exciting things we have happening in Rutland. That sounds that sounds like the change that we've all been hoping for and so where I want to read our interview other than saying thank you for the work you're doing is I understand you're in the process of trying to organize Rutland's first Pride Day event. Now since I'm one of those people who have been known to you know like to dress up and walk in parades can you tell me a little bit about what you're envisioning and how people could become involved in that specific project? Well right now because you know it is COVID times you know we can't have traditional um you know mass social gatherings for Pride but um the two main events we have planned for this for June of 2021 um for first Rutland's first historic Pride will be our car caravan which will take place on June 26th um and that there should be tons of more details coming out about that. We're also planning on working very hard to create a reverse parade through downtown Rutland where we'll have floats that stay stationary and then people driving through the parade um so that's we can keep that socially distanced and that's another project we're working on. Another small thing we're trying to do is just to um work to erect pride flags um on all the flag poles in downtown Rutland throughout the month of June so that's another pride thing. I mean my take on this is I rather have a few quality events for Rutland this year and say we did a great job then to try to over plan and you know not get too far so I'm trying to keep it very uh concise but um for equality and hopefully just showcase the pride that I know Rutland has and we really need to showcase here. I'll I'll I'll start decorating my car now. Awesome Keith yeah. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to bringing you back to do annual reviews of what's been happening and we we will promote the events in Rutland under the event section of our our show so thank you Pearlie. Thank you Keith thanks so much for having me. I'm here with our first international guest Natalia Borges Palasso welcome. Thank you thank you man hello everyone um I'd like to start by giving you a little bio. Natalia Borges Palasso is from Bento Gonzalez would you pronounce that? I know I have it wrong Gonzalez right oh very good in Brazil. She's a writer and translator with a PhD in literary theory. She's the author of cutouts for a photo album without people which came out in 2013. Amora 2015 translated into English and the subject of part of our interview today. In 2016 Amora won the Djibouti Award and the Djibouti Amazon Readers Choice Award, the Book of the Year Ages Award, AGES and the Acorianos Literature Award. She's also the author of control which came out in 2019 among other titles. In 2017 Natalia was one of two Brazilian authors on the Bogota 39 list which selects the most promising Latin American authors under 39. Congratulations on all your accomplishments so far. Thank you very much. I guess the first question I'll have to start with although it's kind of an interview cliche at this point but how are you holding up in the pandemic? Well now better than I expected it better than when it all started but still trying to manage my mental health with my body health and everything it's kind of it's hard it's it's something that I'm learning but it's nice I'm a person that likes to exercise a lot so now in the context we can't and this is this is being some some kind somehow difficult to me but I'm holding up work is fine and and I have my partner and my cats so that's what I need. Do you find that a lot of people are distracted and I struggle with that sometimes a lot of it though is all the turmoil in the US all the political turmoil it's hard to pay attention to things that are maybe more important than the moment but do you find that the pandemic has affected your writing? At first this was a very last year was a very weird strange year for me because when it started I couldn't before the pandemic even I couldn't read or write I was kind of in a drought period you know and then I I was like what's happening and then everything started and it was well I think Brazil and US had kind of the same situation with with the government federal government so that that was kind of heavy until we understand how we had to to move and what to do so and also I'm a very practical and pragmatic person so I thought okay I have to continue doing my work so all the classes all the classes know the classes I give at the university migrates to online that was kind of difficult but it was okay and then I started to translate and everything kind of consumed my creativity so I think I I just came back to writing maybe maybe maybe in August or July last year I was revising a new book but it was kind of difficult so at first I thought it hadn't affected me at all because I managed to change all my life and think but but it did but just now I can see that just now I can realize I guess people get through it yeah you're getting through it most of us anyway um yeah I guess it's more important at that point just to move to move forward exactly is there a particular writing schedule that you have I'm a morning person so uh I love to wake up early and when I say early I mean 5 30 or 6 in the morning but my body just wakes up at this time I don't do anything to I don't have to to make an effort I really go too bad early and I wake up early so I I like to wake up early make some coffee pat my cats a little bit and then go and write that's my favorite time I'm not the kind of writer who would take a glass of wine and write all through the night I can't do that if I get a glass of wine it would be to talk to my partner or to enjoy something not to write that makes sense how long how long do you write usually in the morning every morning I I try to to do this every morning or I'm translating or I'm writing or I am doing something uh but yeah every morning I do that but it's not not that I always have something a project to work on sometimes I'm just I don't know thinking about things that I might write in the future today I had an idea when Alexa just gave me some recommendations that I didn't want but then I had this idea to write about and then I took notes so all all day long I I'm I have those currently I'm using all of those so I take notes and everything um how would you define lesbian fiction oh now is the long answer that's right yeah I'll have to I'll have to go back a little bit to for to context to allies this how I get to to think about that when I published a modem uh I took this decision I made this decision of writing women lesbian or bisexual women characters that was something that was decided when I when I started the book as a as a project and okay it was published people started reading it um it received some good reviews on newspapers and everything the prizes and then a very a very nice professor of mine at the university asked me very innocently one day so now that you have already written about lesbians what are you going to write about so you don't repeat yourself and then I was not sure if if this is how it works but this was a very interesting question because it made me think that um uh I I couldn't answer her at the moment but I thought I don't write about lesbians I write with them I write with the characters I think about the characters and then they go whatever whatever they want they do whatever they have to do to the plot so for example I don't know people say that a moda is a lesbian theme has a lesbian theme I don't think so I think it has lesbian characters and it talks about lots of of things uh not about lesbians so what so uh when people started to talk to ask about my references and everything I had to to start researching uh because you know I grew up I was born in the eighties grew up in the nineties and the internet access internet didn't exist where I lived yet just in the two thousands and search for those references was was kind of hard so you had to someone had to give you the book or something like that or or tell you about something it was much more difficult and a moda is the product of the lack of references more uh more than the product of references that I had so all of these things made me made me think and then I got to my postdoctoral project which was well maybe I will have to to see what lesbian writers are writing so I can say what lesbian literature or lesbian fiction is and then I started this this project called that we can talk about later that is lesbian geographies and one of of my aims my objectives is to map worldwide this writers and to have a little profiles and links where you can find their work and well I started the project with 25 writers now I have more than 500 I had to stop because I have to finish the work and it's impossible to I know it's a work that I will that I will continue doing this archive but many more many more many other people are doing that so I discovered that lesbian fiction or lesbian literature has many faces it's really plural and for me my interest as as a writer is to always have lesbian characters this is what it is about if the sexuality is an issue in the story that's that's something else but having lesbian characters for me is the most powerful thing that I can connect to lesbian literature but this is for me because the other the other authors this I don't know currently there are 280 Brazilian authors writing lesbian poetry fiction and whatever and they write about everything they write about family they write about I don't know or isha's or something like that or their their anyway so it's hard to say I think now it's plural it's diverse and that's really good because as I told you in the beginning of the 2000s I didn't have as much references and now I have this new world where this authors can give me their perspective of being a lesbian in the world in there are many many many ways of doing that so I'm not sure if I objectively answered that that's fine that's fine I love the topic and it comes up all the time in books and classes um one of the strengths of Amora I think is that it considers lesbians in all different contexts and all different kinds of lesbians including older lesbians and um and so we haven't uh the time has flown by and I was wondering if we could close with your doing a little reading from Amora sure sure you can do that so um I'm reading a part of um of this short story called Flor which is about this little girl that lives uh across lives across now lives between two service uh mechanic service uh how do you say that service mechanic auto service mechanic yeah yeah and then there is this uh this person that she service stations yeah maybe okay anyway there is this this person that um she doesn't know what this person is if she's a woman if she's a if she's a man and she hears this word machoja which is a very offensive word um and she tries the whole story she tries to find out what the machoja is and she is given the most absurd answers like oh it's a disease you shouldn't talk about that and everything and finally she she asks her friend to explain what a machoja is so let me just find okay so this is um this narrator and uh her friends they are eight and twelve and they're she's trying to explain it so um I'm sorry I uh I asked Celui about it about Flor Lucas the next day and told her about the sickness Celui rolled her eyes the way people do when they are accusing someone of being naive said nothing took me by the hand into her room then grabbed a teddy bear and two barbies okay so they weren't real barbies they were knockoffs but they were affordable and they worked just fine for what she was trying to explain I was eight years old and Celui was 11 or 12 she took one of the dolls and the teddy bear and began the explanation this is a man and this is a woman when they both love each other they go into their bedroom and they and they go like this she put one toy on top of the other your mom and your dad do this and that's why you exist and why your brother does shoot I nodded trying to follow her demonstration then she took the two dolls and did the same thing and said some some people do some people do this instead that's my sure but my dad said it isn't nice to say that Mr. Kunz was a quiet man but he knew how to take care of people he and Flor were friends I'd often see them sipping shima home together in in her backyard or in front of his shop I thought they were in love so I asked Celui about it she's laughed me and annoyed ask if I hadn't understood what she just explained to me with the dolls but the fact was a doll's doll a bear is a bear and a macho has a macho Celui tried again okay let's see what do you like more dolls or cars well it depends on the car and on the doll Celui rolled her eyes like she had before what do you like more dancing to shusha or playing tag I didn't know how to answer that either because everything depended really and I wasn't and I was having and I was having trouble to understand what she was getting at okay do you like the color pink or the color blue I like green for god's sake this is your last chance who do you like more me or Claudinho Claudinho was a boy who lived on our street Celui thought he was cute you of course I said then you're what am I sure how she said impatient Natalia Borges Palasso the book is a morrow I hope you'll come and join us again and talk about your your uh future work yeah invite me and I'll come back absolutely thank you very much and you're very lovely oh thank you so are you thank you for joining us we'll see you in two weeks but in the meantime resist