Queer Voices Market brings Gay Goods to the Holidays

“Queer lives and the writers living them.”

That’s the tagline for Twin Cities-based writers group “Queer Voices,” an organization that works to bring LGBTQIA+ writers together and share a love of literature and inclusivity.

The group has been around since the AIDS pandemic and has provided a safe space for queer writers in the Twin Cities to share their work without judgment and find a broader community.

This year, the group is bringing that spirit to a specialty Queer Voices Market at Open Book on November 29 in downtown Minneapolis.

This is Queer Voices’ second time hosting a market. Last year, the event had 45 queer vendors and more than 100 people looking over zines, poetry and handmade goods made by queer people, for queer people.

The market isn’t just an opportunity to spend hard-earned cash, though.

Co-curators LM Brimmer and Sherrie Fernandez-Williams have worked together for over five years. They work to continue Queer Voices’ mission of creating books that spotlight queer characters, with queer authors.

The idea for the market came together in one quick conversation — with an idea. Queer Voices has been running since the ‘90s, but they’ve always had a focus on queer writers.

That continues today with brainstorming sessions and online check-ins with other writers across the U.S. and internationally. But in the past few years, Fernandez-Williams has seen more of a need to expand outreach outside their literary group.

Then, the idea for a market around the holidays came along.

Fernandez-Williams saw a chance to create economic opportunities for queer writers and artists to sell and show off their work, especially through non-traditional publishing like zines and prints. Even though there’s a focus on literature at the market, all kinds of makers are invited to participate.

After fleshing out this idea further, the real event planning began. Brimmer and Fernandez-Williams were focused on bringing specifically queer vendors into the space.

They both feel like explicitly queer oriented spaces bring an instant openness into difficult conversations. There isn’t a need for pretenses, and people can come forward openly with their thoughts and feelings.

“In this space, I’m completely free,” Fernandez-Williams says.

Both curators were candid about their different generational experiences and how they opened their eyes to change. Working together as a team to make Queer Voices more accessible has led to them finishing each other’s sentences and forming a special friendship.

Their friendship reflects the organization’s mission of bringing LGBTQIA+ people from different time periods and walks of life to create better art — or events.

At the beginning of Queer Voices over 30 years ago, events were small. Writing circles talking about the process and each other’s struggles presented an opportunity at a time when safe spaces were difficult to find.

“The reading series and its history has often been a place where queer writers that are touring around the United States will actually come through and be a part of a community here,” Brimmer says. “Because we know the Twin Cities has such an amazing queer writing community and queer community in general.”

Through time, the Queer Voices group has been a haven even at times when the LGBTQIA+ community came under fire.

“That third space was so important to the vitality of the community,” Brimmer says. “Queer Voices comes from a time when the AIDS epidemic was rampant and anti-LGBTQIA+ backlash was at a fever pitch.”

Through this history, a niche community of highly educated queer writers can give each other valuable feedback.

The “reading series” is the longest-held queer voices tradition that invites LGBTQIA+ authors to share their work with an audience before release. This can give authors the chance to share their work with a specialized audience that has a unique understanding of their stories.

“I think there are a lot of queers that have taken a literary pilgrimage to the Twin Cities in order to have access to the very unique community that exists here,” Brimmer says.

Fernandez-Williams says she’s always excited to hear how much knowledge attendees bring with them about LGBTQIA+ literature. 

“I think that gives the opportunity for, maybe, a different and perhaps more valuable kind of feedback,” Fernandez-Williams says.

Brimmer says sometimes writing can feel like such an individual job that people forget to reach out to their networks for help.

“We have so many writers that are so deeply in the sometimes isolating work of sorting through their novel, of finishing those poems, but not always connected to other queer writers,” Brimmer says.

As writers continue to type away on their novels, the time to look beyond the cover and celebrate queer authors is rapidly approaching. As for Fernandez-Williams and Brimmer, the work will continue.

“Celebration is a big part of what we do,” Fernandez-Williams says. “Celebrating our community for their brilliance and their creativity and their just — fabulousness, you know.”

The Queer Voices Market 
November 29, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Open Book
1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis