mission and vision
Telling Queer History is a series of storytelling and community-building gatherings that connect LGBTQ+ people across
generations and identities.
Based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Established in June 2013.
Image is from our first gathering with people from age 70 to 16, taken on an old cellphone.
mission and vision
Telling Queer History is a series of storytelling and community-building gatherings that connect LGBTQ+ people across
generations and identities.
Based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Established in June 2013.
Image is from our first gathering with people from age 70 to 16, taken on an old cellphone.
First Telling Queer History gathering in June 2013
We envision an intersectional LGBTQ+ community dedicated to authentic conversations that strengthen a sense of belonging, connection, agency, and hope, where all voices are heard, valued, and respected.
The mission of Telling Queer History is to connect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer + people across generations and identities through storytelling gatherings, which bring communities together to foster compassion, empathy, and healing.
what
Telling Queer History
Connects people who may have have only one thing in common: being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ). When we share our histories, we often find unexpected commonalities. This gives people a space to grow in their understanding of themselves, each other, and their collective history and foster community.
Sliding scale tickets, All-Ages, Substance-free Events
Locations, topics, and storytellers change each gathering.
what
Telling Queer History
Connects people who may have have only one thing in common: being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ). When we share our histories, we often find unexpected commonalities. This gives people a space to grow in their understanding of themselves, each other, and their collective history and foster community.
Sliding scale tickets, All-Ages, Substance-free Events
Locations, topics, and storytellers change each gathering.
Why
LGBTQ people continue to face transphobia, racism, poverty and violence, even in their own communities and relationships. Telling Queer History shows attendees that we have shared struggles and goals. Through sharing stories, our events unite us as a rooted and connected community.
Queer people often feel isolated because so much of our history is buried by systemic violence. Through our events, Telling Queer History works to eliminate isolation so attendees feel empowered to lead in a community they feel connection to. Bearing witness to our current, personal stories and how they relate to past histories gives us a crucial sense of place, pride, belonging, and empathy which allows us to better work together.
Who
Telling Queer History is created and helped by many people over our 10 year history. We started as a grassroots volunteer led organization and grew into a 501(c)3 in January 2020. Below is our current board and staff.
Who
Telling Queer History is created and helped by many people over our 10 year history. We started as a grassroots volunteer led organization and grew into a 501(c)3 in January 2020. Below is our current board and staff.
Our Team
Rebecca Lawrence, executive director
Rebecca Jean Lawrence is the Founder and Executive Director of Telling Queer History. They are also a photographer, working primarily with LGBTQ+ community to document events, nonprofits and make portraits for the last 10 years. Rebecca was raised in Minneapolis and attended college at Seattle University in Washington. They have work with many companies to connect with LGBTQ+ community and history including Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), Minnesota Opera, Kaleo, Metro Transit, and Metro State.
Rebecca also spends a lot of time cooking, reading about queer history, gardening, raising chickens, learning and practicing herbal medicine, dancing, and listening to podcasts.
Mounica kota - contract researcher
Their science background is in evolutionary biology and animal behavior. They have taught in a lot of different contexts. Most recently, they coordinated and taught in a college in prison program for a couple of years, working with incarcerated students pursuing higher education. They also work as a professional grant writer.
They organize locally and nationally around issues of disability justice and mad liberation, prison and police abolition, land defense, and abolishing caste supremacy. They are especially passionate about organizing fellow oppressor-caste South Asian communities to unlearn and fight against caste supremacy, Hindu nationalism, and settler occupation. They are deeply committed to the liberation of Palestine, Kashmir, and all occupied peoples in global liberation struggles.
Outside of community work, Mounica loves spending time with their partner and menagerie of cats and reptiles, reading political ed and sci-fi/fantasy books, watching bad reality TV, and sleeping.
Felicia Philibert - Contract Engagement & Logistics Coordinator
Felicia Philibert (they/she) is a genderfluid Haitian-American operations professional who specializes in organizational development, process improvement, healing justice, event planning, and detail-oriented administrative support. Felicia graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work from Augsburg University in 2020 and has worked in a variety of fields, including government, education, nonprofit, and electoral politics. In her free time, Felicia enjoys reading, playing video games, taking naps, watching anime, and eating delicious meals with their chosen family. As Engagement & Logistics Coordinator, Felicia is curating TQH’s traveling exhibit, which will display our extensive archive of LGBTQ+ stories at locations around the Twin Cities & Greater Minnesota.
NIKOLAS FOX, BOARD TREASURER
Nikolas Fox is a nomad and though he has lived in many different places throughout his life, he has lived in MN the longest. Nikolas joins the TQH board to help manage operating plans, P&L’s, and all things finance. Outside of TQH, he is a Finance Transformation Team Lead. When not buried in spreadsheets and translating data to understandable information, he likes to spend his time with his teenage son & ragdoll cat reading, hiking, or rewatching Lord of the Rings together.
Jaymie Wagner, Board Chair
Jaymie Wagner is one of the new board members joining TQH in 2022. Originally from Ohio, Jaymie describes herself as a queer, trans, and disabled nonbinary girl who has been studying Queer History since the early 2000s. Outside of TQH she is a chair emeritus of 3M's Pride employee resource network, where she works as an IT Analyst. In her spare time she plays the violin, writes novels about hopelessly gay werewolves, and has been a semi-professional NHL writer, a blogger, and a BBQ chef at different parts of her life. She currently lives in the Minneapolis suburbs with her cats Jet and Rocket and an increasingly alarming number of tiny giant robots.
Cam PajYeeb Yang, Board Member
Cameron PajYeeb Yang (they/them/nws) is a second-generation HMong American queer, trans and non-binary individual born and raised in Saint Paul, Mni Sota Makoce. Through a variety of different storytelling methods, Yang’s artistic and professional focus aims to uplift the most minoritized voices of the Hmong American and LGBTQI+ communities in order to transform and/or abolish inequitable and unjust systems and institutions. Currently, Yang is a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota studying Education Policy and Leadership with an emphasis on the neoliberal transformation of America’s public education system and ethnocentric charter schools, and a Development Manager at a Black and Southeast Asian social justice movement nonprofit organization in Madison, Wisconsin.
Mycall riley, board member
Mycall (any pronoun) is the Director of the Gender and Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life at the University of Minnesota. They were raised on the northside of Minneapolis and returned here from time at DePaul University in the fall of 2022. He is a big book enthusiast leading book clubs since 6th grade, has a chihuahua companion, and is a style whisperer.
history
We quickly saw how stories can be a powerful medium to bring people together. Even at our first event, we connected 16 to 70 year olds around race, gender, sexuality and class.
Background image taken by Nance Musinguzi at our 10th anniversary celebration on June 3, 2023.
history
We quickly saw how stories can be a powerful medium to bring people together. Even at our first event, we connected 16 to 70 year olds around race, gender, sexuality and class.
Background image taken by Nance Musinguzi at our 10th anniversary celebration on June 3, 2023.
Sept 30, 2024
Dear community,
In late August, the Telling Queer History board of directors and our Executive Director Rebecca J. Lawrence decided that it is time to bring TQH to a graceful close. It was a really hard decision to make, and we’re sorry to surprise you with this announcement.
Thank you for believing in TQH and in our work. Your efforts and support have made it possible for us to exist. We are deeply grateful to every community member, funder, board member, advisor and elder, storyteller, volunteer, ASL interpreter, and contractor who has made TQH possible for over a decade.
Here are some of the reasons that supported the decision to sunset:
Getting to an ongoing sustainable level of financial support, including general operating funds, has been hard. This program year we only received one grant, which was program specific. However, that grant allowed us to hire two new contract staff who will work with us to create a touring interactive gallery exhibition showcasing TQH’s legacy and impact. It will travel to greater Minnesota in the first half of 2025.
We are so grateful for all of the individual supporters- like you!- who have donated. Yet, the amount of money we’ve raised through individual giving has declined. We understand. It’s a presidential election year. There have been ongoing financial challenges for everyone since the pandemic began, and we know you are feeling the economic crunch too.
Then, there’s the shared challenge of LGBTQ+ organizations receiving very small amounts of overall grant funding. These are systemic issues in philanthropy and nonprofits. The Equity Lab’s LGBTQ+ Index showed that giving to LGBTQ+ orgs doubled over the past decade, which sounds great! Turns out, LGBTQ+ orgs receive only $1 of every $500 donated nationwide.
RJ, staff and board members have experienced ongoing bouts of burnout and health issues, exacerbated by the ongoing Covid pandemic. To exist as a generative, innovative, community responsive and under-resourced organization is exhausting.
You probably have questions, like what is the timeline, and what can I do to help?
We will need you to continue supporting us financially so we can have enough time and general operating funds for an intentional close. We are in conversation with our funders and key stakeholders, trying to gain additional general operating support. Our ideal timeline would be to sunset the organization’s programming by next June and to close out the business end of the 501(c)3 by the end of next July. To help that happen, we need our sustaining donors to maintain their gifts through June and raise an additional $25,000 through this final program year.
What comes next?
You are invited to a community gathering to kick off our sunset process on October 19th from 2-4pm at the MPLS Central Library (more details to be announced). Join us to process this news, get your questions answered, and learn what comes next.
We have been preparing our archives to live with the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota. We are considering partnerships with other community organizations to house parts of our work, such as the digital LGBTQ+ history timelines and walking tours. We will keep you informed as these partnerships develop.
Currently available digital assets like our archived stories, timelines and articles, will remain available throughout the sunset period. We expect to add much more to our archives over the coming months.
With enough financial support, we will be able to sunset over the next 9 months. Assuming that is possible, we plan to host an end-of-life celebration in June 2025, an organizational funeral where you can gather with us to say goodbye and share ritual, food, stories, music, laughter and tears. At that celebration we will invite you to dream with us about the rich life that might sprout from the seeds we have planted.
Stay tuned for details about the community gathering in October (coming soon) and more. Follow our social media feeds (@tellingqueerhistory on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook), subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and check our website (https://tellingqueerhistory.com).
Your story IS Telling Queer History. You have helped us to world-build through joy. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Rebecca Lawrence, founder & executive director
Lucinda Pepper, contract communications & operations manager
And the TQH board of directors:
Jaymie Wagner, board chair
Nikolas Fox, treasurer
Meghan Lafferty, secretary
Mo Mayo
Gereon Fuller
Cam Pajyeeb Yang
Mycall Riley
History
Founder Rebecca Lawrence was first inspired to start Telling Queer History during the Equality and Justice Summit in December of 2012 when they heard their uncle Dan Hawkins share about his experience losing so many of his peers during the 1980s AIDS crisis.
I realized how much history was lost with those lives and how much was shaped by that loss. I brought the idea of sharing stories to other activist friends and they all encouraged me to create the gatherings.
In 2013, Rebecca met Scott Artley met at a Quorum meeting and shared their idea, and he was enthusiastic about it. Scott helped shape Telling Queer History (TQH) in many ways. From there, many, many people and places have made this series of gatherings possible.
Before TQH was created, I was doing my own research on Queer history through books, movies and interviewing elders. After capturing unique images inside the staff room at the moment of victory at the Minnesotans United For All Families, I was invited to archive my images at the Tretter Collection. Lisa Vecoli, curator of the Tretter collection, gave Jie Wronski-Riley (a past facilitator of TQH) and I a tour in January 2013. It cemented the need to learn and share more of our history with a wider community.
The first gathering was June 2013 at Madame of the Arts, a radical queer event space. It was attended by about 25 people, much to our surprise and excitement. The people attending ranged from ages 16-70 and held a large range of identities across race, gender, sexuality and class.
The Minnesota Humanities Center gave Telling Queer History its first grant in the summer of 2018, which transformed us into a more sustainable organization. In January 2020, Telling Queer History became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We now have three paid staff and volunteer board members.
To read about and listen to past events, visit our stories page.
Image by Olivia Levins Holden commissioned for our 9th anniversary with names and dates of our storytelling events and storytellers from June 2013 to April 2022.
Our 103 storytellers as of October 10, 2023
Adina Burke, Alejandra Tobar Altriz, Alex Iantaffi, Alfonso Wenker, Ali Sands, Alicia Bauers, Alissa Paris, Amy Rotering, Andrea Jenkins, Anita Hill, Anna Sutheim, Annie Follet, Archie Bongiovanni, Bart Buch, Bas, Beth Zemsky, Brian Bose, Cam Yang, Carol Ball ,Charles Frempong-Longdon, Chong Moua, Chris Cinque, Coya White Hat-Artichoker, Dallas Rising ,David Harris, David Portillo, DiAn, Dianna Hunter, Eleanor Savage, Eric Hankin-Redmon, Erin West, Esther Ouray, Gabriella Anaïs, H. Adam Harris, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Harry Hartigan, Harry Waters Jr., Heather c. Lou, Heather Spear, Irene Greene, Jane Stedman, Jason Jackson, Joann Vue, Judy Hanks, Junauda Petrus-Nasah, Justin Toliver, Ka Ly ,Kabir Mohamed, Karen Clark, Kate Moore, Katie Burgess, Kevin "Kaoz" Moore, Kim Hines, Kou Thao, Lane Cunningham, Laurie Witzkowski, Lee Jordan, Lisa Albrecht, Lisa Vecoli, Lucinda Pepper M, Marla ,Mason Persons, Maureen Wells, Meadow Muska, Meg Riley, Melissa Harl, Michael McConnell, Mikko Blaze, Myra Billund-Phibbs, Nekessa Opiti, Nick Metcalf, Noam Sienna, Olivia Levins-Holden, Paige Reynolds, Patricia (Pat) Nelson, Patrick Scully, Philippe Cunningham, Quinn Villagomez, Randa Downs, Renee Sugrue, Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel, Reva D’Nova, Rhys Preston, Rica Highers, Ricardo Beaird, Rocki Simões, Rosanna Hudgins, Rox Anderson, Shannon McCarthy aka Randy Dandy, Sharon Day, Siuho Gong, Sophia Benrud, Susan Raffo, Sweet Pea, T. Mychael Rambo, Taya Schulte, Teri Homan, Tiffany Roberts, Trifecta, Venus de Mars, Violet Fox, Zsuzsi Borzalski, and more to come.
If you see any spelling errors, want us to update your name, or remove it, please let us know.
Co-hosts and Collaborators across the years
20 Percent Theatre Company - our fiscal sponsor 2014-2020
Avenues for Youth
Avivo
Catchafire
Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization: CANDO
City of Minneapolis: Trans Equity Summit
Clare Housing
Feminist Book Club
Hennepin County Libraries - hosted and funded TQH for many years
Hennepin History Museum
Inquilnxs Unidxs por Justicia (Renters United for Justice)
J-Pride (Jewish Pride)
Joshua Dorothy Esq. - our lawyer
Karen Kaiser, CTP - our accountant
Madame for the arts
MIA: Minneapolis Institute of Art
Mid-Continent Oceanographic Institute
Minnesota Historical Society
Minnesota Humanities Center - our first funder!
Minnesota Opera
Minnesota Department of Transportation
MN POC Pride
MN School Outreach Coalition
Mossier
MPLS united for rent control
Pauli Murray Project
PFund Foundation
Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association: PPNA
Puppet Camp OUT
Quatrefoil Library
Queer SPACE Collective
Rainbow Health Initiative
Reclaim!
SpringHouse Ministry
St Paul and MN Foundation
SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project)
Tegan and Sara Foundation
Theater in the Round
TPT: Twin Cities Public Television - Out North Documentary
Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies (University of Minnesota)
Voices for Racial Justice
Wilder Foundation Research Center
Telling Queer History Contributors prior to being a nonprofit
Adina Burke - Adrienne Diercks - Allison Rodriguez - Andrea Love - Angela Callais - Arvid Nelsen - Beth Ellsworth - Claire Avitabile - David Lawrence - Emily Butler - Emily Gus - Emily Johnson - Emma Riese - Harry Waters, Jr. - Jeremy Eventyr - J. B. Mayo - Jie Wronski-Riley - Jo Garlich - Jo Herrera - Lain DeSalvo - Lisa Vecoli - Liz Loeb - Madeline Leslie - Meghan Lafferty - Michael Schwengel - Olivia Levins Holden - Patricia Nelson - Patricia Van Ert - Patrick Weber - Quinn Rivenburgh - Rachel Mattson - Rebecca Aylesworth - Rebecca Jean Lawrence - Ryan Taylor - Scott Artley - Susan Raffo - Wren Roy - Korla Masters - Maddie Michaud - AND MANY OTHERS.
Funders
Metropolitan Regional Arts Council
Minnesota Historical Society
Minnesota Humanities Center
PFund Foundation
St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation
Tegan and Sara Foundation
Trans Justice Funding Project
Turbo Tim’s Everything Automotive
UCare
Women’s Foundation of Minnesota
And over 1,121 individual donors throughout our 10 years!