I feel extremely lucky to have gotten to meet Terry, and to have hopefully given him the Drag Race experience he wanted. We didn't know each other for long, but what I did know of him was lovely and sweet and extremely patient and positive in a moment of extreme stress for all of us.
Since she graduated in the late 1980s, amid the Aids crisis, Opie has made portraits of her community, friends and family, adopting unflinching realism, saturated colours, and dramatic tonal contrasts from the 16th-century portrait painters. Many of Opie's most famous portraits included in her new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery use these devices deliberately, a declaration that these people deserve, as the title of the show underlines, to be seen.
I wanted to mention Kenneth Williams because he was so profound, Allen tells me. And yet, because he was also funny, that profundity hasn't been acknowledged. As a child, I connected with his outsiderness. Rather than trying to fit in, he went in the opposite direction. Not only did he not apologise for being different, but he was queer in every sense, truly at odds with the world in which he found himself.
It is embedded in how I live. Specifically, writing everything that I dream of, and everything that fails me, all of the emotional reality. Often, there are things I'm afraid to say, and then I put them in my writing, and they're said. Then I can say it! I can read it in the book, and people aren't that shocked by it. Often, what people are shocked by has nothing to do with what I'm afraid of.
As the oldest of three sisters who grew up with two nurturing parents and involved grandparents nearby, my home and family mean everything to me. My family has always been my rock: from attending my first Pride parade with me when I came out as queer in high school to having my entire family drive six hours each way to move me in when I went to college.
LUNA's music resonates deeply as it explores the journey of coming of age in one's early twenties. She navigates self-discovery, queer identity, and mental health, all while reflecting on the places that have significantly influenced her life. Her ability to encapsulate the bittersweet essence of formative moments, those experiences that exist in the delicate balance between euphoria and pain, makes her an artist unlike any other.
Tullock, who wrote Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God with Frank Winters, introduces Frances in her preferred environment, a cozy book talk with an easy interlocutor, where she can opine in a measured, NPR-ready alto about her memoir of the trauma she endured growing up in Kentucky. But soon, the action glitches. Frances's literary agent is calling, and the church she discussed in her book is threatening to sue.
In a candid TikTok video, Shygirl acknowledges her queer identity, stating, "Even though I'm in a technically 'straight' relationship - I live with my boyfriend, but I'm definitely queer."
