The next episode is in the works, but in the meantime, we wanted to tell y'all about a new favorite podcast. It’s called Transcripts and it’s about how trans people are remaking the world, from the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project. The production team is entirely queer and trans and the first episode features interviews with trans organizers all over the U.S.  

Check it out at : https://anchor.fm/transcripts-podcast  And then subscribe, listen and support this important work!

At the time of our interview, Kody Kay was 52 years old and he lived on Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, & Sioux land in Longmont, CO where he ran a heating and cooling company. Kody is trans and he's an announcer on the International Gay Rodeo Circuit. In this interview, recorded at the Rocky Mountain Regional Gay Rodeo on July 13, 2014, Kody talks about coming out as trans in his 50s, building community with people in his small town, and how he found the gay rodeo community.

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Learn more about this project at www.countryqueers.com

For this episode, we’re asking folks who have additional funds to donate to Frontline Farming - a Denver-based Womxn & POC-led grassroots nonprofit that focuses on building food sovereignty & farmer liberation. FLF works from an asset-based perspective to quote feed our communities with healthy, affordable produce grown from our 5 acres of land, educate our constituents, create equitable policies, and honor the land and our ancestors, end quote. In response to COVID-19, FLF started an initiative called Project Protect Food Systems that seeks to support immigrant food workers across the nation by raising funds to provide PPE, proposing and advocating for equitable policy action, raise awareness to Food Worker strengths and plights, and illuminate the nation to Food Workers contributions to our society.

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer

Assistant Editor & Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves, pedal steel versions by Rebecca Branson Jones

Additional music: Composed and performed on acoustic and electric guitar by Tommie Anderson

Thank you to Abbie & Winnie the pigs in Efland, NC for our intro sound, recorded by Karen & Ella!

Elandria Williams identifies as a Black, southern/Appalachian, disabled, genderqueer, pansexual, Unitarian Universalist, “auntiemama” to 3 nieces and nephews and 4 god kids.  E grew up on Cherokee land in Knoxville and Powell, TN. In this interview - recorded at the STAY Project's summer gathering at Highlander in 2013 - E talks about organizing, their complicated feelings about "country," how you can never be anonymous in the town you grew up in, and how much joy they get from seeing youth thrive.

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Learn more about this project at www.countryqueers.com

For this episode, at Elandria’s suggestion, we’re asking folks who have additional funds to donate to two initiatives:

The first is Black, Appalachian, Young & Rising - a Black-led youth program of the STAY Project. STAY is a central Appalachian regional network of young folks 14-30 supporting one another to make their home communities places young people can and want to stay.  

The second is the Disability Justice work of the People’s Hub. Elandria is the Executive Director of the People's Hub - a nonprofit that offers live, interactive trainings and workshops to build community power and support grassroots work.

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer

Assistant Editor & Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves, pedal steel versions by Rebecca Branson Jones

Additional music: Composed and performed on acoustic and electric guitar by Tommie Anderson

David Rodriguez grew up on Karankawa land in Wharton, Texas in a family whose roots reach back to before TX was a state.  David was 26 and living on Tonkawa and Sana land in Bastrop, TX at the time of our interview in June 2014. He shares stories of raising livestock for the FFA as a kid, his mom kicking him out of the house after coming out at age 17 and their journey towards reconnection, his frustration with the marriage equality movement's celebration of assimilation, and his love of farming. 

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Learn more about this project at www.countryqueers.com

Check out David & Josh's goat farm in Lane City, TX at www.countryqs.com and donate to support them during the cover-19 pandemic which has drastically reduced their farmer's market income on Venmo at @countryqs13. 

And, if you have additional funds, we're asking folks to please donate to:

RES*ST - a campaign led by formerly incarcerated Black womxn - including caregivers, sex workers, and mothers - with the goal of ethically buying land to build a sustainable center in which they can heal, grow, and organize together: https://gf.me/u/x9vj8k

And to support Miguel Mendiás -  a queer, trans, artist and activist of Czech, Basque, and Raramúri / Tarahumara (indigenous Mexican) descent who is in the process of reclaiming his family’s 4th generation Mexican-American adobe home in the high desert of Marfa, TX on unceded Jumano-Apache territory. The house which belonged to his great-grandmother was threatened with public auction by the county and is in a remote part of Texas that has experienced rapid gentrification: https://gf.me/u/yitk6f

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer

Assistant Editor & Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves, pedal steel versions by Rebecca Branson Jones

Additional music: Composed and performed on acoustic and electric guitar by Tommie Anderson

Tessa grew up in Cookeville, Tennessee - which was built on Cherokee and Shawnee land. At the time of this interview, in November 2017, Tessa was 22 years old and studying chemical engineering at TN Tech. In this interview she talks about coming out to her parents, her work with Cumberland Gender Advocacy to support other trans folks in rural middle TN, the struggle to find trans affirming healthcare and jobs in the rural South, and her experiences coming up through the Boy Scouts.

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You can learn more about this project at www.countryqueers.com

And please donate to support Melisse Watson "a black indigenous queer non binary artist from Tkaronto, Dish with One Spoon wampum territory. They are raising money to buy land in Georgia where their birth father’s family has lived for generations - for the purposes of building community with Black and Indigenous farmers and earth workers, working  towards land sovereignty, protecting and restoring the land, and reclaiming it from the state."

Reunion: Family & Black Land Stewardship

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer

Assistant Editor & Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves. Pedal Steel Version performed by Rebecca Branson Jones.

Additional music: Composed and performed on acoustic and electric guitar by Tommie Anderson

Sharon P. Holland is a professor of critical race, queer, and feminist theory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives on Catawba, Eno, and Shakori land. In this interview, recorded in June 2017, Sharon talks about her childhood in D.C. and Durham, NC, her journey towards finding an identity that fits, the 8 magical acres she calls "Sweet Negritude" where she makes her home, and the Black intellectual thought that has guided her throughout her life.

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Learn more about this project at www.countryqueers.com

And please donate to support My Sistahs House - a grassroots, direct services and advocacy organization that was founded in 2016 by two trans women of color who sought to bridge a gap in services for trans and queer people of color in Memphis, TN. They’re fundraising to build 20 tiny homes for Black trans women - expanding on their housing security work. Please donate today:

20 Tiny Homes for Trans Women Go Fund Me

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer

Assistant Editor & Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves

Additional music: Composed and performed on acoustic and electric guitar by Tommie Anderson

Crisosto Apache was born and raised on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico. After coming out at age 17, they left home and spent years searching for a sense of belonging in gay scenes in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. In this episode, featuring an interview recorded in June 2014, Crisosto describes how coming out again as two-spirit later in life enabled them to reconnect with their people, culture, and an indigenous identity that had been there all along.

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Learn more at www.countryqueers.com.

And please donate to support Indigenous communities that have been hit hard by the Covid-19 Pandemic at:

The Navajo Nation Covid-19 Relief Fund

and

The White Mountain Apache Tribe Covid-19 Relief Fund

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer 

Assistant Editor and Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson 

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland.

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves. 

Additional music on acoustic and electric guitar written and performed by Tommie Anderson.

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 Special thanks to Laura Staresheski and AIR Media’s mentorship program for support on this episode. And, thanks to Hideo Higashibaba, Riley Cockrell, Abby Huggins, Sam Gleaves, and Yasmine Farhang for feedback on the first draft. Thanks also to Benny Becker for helping clean up the background noise in Crisosto’s interview!  Thanks most of all to Crisosto for sharing their story so generously with us all!

When Rae Garringer set out to gather rural and small town LGBTQIA+ histories in 2013, they had no formal training in oral history or audio recording. They were motivated by a deep frustration that it was so hard to find rural queer stories, and an intense personal need to connect with other rural queers. In this episode you'll learn more about Rae and the history of the ongoing multimedia oral history project: Country Queers.

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Learn more at www.countryqueers.com

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Host, Producer, and Lead Editor: Rae Garringer

Assistant Editor & Musical Magic: Tommie Anderson

Editorial Advisory Dream Team: Hermelinda Cortés, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Sharon P. Holland

Theme Song: Composed and performed on banjo by Sam Gleaves, performed on pedal steel by Rebecca Branson Jones

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Special Thanks to:

Laura Starecheski and AIR Media's mentorship program, Hideo Higashibaba, Riley Cockrell, Abby Huggins, Deya Terrafranca, Annie Terrafranca, Sam Gleaves, Benny Becker, Sam Hamlin, Beth White, Yasmine Farhang, Lynn Creamer, Jai Arun Ravine, Theresa Smith-Garringer, and Brandon Jent. 

Country Queers is a podcast featuring oral history interviews with rural and small-town LGBTQIA+ folks. Season One uplifts often unheard stories of rural queer experiences across intersecting layers of identity including race, class, gender identity, age, religion, and occupation.  Hosted and produced by central Appalachian country queer R. Garringer with editorial support from Hermelinda Cortés, Sharon P. Holland, and Lewis Raven Wallace. Subscribe now!  Find out more about the project at www.countryqueers.com