Suzette Mullen (she/her) is a memoir and nonfiction book coach, retreat leader, and the author of the memoir The Only Way Through Is Out, forthcoming February 13, 2024, from the University of Wisconsin Press. Her publications include a tiny love story in the New York Times and The Subaru Should Have Been a Sign, an essay that went viral on today.com.  As a book coach, Suzette builds safe and supportive communities for queer writers where she helps them find their deeper stories and big ideas, choose the structures that serve those stories and ideas, sort through their publication options, find agent representation, and land book deals.

“I had this experience of recognizing my sexuality later in life. And the question for me was, how did I not know this before? How did I get to this place? And then how did I get to a place where it was so difficult for me to make a decision about or take action on what I knew to be true for myself?”

“I had a lovely life and I have no regrets about that lovely life I led. And I have two sons who I have a great relationship with. I have an ex-husband who I'm still friendly with. I had a whole life before. I feel very grateful that I am now stepping into Suzette 2.0, and it is a very different life. It is a life that feels more alive for me. I feel more aligned with everything.”

“We talk about how visibility matters. And I'm sharing a story of somebody who came out later in life, came out in her fifties, is stepping into a vibrant professional career in, in her fifties and now into my sixties. And hopefully it's going to resonate with some people out there.”

“I didn't just make a huge change in my personal life. I did that first and then the professional possibilities and really stepping into the work I was meant to do — just to write stories and to help guide other writers and in their storytelling. I mean I love, love my work.”

Sign up to receive the Insider Companion Guide to The Only Way Through is Out

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Learn more about book coaching with Suzette

Learn more about Suzette’s Mentorship and Community of Queer writers, Write Yourself Out

 Sarah McDevitt and her wife were one of the first queer couples to get married in Ireland. In order to legalize equal marriage, LGBTQ+ Irish citizens were knocking on doors and asking their family and friends to vote for the constitutional change. 

 What happened next is a piece of our history that we all need to know about. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdevittsarah/

Sarah Stone McDevitt is a Radio broadcasting graduate she spent the early part of her career in local radio before moving into agency life. She spent 16 years working across creative, media, content and web development agencies before joining Hubspot. In her personal life, Sarah is married with three kids and lives in Dublin, Ireland. She and her wife were the first couple to marry in the only county in Ireland to vote no in the marriage vote. She proudly served 13 years in the reserve army in Ireland as a corporal in a communications unit. She is the founder and chairperson of a charity called Help Us Give Smiles which has seen her travel to Kenya for almost 20 years working with vulnerable children and communities. And finally, she is an LGBTQ+ activist focused in particular on the rights of LGBTQ+ parents in 2020 post a lenghty campaign Sarah and her wife Geraldine along with countless other couples finally got on thier childrens birth certs.

Travers Johnson (he/him) is the Founder & CEO of Queerency, the leading source for LGBTQ+ business news. He is also the Creator of LGBTQ+ Business Week, an annual 7-day celebration of queer-owned small businesses. Travers is an award-winning content strategist and editor with 15 years of experience in digital media, digital marketing, and book publishing. A Forbes contributor who covers topics at the intersection of the queer economy and the creator economy, Travers has worked for and with industry leading companies including Mailchimp, Penguin Random House, Edelman, and Scholastic. He was trained at Morehouse College and Georgetown University and is a winner of the Google News Initiative Pitchfest and the Maynard Institute Media Entrepreneurship Award.

https://www.instagram.com/queerency/

https://www.instagram.com/lgbtqbusinessweek/

Martine Rothblatt, founder of Sirius XM and United Therapeutics 

KN Global Group, owned by Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip, bought the Miss Universe Organization

Arlan Hamilton 

Ayla and Savannah run the all-female production crew at the award-winning Borderlands Brewing Co in Tucson, AZ. They've taken those leadership skills into the community, co-founding the local Pink Boots Society chapter, and creating cross-cultural leadership opportunities that reach across our southern border for community building in unlikely places - the women-run breweries of Mexico. Join us to listen and learn from their unique and impactful journey! OutofQueeriosity.com 

https://tucsonfoodie.com/2023/02/02/ayla-kapahi/

https://tucsonfoodie.com/2022/09/08/las-hermanas-2022/

https://ket.org/program/la-frontera-with-pati-jinich-14148/beer-tasting-at-borderlands-brewing/

https://www.instagram.com/aylakapahi/?hl=en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayla-kapahi-337164265/

https://www.borderlandsbrewing.com/

https://www.instagram.com/openupsavy/

Savanna Saldatem she/her- Tucson native since 1991. Lead Brewer for Borderlands Brewing Company for 5 years. Dog-loving, travel-loving, experience-driven human being. LGBTQ+ community member.  

Ayla Kapahi, she/her, is the Head Brewer and Director of Production for Borderlands Brewing Company. She has 8 years of professional brewing experience in Tucson. She’s part of an all-women’s beer production facility and collaborates with women brewers throughout Mexico. Ayla is passionate about empowering women and minorities in the craft beer industry. She co-founded Pink Boots of Southern Arizona, a non-profit that supports women in alcohol fermentation sciences. Ayla is currently completing a master’s degree through Eller’s Evening MBA program at the University of Arizona. She loves spending time with family and friends. If Ayla had more free time, she’d spend it taking Bachata dance lessons, going to classic car shows, and training for a weightlifting competition.

Today, we are joined by Ricky Koo (he/him), an incredible leadership and development coach who leverages his day job as a tech executive to mentor emerging LGBTQ+ leaders to increase their impact. Our conversation explores the binary experience of growing up in both American culture and Hong Kong culture. Ricky shares his experience in coming out to himself and his cherished mother and how Ricky is using his voice to build connection and community. Ricky displays one of the skills masterfully in this episode. 

Ricky Koo (he/him) is a first-generation, queer immigrant originally from Hong Kong. He is a full-time Dog Dad, Finance executive in the technology industry, and a proud entrepreneur who owns a coaching business centered around empowering under-represented communities in their life and career. Ricky's vision is a future of more diverse, more empathetic, and more self-aware leaders, as he coaches individuals and teams on authentic leadership and impactful communication. 

You can find Ricky on Instagram @coachingwithricky or on his website: rickykoo.com.

Also, you can read his blog post, Queer Innocence and Discovery on the Pride and Joy Foundation Blog here. 

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Our podcasts are produced with the incredible help of Jessica Whipple. Are you in need of podcast assistance? Find Jess online for podcast management support:

jessicawhipple.com

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juliany taveras (they/them/elle) is a storyteller from Ayití Bohio (Dominican Republic) by way of Lenapehoking (New York City). Their work, which centers the lives and liberation of the Afro/Indigenous and queer/trans diasporas, takes many forms, including playwriting, screenwriting, poetry, photography, graphic design, teaching artistry, and (perhaps most importantly) kinship.

This fall, a new World Premiere stage adaptation of Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress will debut at Children's Theatre Company (CTC), written by playwright juliany taveras and directed by Heidi Stillman, Artistic Director of Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre. The production will run at CTC from Oct. 10 - Nov. 19, 2023. More information is available here: https://childrenstheatre.org/whats-on/morris-micklewhite/. 

 About the Play:

Morris likes lots of things: doing puzzles, painting pictures, pretending to be an astronaut, and wearing a tangerine dress from his school’s dress-up box because it “reminds him of tigers, the sun, and his mother’s hair.” But some of his classmates think boys can’t wear dresses because … well, they’re boys. With his vivid imagination and space-animal friends, Morris travels the galaxy in search of an answer to the all-important question: “Do astronauts wear dresses?”  

The original children's book Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress has received widespread praise, from critics, readers, families, and educators. Dame Julie Andrews featured it on her show, Julie's Library. It has received the following recognition:

First video teaser: https://vimeo.com/859480374?share=copy

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Our podcasts are produced with the incredible help of Jessica Whipple. Are you in need of podcast assistance? Find Jess online for podcast management support:

jessicawhipple.com

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 In this episode, we chat with Meg Appelgate and Katherine McNamara of Unsilenced.  Unsilenced is a nonprofit dedicated to lifting the voices of survivors of the troubled teen industry and eradicating the industry altogether. This is incredibly important work for the LGBTQ+ community, as a disproportionate amount of LGBTQ+ youth are in these dangerous organizations. In many instances, this is where our youth experience conversion therapy and live with the consequences.

From Unsilenced - 

Every year, thousands of children are sent against their will – often ripped out of their beds in the middle of the night by strangers – to private facilities to be treated for various mental illnesses, addiction issues and perceived behavioral problems. Many times these programs are labeled as “boot camps,” “behavioral modification schools,” “wilderness therapy,” “secured group homes,” and “conversion therapy.” These programs market themselves to parents, therapists, state and judicial agencies, and insurance companies as providers of therapeutic treatment. Instead of delivering evidence-based treatment, many of these programs deliver a myriad of maltreatment such as physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, isolation, forced hard labor, chemical sedation, sleep and food deprivation, attack therapy, aversion therapy, etc.

Tags for IG, twitter, and Tiktok:  @unsilenced_now Unsilenced Tags for Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Unsilenced.now Unsilenced Website: www.unsilenced.org

Meg is the co-founder and CEO of Unsilenced, a nonprofit organization aiming to stop institutional child abuse within the Troubled Teen Industry (TTI). She is a survivor of 2 TTI programs, where she spent a combined total of 3 1/2 years of her teen years feeling brainwashed and abused.  After graduating college, with a degree in psychology,  completely oblivious to the abuse she had experienced, Meg spent the next 17 years dedicating her life serving on various non-profit boards helping with Board development, recruitment, and fundraising.  It wasn’t until she was well into her non-profit career that she woke up to the abuse and brainwashing that plagued her childhood and the effect it had on her entire adulthood. It was then that she became determined to pair her love of giving back and helping those in need, with her dedication to empowering other survivors of institutional abuse.

Katherine spent over 2.5 years in Provo Canyon School and Casa By The Sea as a teenager. She has been an outspoken vocal advocate speaking out against this industry and advocating for evidence-based community treatment. In her years of advocacy, she’s conducted multiple investigations into active and closed programs, worked with law enforcement on multiple investigations, built one of the largest program maps, and created the largest archive of program data that is currently available online. In 2020, she was featured in Paris Hilton’s documentary, entitled “This Is Paris” where she and her fellow Provo Canyon School classmates discussed their experiences and brought much-needed mainstream attention to the plight of children in these programs.

Outside of her advocacy work, Katherine McNamara is well-known in the cybersecurity field. She is considered a subject matter expert and has published several courses, books, articles, and blogs. She has earned a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology Security, Masters of Science in Information Security and Assurance, and holds over 30 industry certifications including two CCIEs, CISSP, etc.

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Our podcasts are produced with the incredible help of Jessica Whipple. Are you in need of podcast assistance? Find Jess online for podcast management support:

jessicawhipple.com

@jessicawhipple.wav

Are you book-curious or book ready? Did you know the publishing industry is 89% hetero? We NEED LGBTQ+ writers, we need YOUR voices. If you have expertise and always wanted to write a book or you are ready to take your business to the next level, then OUTWrite Authors might be for you. This week we take a deep dive with our instructor of OUTWrite Authors, Suzette Mullen (she/her), and our very own Director of Operations, C. Rizleris (they/them), who also happens to be an OUTWrite Authors grad. 

Suzette Mullen (she/her) is a memoir and nonfiction book coach, retreat leader, and the author of the memoir The Only Way Through Is Out, forthcoming February 13, 2024, from the University of Wisconsin Press. Her publications include a “tiny love story” in the New York Times and “The Subaru Should Have Been a Sign,” an essay that went viral on today.com.  As a book coach, Suzette builds safe and supportive communities for queer writers where she helps them find their deeper stories and big ideas, choose the structures that serve those stories and ideas, sort through their publication options, find agent representation, and land book deals.

C. Rizleris (they/them) is a recent MFA Writing graduate from Vermont College of Fine Arts. They are a contributing writer for the Pride and Joy Foundation and have worked in higher education for over ten years. They currently volunteer with LGBTQ+ youth at the Guilford Green Foundation and serve on the Transgender Task Force Committee for the city of Greensboro, NC. You can find C. on Twitter @rizwrites or visit their website. 

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Our podcasts are produced with the incredible help of Jessica Whipple. Are you in need of podcast assistance? Find Jess online for podcast management support:

jessicawhipple.com

@jessicawhipple.wav

Our bonus episodes feature the voices of the most recent graduates of our Keynote Queers program. This is our 8-week online course just for LGBTQ+ participants, to learn public speaking skills as well as the knowledge to build public speaking into an extra form of income. Whether our participants were pitching their own small business, upleveling their skills for their corporate career, or just learning how to effectively move audiences to take action, our Keynote Queers gave a hell of a graduation presentation and we are here to share it with you! Can you imagine squishing an entire keynote into just 10 minutes? This is considered expert level skills in the public speaking world and it was our graduates' capstone project. Check back here on Thursdays in the summer of 2023 to hear from another Keynote Queer graduate. 

Nicki Hangsleben (she/they) is the Executive Director and Founder of QUEERSPACE collective, an organization committed to creating space for LGBTQ+ youth to feel safe and empowered to be their true selves. They have been providing leadership in both for-profit and non-profits spaces for over 20 years and have a diverse background in strategic partnerships, business development, program oversight and financial management. Nicki grew up in South Minneapolis surrounded by a vibrant LGBTQ+ community and currently lives in North Minneapolis with her wife and two amazing kids. They are passionate about serving their community, advocating for the rights of all humans, and creating lasting impact locally and globally.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicki-hangsleben-539b815/

 www.queerspacecollective.org

 www.instagram.com/queerspacecollective/

Kicking off Season Three of Out of Queeriosity, we are excited to speak with Nicole Gress, she/they, about her business journey with Undead Voice, an online trans/nonbinary speech platform. 

Behind Undead Voice is the founder, Nicole Gress (she/they), a leading expert in demedicalizing transgender voice care. As a gender-fluid individual, they know firsthand the power of voice in affirming one's gender identity. Nicole has leveraged their eight years of experience as a speech-language pathologist in the trans voice specialty to redefine voice transition care and champion innovative, inclusive solutions for the transgender community.

And now you have the opportunity to chat with Nicole live! Join us for our next Pride and Joy Parents event, an evening with Nicole Gress to learn how affirming voice impacts mental health and how quickly and thoroughly it can be accomplished in a noninvasive way. Save your seat at www.PrideandJoyParents.com. 

Undead Voice: https://www.undeadvoice.com/

Trans Voice Guide: https://www.undeadvoice.com/guide 

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Our podcasts are produced with the incredible help of Jessica Whipple. Are you in need of podcast assistance? Find Jess online for podcast management support:

jessicawhipple.com

@jessicawhipple.wav