LESBIAN INVISIBILITY: from AIDS, to Civil Rights, to Marriage Equality

April 29, 20215:30 PM to 6:30 PMZoomFree! Sponsored by: USM Sampson Center for Diversity 

Join speakers Holly Valero, author of Tales of an American Lesbian, and Clare Forstie, whose research has examined lesbian invisibility in Maine and beyond, to discuss how and why lesbians have not shared the spotlight in recent events.

This virtual event will be recorded and made available on our Digital Commons at a later date. 

This virtual event will be closed captioned. There will be space in the registration form for you to let us know if you have any accessibility requests. We will accommodate your request to the best of our abilities within the format of this presentation. 

Holly Valero

Born in Miami, Florida in the early 1960s, Holly Valero grew up on a 100-acre, Pennsylvania sheep farm and halfway house for psychiatrically labeled chickens. The only lesbian in a one-lesbian town she spent several years as the night shift DJ at WTTC Radio, a 500-watt AM/FM station with an audience largely comprised of dairy cattle.

Radio took her to Concord, New Hampshire, where she became involved in early efforts to change the laws regarding gay and lesbian rights. It was there she began writing a regular series for the local gay and lesbian community newspapers.

A move to Portland, Maine and a change in careers (newspaper, then publishing) led her eventually to the World Wide Web where she established her own web and graphic design business in 2000, called  HollyWorks, and more recently, a digital publishing company.

Holly Valero is a writer, artist, programmer and publisher living in Southern Maine with her partner, Janet McKenney.

Clare Forstie

Clare is a teaching consultant at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Educational Innovation. In addition to her programming and consulting work, she has published widely on sexuality, gender, and pedagogy topics with a focus on LGBTQ communities in small cities. Her forthcoming book, Same Rainbow, Different Raindrops: Ambivalent LGBTQ Community in a Small, Midwestern City, is under contract with NYU Press. Clare earned her PhD in sociology from Northwestern University in 2017 and her MA in American and New England Studies from USM in 2010. She lives in Minneapolis but very much misses her Portland, Lewiston, and Brunswick Maine communities!

To register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfKdR5OQxx50FeMNHGzmem8q6OD8zmj...

Contact Information

Susie R. Bocksusie.bock@maine.edu