Broadway and Fellow Travelers star Noah J. Ricketts and artist Zain Curtis are the double feature of QueerKY magazine’s fifth volume. The magazine is an arm of nonprofit organization Queer Kentucky and aids in its mission to amplify and strengthen queer culture through storytelling, education and action.
CityBeat spoke to Missy Spears, Queer Kentucky’s executive director, whose story is also featured in the upcoming magazine. Out this week, QueerKY’s latest publication centers its theme on reimagining masculinity.
Spears – a.k.a “the head butch in charge” – shares an autobiographical bit, introducing herself to readers while naming ways she will lead the organization into the future. “Before I understood queerness, I understood masculinity,” is how she begins her letter to readers.
Queer Kentucky was founded by Spencer Jenkins in 2018 and became a nonprofit in 2020; Jenkins is the editor-in-chief of the magazine. Spears says that upon the organization’s inception, Jenkins would travel around Kentucky and write profiles on queer individuals. Toting a Polaroid camera, Jenkins turned a blog into the nonprofit QueerKY is part of today.
The magazine launched in 2022, and Spears says this is the second edition that features stories that center around one theme. The fourth edition’s theme was home and what it’s like to call something home as a member of the queer community, because family structure can be different than others, she says.
“We started to explore set themes for all of our future issues,” Spears says. “Issue five is our first really strong theme, reimagining masculinity. We opened it up to anyone to submit. This one we really pushed to get writers from all over the state and especially Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.”
The issue features eight contributing writers and 16 contributing photographers and artists, who created pieces on topics like butch history and “how grunge music broke down my closet door,” in a work titled Slipknot Made Me Gay. Writer Kevin Garner shares an article titled Black Queer and Free, then in a “he/they’s tell all” Joshua Brown shares a pursuit in embodying a soft masculinity.
“We really dive into what it’s like for folks to not want to feel masculine and the steps that they took to kind of step away from that in their life,” Spears says. “And then also we focus on the other end of the spectrum who definitely wanted to step more heavily into that. And even the fluidity of folks who find themselves in the middle.”
Jenkins interviews native Kentuckian Ricketts in an article titled Bringing The Bluegrass to Hollywood and Broadway, which details Ricketts’ experience growing up in Louisville, Ky. and making his way to Hollywood while representing Black, queer men of the south.
Spears says she enjoys how the article reveals that Ricketts is hanging out with some of the biggest queer stars on the planet and still loves his home state.
“I connect with it a lot. Just reading that and knowing that he still loves his state,” she says. “My favorite thing about this issue is the cover. I love that we were able to do two different collectible covers for this one. We have a singular theme and we were able to put that on the front of it. So if someone walks into a coffee shop, they know exactly what they’re picking up and exactly what they’re about to read. And I just think the art is so incredible.”
Readers can find QueerKY today online, at Downbound Books in Northside; Hail Records and Oddities, Conveyor Belt Books and Roebling Point Books and Coffee in Covington; and Roebling Books and Coffee in Bellevue.
Visit queerkentucky.com for more information.
This article appears in Apr 17-30, 2024.