Alaska's Barnes & Noble stores join national No Name-Calling project

January is "No Name-Calling Month" at Barnes & Noble, and B&N stores nationwide are hosting events in support of GLSEN's annual No Name-Calling Week, happening this year on January 24-28, 2011. Stores in Anchorage and Fairbanks will hold Storytime readings and art activities before NNCW, and teaching materials on name-calling and bullying will be displayed during the month.

"Bringing awareness to the seriousness and severity of name-calling, teasing, bullying and cyber bullying is very important to Barnes & Noble. We're pleased to be partnering with Simon & Schuster and GLSEN for such an important effort," said Mary Amicucci, vice president of Children's Books for Barnes & Noble.

"GLSEN is excited to work with Barnes & Noble to bring No Name-Calling Week's message of respect to youth across the country throughout the month of January," said Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) Executive Director Eliza Byard. "As the world's largest bookseller, we applaud Barnes & Noble for embracing this opportunity to raise awareness about the problems of name-calling and bullying."

No Name-Calling Week is a week of educational and art activities aimed at stopping name-calling and bullying of all kinds, including anti-LGBT harassment. Lessons and resources for elementary, middle and high schools are available online HERE.

Barnes & Noble's No Name-Calling Storytime in Anchorage is on Saturday, January 15 and includes the two books recommended in the press release quoted below. The Fairbanks Storytime is scheduled for Saturday, January 22, and involves a different book.

Barnes & Noble stores across the country have events planned throughout January to recognize No Name-Calling Month including: All stores will host a national Storytime event on Saturday, January 15 at 11 a.m. The event will include a Storytime reading of the books Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes and One by Kathryn Otoshi, arts and crafts and other activities.

From January 15 through January 23, stores will host Barnes & Noble Educator Appreciation Week. Stores will have No Name-Calling materials available for teachers and educators including book recommendations, tip sheets for organizing No Name-Calling events, lesson plans for elementary and middle school students, classroom posters and buttons, [and] in-store panel discussions with GLSEN local chapters. Exclusive No Name-Calling articles by James Howe and Jodi Picoult will be featured in the January line-up of the More In Store program available on NOOK, the Barnes & Noble eBook Reader.

Barnes & Noble.com will feature a No Name-Calling page. Exclusive video content from bestselling children's, teen and adult authors will be placed on the site during the month of January... The authors will discuss their thoughts on and experiences with bullying.

Barnes & Noble stores will also provide information on GLSEN's Creative Expression Contest for Students:

The Creative Expression Contest is an opportunity for students to submit essays, poetry, music, original artwork, or other pieces that convey their experiences and feelings about name-calling, and their ideas for putting a stop to verbal bullying in their schools and communities. This year, we have added a new High School category to the contest for short-film submissions that focus on anti-LGBT name-calling and bullying in school. The goal is to have students working on their art pieces during the week as a way to learn about and deal with name-calling and bullying.

For contest guidelines, school resources and more information, visit No Name-Calling Week.

Thanks to GLSEN and their partners for the LGBT-inclusive No Name-Calling campaign, and to Barnes & Noble for bringing the anti-bullying message to their bookstores in Alaska and throughout the country.

Transgender podcast debuts with Alaska show on "Transpeople and Christianity"

The first show of "Good Morning, TransAmerica!" is now available, with news and discussion on transgender issues around the world, hosted by Anja Gensel of Anchorage, Alaska.

The first show is called "Transpeople and Christianity: Does God have a plan for us?" Anja and her guests address why many Fundamentalist Christian churches reject transpeople, how they hijacked the Anchorage assembly hearings last summer, and why they have it wrong.

We ask the question "Can you be transgendered, AND be a Christian?" We hear from Anchorage Televangelist Jerry Prevo, Pastoral Minister Sarah Gavit of St Mary's Episcipal Church, and two Christian Transwomen, Kelly Johnson and Piper Moritz.

Another local segment on the show is "TransLife in a small Alaskan town" with commercial fisherman and Transwoman, Carrie Thorne. Carrie also discusses her experiences with Dr. Toby Meltzer, who performed SRS, Voice modification and FFS on her.

Other guests include Lisa O. discussing her SRS results performed in Thailand by Dr. Suporn.

Finally, Mental Health Clinician Roni Lanier, M.S. reviews the book: "Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working With Gender-Variant People and Their Families" by Arlene Ister Lev.

Plus, the podcast opens with a review of recent transgender world news.

The second show is called "TransLife in Australia" and will be available in June. For the third show, Anja travels to Chicago to the 2010 "Be-All" International Gender Conference.

"Transpeople and Christianity: Does God have a plan for us?" is available HERE.

For more information on the next shows, visit "Good Morning, TransAmerica!" on TransAlaska Pipeline, the website for Transgender Alaska.

Kathy Griffin looks for gays in Anchorage

Award-winning and gay-friendly comedian Kathy Griffin is performing in Anchorage on Friday March 5 at the PAC.

In addition to stand-up comedy, Griffin played a lesbian activist on a recent episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and posed for the NoH8 photo project. She also escorted Levi Johnston to the Teen Choice Awards, and joked that they are engaged and she's carrying his baby.

"Kathy invades Alaska for one night only in March. Make sure to get your tickets early for this rare stop. In addition, Kathy will be stopping at Borders (1100 East Dimond Boulevard, Anchorage) at noon sharp for a very special book signing. Please call in advance for any special instructions the store may have: 907-344-4099."

"Multiple HBO and Bravo specials weren't enough! Catch double Emmy award winning Kathy Griffin live in her true element. She has more stories, more dish, more of what she shouldn't say but you know you want to hear. Chicago native Kathy Griffin is a multi-faceted performer with a rapid fire wit. Come with an open mind and laugh until you puke . . . Just a little."

Griffin loves "her gays" and will definitely have gay and lesbian fans at the Anchorage show. She even looked for - and found - gay soldiers when entertaining troops in Afghanistan, in this video clip from her DVD Allegedly:

Her fourth stand-up comedy DVD She'll Cut A Bitch was released in January. Learn more at Kathy Griffin's home page.

Tickets are $65 for the main floor and $45 for the mezzanine and balcony, and are available through the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts event page for Kathy Griffin.

No Name-Calling Week, Prof. Smoke on Matthew Shepard, & the Women's Summit

Gay AK - notes for and from LGBT Alaska

No Sticks, No Stones, No Dissing

GLSEN's No Name-Calling Week is January 25-29, 2010, a week of educational and art activities aimed at stopping name-calling and bullying in schools. The Creative Expression Contest is an opportunity for students to submit essays, poetry, music, original artwork, or other pieces that convey their experiences and feelings about name-calling, and their ideas for putting a stop to verbal bullying in their schools and communities. Lesson plans and other resources at No Name-Calling Week.

Gale Smoke on Matthew Shepard

Professor Gale Smoke will review Judy Shepard's book "The Meaning of Matthew, and a World Transformed" (Hudson Press, 2009) at this month's Anchorage PFLAG meeting. Refreshments will be available and all are invited to the meeting at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. Anchorage PFLAG.

Alaskans Together announces new board and officers

Congratulations to the new board members: Heather Bayless, Kelli Burkinshaw, Shayle Hutchison, Miguel De Marzo, Verner Wilson, and Christopher Narvaez. For 2010, the new executive officers for the organization are as follows: Elias Rojas - Board President, Joseph Lapp II - Vice President, Kevin Kristof - Treasurer, and Miguel De Marzo - Secretary. We are happy to announce that ATE is now a member of the Equality Federation. Come and join in the fun and hard work by volunteering to serve on one of the committees, which meet monthly by conference call. There is room for you! Join Alaskans Together.

Women's Summit: Anchorage lunch 3/17 and Juneau conference 3/18 – 3/19

It's time to sign up for the 2010 Women's Summit on March 17-19. The theme for this year is "Interpersonal Violence in Alaska: Why Alaska Ranks at the Top, and Strategies for Success." The keynote speaker is Rebecca Levenson, Senior Policy Analyst with the Family Violence Prevention Fund. Come listen, learn and network with other women from around the state. Rebecca will also speak at a luncheon in Anchorage on Wednesday, March 17, 12 pm at the Sheraton Hotel downtown, $35/person. A limited number of scholarships are available for the Juneau conference (for travel, lodging and registration) and are due by March 1. For those arranging your own travel and lodging, applications are due by March 10. The Women's Summit is organized by the Alliance for Reproductive Justice.

Tantric Wisdom for the Activities of Daily Living

Bird Trungma, Rinpoche, has moved her short essays on Tantric Wisdom to HubPages. She hopes you will keep reading them, and continue to enjoy and benefit from them. Her first essay tells her story of moving to Anchorage, almost leaving, then deciding to stay. Check out Bird's Tantric Wisdom.

Anchorage paper hosts legacy book for Mary Daly, Boston lesbian author

Mary Daly, radical lesbian feminist author of Gyn/Ecology and Beyond God the Father, passed away on Jan. 3, and the Anchorage Daily News opened a legacy book for the Boston professor who didn't live in Alaska and probably never visited.

The ADN reprinted her obituary from the Associated Press, and the guest book currently has 105 entries, mostly from New England. Only 2 entries are from Alaska, although a few entries do not give locations.

Daly was a major voice in the women's movement and a central figure in eco-feminism. Several of her books are among the classics of women's studies courses. Her first book, The Church and the Second Sex published in 1968, argued that the Church systematically oppressed women for centuries. In later years, she considered herself "post-Christian."

"Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin," she wrote in the opening of "Sin Big," a 1996 autobiographical article for the New Yorker magazine. "The word 'sin' is derived from the Indo-European root 'es-,' meaning 'to be.' When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, 'to be' in the fullest sense is 'to sin.' "

Daly made headlines when she retired from Boston College (a Jesuit university where she taught for 30 years) rather than admit men to some of her advanced women's studies classes, saying that the presence of men made the women less likely to speak. She did let men enroll in her introductory feminism courses and tutored them in the advanced subjects. Her anti-trans opinions were as controversial in the LGBT community as her anti-patriarchy stance was at Boston College.

Free copies of "Silent Lives" for GLBT-welcoming ministries

PFLAG Juneau has received another grant to give away several hundred more copies of the book by local author Sara Boesser, Silent Lives: How High a Price?

Silent Lives combines autobiographical stories, personal interviews and questions for reflection to explore issues about everyone's sexual orientation and gender status, whether heterosexual, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or intersexual.

Boesser examines the consequences a sexual minority person suffers when attempting to pass as heterosexual or as having a traditional gender expression. She also looks at how society as a whole is affected when an individual is pressured to hide his or her sexual identity.

This year, the gift copies are available for furthering the work of "Welcoming Ministries" around the country: for faith and religious people, groups and denominations that are working to become more accepting of GLBT people, for your own work to make your faith community more accepting of GLBT people, or to give to someone you know who is involved in that effort, maybe a copy for a church or synagogue library, a counselor's office, a religious parent, or a faith leader, rabbi, minister, preacher, pastor, or priest.

The book isn't religious per se, but Boesser is a minister's daughter and she reflects on that in the book. Excerpts of Silent Lives are posted on the Silent Lives web site.

"This book is the result of my personal struggle for integrity," Sara wrote in the introduction to Silent Lives. "I realized I could no longer be silent and let society condemn a core part of me while praising the outer manifestations I selectively permitted it to see. And with that realization came another: while society was blind, my very silence was what blocked its vision."

"From that instant of realization, my only hope for personal peace was to seek clues that could free me from my silence and to speak out about what I discovered in the process. This book is the result of the first fourteen years of that search."

Kathy Reim of the Skagit PFLAG chapter wrote a column based on Silent Lives:

"Where is the silence in my life or yours? What do we lose when, as Sara Boesser challenges us, we "pass"- we pretend for whatever reason to be something else to make it comfortable for others and easier for ourselves - and lose our authenticity in the process?"

"... Boesser suggests we all lose when silence separates us. We end up hiding from ourselves. When the safety net is widened for all of us, the lives of everyone will be enriched."

If you'd like a free copy or two, write to Sara Boesser with your name and mailing address, and say how many copies you'd like. And feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

You can read more about the welcoming Christian movement at Welcoming Community Network, and the welcoming multi-faith movement at Welcoming Resources.

KK editor, former ADN writer seeks Queer Alaska stories

Remember the local lesbian newsletter, Klondyke Kontact? Kim Wyatt, an editor of the KK and board member of RAW, has co-founded Bona Fide Books and wants to publish your stories of being gay or lesbian in the Great Land.

Queer in the Last Frontier is an anthology of literary essays that explore the experiences of LGBT Alaskans, the challenges and pleasures of being queer - for both newcomers and old-timers - in a place that is "isolated, conservative, and impossibly beautiful." Bona Fide is also seeking essays for an anthology called Permanent Vacation: Living and Working in Our National Parks. The two calls for submission were posted earlier this month HERE.

Kim gave Bent Alaska the scoop on Queer in the Last Frontier:

Q. Why did you choose an anthology of literary essays on Queer Alaska?

A. I've always loved nonfiction anthologies, and received an MFA in nonfiction from UAA. Also, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and living in Alaska was an eye-opener. I felt like I had a better understanding of queer life and the importance of community after my time here. (Plus, I really love the title!)

Q. What queer and writing activities were you involved in when you lived in Alaska?

A. I edited the Klondyke Kontact for a while, and one of my goals was to make it a newsmagazine. I did shepherd it from rainbow-hued Xeroxed paper to newsprint with art, and tried to bring some consistency to the columns and layout. I applied for grants from the Gill Foundation and other organizations to upgrade materials. I had a lot of fun working on the KK, and had the help of some great Alaskan women. I was also on the board of Radical Arts for Women. And as I mentioned above, I got an MFA at UAA, and wrote for the Anchorage Daily News.

Q. What qualities are you looking for in the essays?

A. Honesty and transcendence are ideal, but I'm probably partial to stories that make me laugh or cry. We're really just looking for well-written explorations of queer life in Alaska. Or life in Alaska as it is experienced by someone who happens to be queer. You can write about relationships, the Northern Lights, or working on a fishing boat. Just tell your story.

Q. Will you be visiting Alaska to promote the book?

A. Absolutely. I try to get up there whenever I can.

Kim has a special greeting for all the Alaskans who remember her, especially the KK readers:

"Hello, Alaskans! I just got back from a backpacking trip with another former Alaskan, Val Garrison – the friendships I made there are lasting, because that's just the kind of people Alaskans are. (And I would like to give a shout-out to the Wesleyan Wimmin's Writing Wetreat!)"

photo: Bona Fide Books Publisher Kim Wyatt & Val Garrison goofing around in Yosemite 9/09.

The deadline for submitting an essay to Queer in the Last Frontier is February 5, 2010 and the word count is limited to 5,000. Writers will receive $100 for their story and one copy of the collection. Send to Bona Fide Books submissions with "Alaska" and the title of the work in the subject line.

For more information, please visit Bona Fide Books.

New Press seeks Essays on Queer Alaska

Ex-Alaskan Kim Wyatt and Shelley Zentner from the UK launched Bona Fide Books earlier this year, "a small press that seeks to publish provocative and adventurous literature." They are seeking submissions for two anthologies of literary essays: Queer in the Last Frontier and Permanent Vacation: Living and Working in Our National Parks.

Queer in the Last Frontier explores the experience of LGBT Alaskans, the challenges and pleasures of being queer in a place that is "isolated, conservative, and impossibly beautiful" for both chechakos and sourdoughs. Permanent Vacation considers the daily life and wider implications of living and working in our national parks, from Denali to the Everglades.

Queer in the Last Frontier

Alaska is a place of extremes, where people go to reinvent themselves. Or perhaps you were born there at a time when it wasn't safe to be out. What is it like to grow up or remake yourself in a place that is isolated, conservative, and impossibly beautiful? Bona Fide Books seeks literary essays for Queer in the Last Frontier, the first collection to explore the challenges and pleasures of being gay or lesbian in the Great Land. We seek a diversity of experience, from the newly arrived to the old-timer who has seen it all. Send us your stories of prejudice, triumph, and community in the Last Frontier.

Writers will receive $100 for their story and one copy of the collection. Deadline: February 5, 2010. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and 12 point Times New Roman or Courier font with standard formatting applied; word count is limited to 5,000. Send to Bona Fide Books submissions with "Alaska" and the title of work in the subject line.

Permanent Vacation: Living and Working in Our National Parks

Bona Fide Books is also seeking literary essays about your experience working in our national parks, from Denali to the Everglades, Yellowstone to Yosemite. Some go seeking commune with nature; others to escape. Diverse park experiences are desired. Although we enjoy tree-hugging epiphanies, we also want to read about day-to-day life, and societal, environmental, and existential implications of living in the park. What happened there, and how did it influence your life?

Writers will receive $100 for their story and one copy of the collection. Submit manuscripts postmarked no later than January 5th, 2010 to Bona Fide Books submissions with "Permanent Vacation" and the title of work in the subject line. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and 12 point Times New Roman or Courier font with standard formatting applied; word count is limited to 5,000.

For more information, please visit Bona Fide Books.