Book launch: The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine

Please join us Saturday, March 14, at 4 PM at Artbook @ MoMA PS1 for a conversation with award-winning photographer and journalist J. Lester Feder and Miriam Elder, Executive Editor Features at CNN, for the New York City launch of The Queer Face of War: Portraits and stories from Ukraine,Q & A and book signing will follow.

The event will be live streamed on instagram at @artbookps1

The award-winning photographer and journalist J. Lester Feder shows us The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine, in this first-ever visual and oral history of a queer community in war. This remarkable collection of stunning portraits and moving profiles captures the many ways queer people can be vulnerable in armed conflict—and the many ways they feel especially called to fight.

Drawing on more than a decade of reporting in and around Ukraine, the book documents how queer Ukrainians—soldiers, medics, activists, refugees, and survivors of war crimes—have come out in unprecedented numbers since Russia's 2022 invasion, demanding equality even as they fight for their nation’s survival.

For LGBTQ+ people, visibility is power. The portraits and profiles in this book are rare because recent wars have been fought in places where it is unsafe to come out. At a moment when LGBTQ+ people are under attack worldwide, The Queer Face of War is a crucial record of queer history—and a powerful testament to resistance and resilience.

Pre-Order Signed copies at: https://artbookstores.com/The-Queer-Face-of-War-March-14th

Verlag Kettler| 2026 | 144 pages | 7.09 x 0.6 x 9.45 in | Hardcover

$40

J. Lester Feder is an American journalist of Ukrainian descent who has been reporting in and around Ukraine for more than a decade. Originally from the Washington area, he was the senior world correspondent covering LGBTQ+ rights for BuzzFeed News from 2013-2020, and he has been a senior fellow at the global LGBTQ+ human rights organization Outright International and the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic of the City University of New York. His honors include a Journalist of the Year Award from the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, a GLAAD Media Award, and a Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Award. His photos and writing have appeared in numerous other outlets including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair.

Miriam Elder is Executive Editor of Features at CNN, with 25 years of experience covering politics, business, and culture. She began her career in Paris at the International Herald Tribune and spent eight years in Moscow covering Vladimir Putin’s rise, including as The Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief. In New York, she built BuzzFeed News’ foreign desk, covered Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and the onset of COVID-19, and led Vanity Fair’s Hive. In 2023, Elder received the Council on Foreign Relations’ Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship.

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