Zeppelin Presents: A Hot Queer Summer

Event Description:

Zeppelin Presents: Hot Queer Summer

Here at Zeppelin, we say gay! Join us on June 3rd, 2023 as we present Hot Queer Summer, an event in celebration of Florida-based LGBTQ+ authors. We are thrilled to celebrate Tyler Gillespie’s the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023) with the help of three local authors: Kristen Arnett, Rochelle Hurt, and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya. These talented writers will gather at our North Quarter location to share their work in a reading, answer questions, and chat about queerness in Florida. We can’t wait to present these four readers and to remind the Orlando LGBTQ+ scene that their writing will always have a place here. Purchase tickets and copies of the authors’ books now!

Bios

Tyler Gillespie

Tyler Gillespie is an award-winning teacher and writer. His reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, GQ, and The Guardian while his poetry has been published in recent anthologies such as In Absentia: Reflections on the Pandemic (Bicycle Comics) and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing). He’s the author of the essay collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (UPF, 2021) and two poetry collections Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018) and the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023). He’s a fifth-generation Floridian and currently teaches writing at Ringling College of Art + Design.

Kristen Arnett

Kristen Arnett is the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Millay Colony, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her next book (an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.

Rochelle Hurt

Rochelle Hurt is the author of the poetry collections The J Girls: A Reality Show (Indiana University Press, 2022), which won the Blue Light Books Prize from Indiana Review; In Which I Play the Runaway (Barrow Street, 2016), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize; and The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems (White Pine, 2014). Her work has been included in Poetry magazine and the Best New Poets anthology. She's been awarded prizes and fellowships from Arts & Letters, Poetry International, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel, and Yaddo. Hurt lives in Orlando and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the author of Helen House, a queer horror novelette. She is the managing editor of Autostraddle and the assistant managing editor at TriQuarterly. Her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, The Rumpus, and others. She was a 2021 nonfiction fellow and is the upcoming 2023 speculative fiction writer-in-residence for the Lambda Literary's Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices.

Host or Publisher Zeppelin Books