Coming February 17-19, the sixth annual ReadOut Festival!

It’s FREE and HYBRID with ONSITE, LIVESTREAMED and PRERECORDED presentations

The festival includes many talented writers of LGBTQ romance, memoir, nonfiction, history, mystery, poetry and more. Featured authors include: 
- Kirkus Prize-winning author Brian Broome,
- Lesbian literary icons Radclyffe and Ann McMan
- St. Pete’s Poet Laureate Gloria Munoz
- Kitchen Table Arts founder Sheree Greer
and more than 75 other talented writers of LGBTQ romance, memoir, nonfiction, history, mystery and poetry.

Find festival details and register here.

Festival overview: ReadOut Festival 

Sponsorship opportunities:  Sponsorship

Registration: ReadOut Tickets 

Elle E. Ire and Becky Bohan Win Royal Palm Literary Awards 

Mystery & Suspense Writing Secrets to be Revealed at ReadOut 2023!  

Two Florida novelists appearing at ReadOut 2023 snagged top honors in the LGBTQ category at the annual Florida Writers Association conference this October in Orlando. The FWA has served writers of all genres for over twenty years.

Elle E. Ire won the FWA’s Gold Royal Palm Literary Award for her paranormal romance Dead Woman’s Pond, in addition to being named first runner-up for Book of the Year. Becky Bohan won the Silver Royal Palm for her suspense/romance blend, The Santorini Setup. 

Elle and Becky also have received recognition from the Golden Crown Literary Society, an international organization for writers, editors, publishers, and readers of Sapphic fiction. Elle’s science fiction/murder mystery/Sapphic romance, Reel to Real Love,was a 2022 GCLS finalist, and Dead Woman’s Pond was a 2022 GCLS winner. Becky’s over-60s road trip/lesbian romance, A Light on Altered Land, was a 2021 GCLS finalist. 

For more about Elle E. Ire, visit her website here.  

For more about Becky Bohan, visit her website here. 

Both authors will appear on the February 18, 2023, ReadOut panel “Secrets Revealed! Mystery Writers Discuss Their Craft” with prize-winning mystery and suspense novelists Ann Aptaker, Cheryl Head, Penny Mickelbury, and Elizabeth Sims. The 60-minute panel is sure to be lively and informative as the authors discuss how to keep readers turning pages. 

Partial funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

February 1 Annual Meeting 5 – 6 p.m. at the Gulfport Public Library and Zoom

Click here to register:

LGBTQ Resource Center (Gulfport, FL) Annual Meeting Tickets, Wed, Feb 1, 2023 at 5:00 PM | Eventbrite

Join us!: LGBTQ Resource Center membership is required to vote on the annual budget. Join here: LGBTQ Resource Center Membership | City of Gulfport (mygulfport.us)

Meeting Agenda

Welcome
President’s Report Susan Gore 2022: A Year of Growth and Change
Treasurer’s Report Pete Rintye 2022 financials and 2023 budget
Election Madison Temple, Stetson College of Law*
Other business: New Film series to debut March 2 at the Catherine Hickman Theater
Announcements: ReadOut 2023 celebrates LGBTQ Literature Feb. 17 – 19 at the library and on Zoom
Adjournment

The LGBTQ Resource Center of the Gulfport Library is the only collection of its kind in a public library in Florida, offering more than 10,000 books, CDs and other media, as well as events like ReadOut. The Center’s mission is to promote awareness of the diversity of experiences, contributions and needs of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer. The Resource Center is a 501(c)3 and has been recognized with the Newlen-Symons Award for excellence in library services and outreach by the American Library Association.

*Madison Temple is a first-year student at Stetson University College of Law and the Community Outreach Coordinator for the Lambda Legal Society at Stetson. The Lambda Legal Society provides a forum for exploring the legal issues faced by people in the LGBTQ+ community. The goal of Lambda is to educate young attorneys about the unique issues that the community faces. We also aim to promote intersectional social justice and recognize that the issues faced by people who identify as LGBTQ+ are influenced by other parts of their identity. Students need not identify with any particular label to belong.