A long-overdue Bent Alaska update — October 2013

Alison Bechdel, cartoonist (LGBT History Month 2011)

Alison Bechdel  is a celebrated cartoonist and author of the long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. Her groundbreaking graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, was awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book. Bent Alaska presents her story as part of our celebration of LGBT History Month 2011, with thanks to the Equality Forum.

Alison Bechdel

“The [comic] strip is about all kinds of things, not just gay and lesbian issues—births, deaths and everything in-between happen to everyone.”

Alison Bechdel (b. September 10, 1960) is a celebrated cartoonist and author of the long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. Her groundbreaking graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, was awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book.

A native of central Pennsylvania, Bechdel and her siblings grew up in a small town. Her parents both taught at the local high school and her father, the subject of her first memoir, was the town’s mortician. Bechdel attended Oberlin College, where she graduated with a B.A. in 1981.

Dykes to Watch Out For was published in 1983 and became a syndicated comic strip in 1985. With her signature subtle wit, Bechdel took on the complex and often stereotyped world of lesbian relationships through her comic alter ego, Mo. The strip has become a cult classic.

In the late 1990’s, Bechdel began work on her first graphic memoir about her family, Fun Home. The memoir focuses on her relationship with her father and his death. Time Magazine honored Fun Home as No. 1 of the 10 Best Books of 2006, calling it “a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.” The book won a Lambda Book Award, an Eisner Award and the 2006 Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award. It was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Dykes to Watch Out For continued production for 25 years. In 2008, Bechdel suspended work on the award-winning comic strip to create a graphic memoir about relationships. The same year, Houghton Mifflin published a complete collection of her work, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.

Bechdel resides outside of Burlington, Vermont.

Alison Bechdel was interviewed by MiND TV about her bestselling graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Watch:

For more about Alison Bechdel, visit the Dykes to Watch Out For website, the Alison Bechdel page on Amazon.com, her LGBT History Month page, or the Wikipedia article about her.

Photo credit: Alison Bechdel came to Brussels to promote her new autobiographical book Fun Home. She signed her book in the comic store Brüselm 29 Oct 2006. Photo by Tineke on Flickr; used in accordance with Creative Commons license.

John Ashbery, poet (LGBT History Month 2011)

John Ashbery is one of the most successful 20th century poets. He has won almost every major American literary award, including the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Bent Alaska presents his story as part of our celebration of LGBT History Month 2011, with thanks to the Equality Forum.

John Ashbery

“My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life.”

John Ashbery (b. July 28, 1927) is one of the most successful 20th century poets. He has won almost every major American literary award, including the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Ashbery graduated from Harvard University, where he studied English and served on the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate. He received his master’s degree from Columbia University. After graduating, Ashbery spent three years in publishing before moving to Paris on a Fulbright scholarship.

Returning to the U.S. in 1957, Ashbery attended graduate classes at New York University. Thereafter, he returned to Paris, where he supported himself as an editor. He eventually moved back to the U.S. to become the executive editor of ARTNews magazine.

Ashbery’s success began with frequent publication of his poems in magazines such as Furioso and Poetry New York. While in France, his book Some Trees won the Yale Younger Poet’s Prize. He has won many awards, including the Bollingen Prize and the McArthur Foundation’s “Genius Award.”

His Pulitzer Prize-winning poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” which also won the National Book Award and the National Critics Circle Award, is unique for its triple prize status. The poem pulls together his favored themes: creating poetry and the influence of visual arts on his work.

Ashbery’s career has been marked by controversy. Response to his poetry ranges from praise for his brilliant expressionism and use of language to condemnation for his work’s nonsensical and elusive nature.

A prolific writer, he has published over 20 books of poetry, beginning with Tourandot and Other Poems. His work has been compared to modernist painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Critics assert that he is trying to translate visual modern art into written language.

Since 1974, he has supported himself through teaching positions, the last of which was as the Charles P. Stevens, Jr. Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College. He lives in upstate New York, where he continues to write poetry.

Here he is reading his poem “”Interesting People of Newfoundland” from Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, winner of the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize. Watch:

For more about John Ashbery, visit his LGBT History Month page or Wikipedia article.

Photo credit: Poet John Ashbery at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival’s gala for the presentation of Best of Brooklyn, Inc’s BoBI Award, 12 September 2010. Photo by David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons.

Kye Allums, athlete (LGBT History Month 2011)

Kye Allums, is the first openly transgender athlete to play NCAA Division I college basketball. Bent Alaska presents his story as part of our celebration of LGBT History Month 2011, with thanks to the Equality Forum.

This one for you, James Crump

James Crump came to Alaska to find himself, and stayed in Alaska to share himself with us. His death on June 25 at Anchorage’s Pride parade was a blow not only to his family & friends, but also to our whole community. But just what is our community — and where do we go from here?

Doug Frank: Grand Marshal for Alaska Pride Fest 2011

Doug Frank has been announced as tthe Grand Marshall for Alaska Pride Fest 2011. Alaska Pride Fest provided this biography documenting Frank’s decades of service to the LGBTQA community of Alaska, including his work with World AIDS Day and the Names Project Quilt, cofounding of the annual Pride Conference, and the 20012 Pride Month display at Anchorages’s Loussace Library.

My first Anchorage Pride, 1983 — and (some of) Identity’s early history

As Pride Week approaches, we thought we’d revisit a few of the Pride Weeks of Anchorage’s past. Last week, Alaska Pride gave us a flashback to 1978. Now we’ll jump forward in time a few years: to 1983, my first Pride in Anchorage, just short of a year after I first arrived in Alaska.

Thanking those who in the past Stepped Up and Stepped Out with Pride

A message from Alaska Pride | originally posted at the Alaska Pride blog

Flashback to July 1978

In this day and age, it isn’t too rare to see Gay Pride marches across the United States and all around the world. In fact, its pretty much expected. Presidents of our nation even declare a month out of the year as Gay Pride Month (when we really should celebrate Pride all year round!).

GLBT folk and our allies get to march in these parades, unhindered and proudly.

That wasn’t always the case…

Lets flashback to Anchorage in July of 1978. This was the reality of that day and age:

Just imagine being someone in this march. These brave marchers had to wear paper bags over their heads for fear of harassment, abuse, and most of all — losing their jobs. Life was already hard enough being GLBT in Alaska in the 1970′s. But to march and show your Pride was even harder.

This Pride, we honor those who took the first steps to ensure that we as a community can march proudly in the streets, open, no brown paper bags over our heads, no disguise. Because of these individuals who Stepped Up and Stepped Out decades ago, we have the luxury to be able to continue Stepping Up and Stepping Out.

So what have you done to make sure that pictures like these become a thing of the past, something that years from now, we will look back and wonder at the incredulity and ignorance of those people?

This year, this Pride, we ask that you Step Up, Step Out, take that paper bag of your head and march proudly with us on June 25. For even today, it is punishable by death to be GLBT in several nations across the world. Today, Pride marches are banned in several nations, like the Pride march banned in Moscow in which marchers were brutalized and arrested (Read more here.)

That will only end when individuals like you end it.

But please, remember that you are walking in the footsteps of giants like Doug Frank, our Grand Marshall for this years Pride. (Read his bio here.) So tread softly, but tread on nonetheless!

Bent News, 5/31/11: Pride fundraisers, & solidarity against hate

Last weekend’s Pride fundraisers, a presidential proclamation, Old Navy Pride t-shirts, and Moscow repression; solidarity against hate in Portland; marriage equality updates from California and Minnesota; a memorial to gay Holocaust victims in Munich; and more in this edition of Bent News.

A majority of Republicans support either marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples

A majority of Republican voters support some form of legal recognition for same-sex relationships, according to a recent poll; and national trends show that a majority of Americans support marriage equality for same-sex couples.

Education Dept. recognizes October as LGBT History Month

“For a community deprived of its history, GLBT History Month teaches heritage, provides role models, builds community, and recognizes extraordinary national and international contributions,” said Ora Alger, LGBTA Employees at ED President, U.S. Department of Education.

“GLBT History Month is an educational project,” stated Malcolm Lazin, Executive Director, Equality Forum. “We are delighted to have the U.S. Department of Education recognize and celebrate our community’s history month. We salute GLSEN, GSA Network and Campus Pride for promoting, with Equality Forum, GLBT History Month to over 6,000 high schools and colleges.”