June 2026 Newsletter: A Sinister Wisdom Party, Activist Resources

Welcome to this month’s newsletter! Each month, I try to share what I’ve been up to, what things I’ve published that month, and exciting news if there’s any to be shared.

News and updates

We kicked off June with a Sinister Wisdom launch party (more on that below)! This Pride Month has continued 2026’s theme of focusing on community and resilience, especially for at-risk LGBTQ+ folks right now. You’ll see that from this month’s blog post, if you haven’t already.

Additionally, you can still request free LGBTQ+ books shipped directly to you! Ashton’s got a whole pile of them ready to be sent to folks who request them. Fill out the form to request books for you, a loved one, or even a reading group or library.

Blog posts from this month

Many months late but just in time for Pride, Ashton shared LGBTQ+ reflections on the Bring the Heat: Melt the ICE week of action. In it, they discuss what the week looked like, how LGBTQ+ people have been supporting anti-ICE movements in Minnesota and beyond, and what roles each of us can play in changemaking. They may have also taken a brief detour into video game mechanics and character decisions. Check it out and share your own reflections or tips in the comments on that post.

And if you’re looking for ways to support activists from afar, you can donate to the legal defense fund for the 15 organizers targeted in June 16th’s indictment and raids in the Twin Cities.

Sinister Wisdom’s 50th and the Launch of Get Curious

We had a fabulous event on June 3, and I want to thank Sinister Wisdom and everyone involved for a great time — a packed room, which is lovely for book events — and a friendly, very queer, wonderful audience. 

I also want to thank reviewers who have posted reviews of Get Curious. These are wonderful to see. It’s exciting how many people are resonating with this story and with the themes of this story. I will be returning to these themes again in the future. I don’t know if I’ll be returning to these characters and the setting, but you will definitely see these themes.

At the Sinister Wisdom event, it was great to present with Stuff Studio. We’ve worked on a number of projects together, and I’ve gotten to see Stuff developing the Familiar framework of Black cultural archetypes. It’s an amazing framework! For this event, we decided it would be exciting to look at four of the base archetypes in the context of four of the characters in the story. Stuff has helped me a lot with the story and did the cover art, so she’s quite familiar with it. We talked about these four characters and what archetypes would fit them well, which characters we could use without spoilers was a big consideration, and came up with four archetypes that fit major characters in the story.

Archetypes in Get Curious

The main character, Rev, is a Trickster, and I think this is not an archetype that we frequently see in the protagonist’s point of view. When we hear the word “trickster,” depending on our context, we can fixate on the trick part rather than understanding that the trickster as an archetype is much broader. It’s about mischievousness and play and poking at authority and the quality of charm. Rev has that broader trickster archetype: a desire to find things out, to get into places, to discover and uncover secrets. That is the engine of this whole novel, her uncovering secrets. It’s definitely been fun to write a trickster character. Stay tuned for more of those in the future.

I also want to talk about Sophi as an elder. At least for myself, when I hear the term “elder,” I think of someone who is older, but really a person can be an elder at any stage of their life if they have more lived experience than someone else in a particular context. For example: if I’m with younger people and they’re explaining a video game that I’ve never played before, they can be in an elder role to me. In the context of that game, they are the elder; they have all this lived experience of playing it. I’ve never played the game, so I can come in and get that mentoring experience. 

In the novel, Sophi is only a year older than Rev and a year ahead in school, but she knows the campus well because of her interest in historical theater productions on campus. She has a good awareness of resources. When Rev starts digging into uncovering the secrets, Sophi becomes a very valuable elder who can show her around and help her connect to places, resources, and people who can be helpful. 

Of course Char is doing some of that too. Char is Rev’s bestie in the story, but Char’s support has that really nurturing quality. It’s very much about helping Rev take care of herself, whereas Sophi’s is more about sharing what she knows: what’s already been done, what’s possible, what might work in a situation. That’s one way to feel the difference between elder and nurturer. 

I’m not going to say too much about June as Truth Teller, because therein lie some spoilers, so check out the book for that. And if you want to know more about the Familiar framework, please head over to Stuff Studio’s website.

I hope you’re having a wonderful Pride celebration this June, in person or online, maybe cozily in a corner of your house with a book or a project. I hope you are having a wonderful time celebrating the lengthy and beautiful history of queerness and transness in this world. When things get tough, we can get a little cut off and forget — speaking of elders — that we have elders going back thousands and tens of thousands and probably millions of years. (There are some very queer and trans animals out there.) The world is full of queer and trans elders who are available to help support and resource us.

Ashton’s addendum

The Sinister Wisdom party was a fantastic time, and very well-attended. We brought in some extra chairs, then a few more extra chairs, then still had folks standing in the back. For me, deep in the despair and shittiness coming through the news and community networks every day, it was a great reminder of how many queer and trans folks there are looking out for each other.

The host opened the event with a dedication to sapphic poet and activist Renée Nicole Good, who was murdered by ICE agents in Minnesota earlier this year. They read her award-winning poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.” There was a heaviness in the air, a collective moment of grief, which ebbed and flowed and blended with hope throughout the night. It was a double-edged reminder; first of the fact that we as LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be targeted by the state, and also of the value each one of us brings to the spaces we’re in.

Good’s murder feels like a lifetime ago, but it has only been 6 months. As I continue my work here in Minnesota, I keep grounding myself in the community we have, even when it feels far away. We need more spaces like this one.

Stay tuned next month for more blog posts, other resources, and another newsletter. Thanks for being a reader!

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