An upcoming celebrity panel on the importance of queer people telling their own stories will benefit Pride and Less Prejudice, a non-profit that has donated over 8,000 LGBTQ-inclusive picture books to elementary school classrooms since its founding in 2019. Here’s how you can join in!
Pride and Less Prejudice (PLP) will host the virtual panel “Telling Our Stories: A Panel on Queer Visibility and Authorship,” Saturday, June 3, at 2 p.m. EDT, featuring actor, author, and producer Chris Colfer (Glee, The Land of Stories); comedian, actress, and author Cameron Esposito (Take My Wife, Save Yourself, Queery); and actress, singer, and author Alexandra Billings (Transparent, This Time For Me). It will be moderated by writer Sa’iyda Shabazz.
The panel, on Zoom, will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A. Tickets are available here, and start at $20. All proceeds will go towards sending LGBTQ-inclusive books to classrooms across the U.S. and Canada.
PLP sends LGBTQ-inclusive books to classrooms from pre-K to 3rd grade in order to foster LGBTQ+ inclusivity and acceptance. Since its launch, PLP has raised more than $140,000 and donated more than 8,000 books to classrooms across the U.S. and Canada. Recently, PLP received a major donation from Miley Cyrus’s Happy Hippie Foundation after Cyrus and Dolly Parton’s song “Rainbowland” was banned from a school concert in Wisconsin.
“From bans on gender-affirming care to restrictions on discussions of queer people in the classroom, LGBTQ+ people and their identities are constantly being silenced,” said PLP founder Lisa Forman. “That is why it’s so important to celebrate the queer people who are telling their own stories—in books, television shows, movies, and comedy. The more authentic stories we hear from the LGBTQ+ community, the more we foster acceptance and inclusivity.”
I couldn’t agree more. Storytelling is a superpower. Whether they are real stories of our families or fiction that portrays the diversity of queer lives in ways that ring true even while our imaginations soar, stories can make a difference. I hope you’ll tune in to this event to hear the perspectives of these high-profile figures and be inspired to share our own stories and create change.