Pride Page Turners Seeks to Spark Joy, Connection

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This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.

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About three weeks ago, Trish Fancher was lying in bed and thinking about how folks she knew in big cities got the chance to enjoy literary festivals as part of Pride celebrations. But Santa Barbara, even with its strong literary community, didn’t have an equivalent.

“We have a good Pride here, and we have different things to do, but we don’t have anything like bookish or poetry [based] or literary,” she said.

So, Fancher said, she called her friend Michaela McGinnis and the pair started to organize Pride Page Turners — a poetry and literature night highlighting queer voices.

McGinnis said it’s important to create a safe space to share together and build community.

“And [to] showcase our fun, queer and otherwise, community, [show] that they’re an important part of the community,” she said. “Not commodifying them, letting them actually have a space to shine outside of just being a queer person.”

The event, hosted at Casa Agria on Friday, June 20, will include readings and crafting, as well as zine-making opportunities. There will be queer sex-ed material to peruse, a book swap, a deejay set by KATIEXIOTH and even a pop-up bookshop installation. Readings and the pop-up will be located out on Casa Agria’s spacious patio area while KATIEXIOTH will be set up inside.

Both Fancher and McGinnis are active in Santa Barbara’s literary community. Fancher co-runs the Lowstate Writing Salon – a monthly event at Casa Agria, where folks can write together. McGinnis, a book-lover, hosts Literally Amazing S.B., an open group where folks can bring their books, read silently alongside each other or swap recommendations.

But, they said Pride Page Turners came together with the help of many people in their community, from their friend who helped them narrow down their goals for the event to the artists and writers participating in the event to the Santa Barbara Public Library and Honey Boy Press, who are involved with the zine-making opportunity. 

“I think it’s a testament that the community already exists,” Fancher said. “All we’re doing is creating some structure around it.”

Memorists, novelists, archivists, poets and performers will take the stage, including Fancher herself, who says she’s planning to tell the story of her first time in a queer space.

As part of the crafting, folks will have the chance to try glitter poetry — a spin on blackout poetry, where a person takes an existing page of text and blacks out certain words to create a verse. McGinnis and Fancher are considering using old romance novels and beauty magazines as possible source materials. Fancher said it’s a chance to take something that typically centers heterosexual relationships and make it queer.

The event, Fancher said, aims to be a place for joy in the face of fear, given the current political climate.

“There’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of reasons to be afraid,” she said. “In the face of that fear, it’s ever more important to hold on to things that make us feel joyful. And art is our entitlement. We are entitled to our stories and sharing them.”

Pride Page Turners will run from 6 to 11 p.m. Everyone is welcome.

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Pride Page Turners takes place on Friday, June 20, 6-11 p.m. at Casa Agria, 418 State Street. Along with crafts and music, several writers and artists will read at Pride Page Turners. Those readers include:

Celina Garcia, poet, screenwriter, crafter
Ari Linder, memoirist, inter-textual writer
Michelle Detorie, poet, community art leader, teacher
Michelle Petty, novelist, scholar, professor 
Trish Fancher, memoirist, researcher, party planner for nerds
Dez Alaniz, archivist, activist, everyone’s favorite zinester 
Nicole Sophia, singer-songwriter, sparkle-bomb
Joshua Alán, community art organizer, poet, bilingual researcher
Julian Talamantez Brolaski, poet, performer, singer-songwriter
Madison Connaughton, queer archivist, historian, storyteller