Association announces inductees
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association is celebrating its silver anniversary this year and is in its 10th year of its LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame.
The association shared that its Hall of Fame inductees have left a lasting mark on the profession — through their own courage, by blazing trails and by their dedication to telling the truth about themselves and in their work.
Recent inductees include a North Carolina native and a former qnotes cartoonist.
Armistead Maupin, who hails from the Triangle area, is one of the more well-known in the fiction field with his nine best-selling novels, including six “Tales of the City.” “Tales” eventually was made into miniseries, using the first three novels as its base. His career got a boost when he began a daily series for theSan Francisco Chronicle in 1976 when he began the original dispatch of “Tales of the City.”
A former student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he began his journalist career writing for The Daily Tar Heel. Oddly, he worked for the future U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms at WRAL-TV. Being exposed to anti-gay rhetoric pushed Maupin to leave the South and go to work with the Associated Press in its San Francisco, Calif., bureau.
Alison Bechdel is no stranger to qnotes readers. Her “Dykes to Watch Out For” graced this newspaper’s pages for several years. Her creation of the Bechdel Test for gender bias in works of fiction has been a benchmark in the literary field. She has been penning works for and about the LGBT community since 1983.
A few months ago, her graphic novel “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” was presented with a Tony Award for its stage adaptation. She has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”
info: nlgha.org.
Fest seeks volunteers
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — The Pride Community Center of the Tri-Cities is hosting its End of Summer Festival on Sept. 13, 10 a.m.-8:30 p.m., at Rotary Park, 1001 N. Broadway St.
The family-friendly event is filled with food, fun, live music, informative speakers and activities for children.
A handful of volunteers are needed to help set-up, break down and handle miscellaneous other duties throughout the day. Individuals will report in as early as 8:30 a.m. and may continue until 9 p.m. depending upon assignments.
Visit docs.google.com/forms/d/19AUyEyzWz2DMjHjLbk7jCLi27ssFbvh2pXfJduHTquU/viewform?edit_requested=true to sign up.
info: bit.ly/1I4Xsmt. info@pridetricities.com.
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Share your news with us
Does your organization or special interest group have events or great information to share with our readers? If so, be sure to send in your information to specialassignments@goqnotes-launch2.newspackstaging.com. In the upcoming months, we’ll feature one of you in our news notes section in each issue. Are you a part of a Meetup, Yahoo or Google group and do you do something that’s really newsworthy? Do you provide a service for the community or hold fundraisers for worthy causes? Do you educate the public about LGBT issues or concerns? Of course, this is only a sampling of things we are interested in. It’s the aim of these pieces to inform, enlighten and educate our readers about what we’re doing here in the Carolinas to champion LGBT rights, as well as offer resources for those who may be interested in what your group is doing.