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- [00:01]
Renita Hora
As humans, we're naturally driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search Match with Indeed. When I was looking to hire someone, it was so slow and overwhelming. I wish I had used Indeed. If you need to hire, you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busy work. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com podcast that's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [01:00]
Jodi Anders
I saw it was over 500 laws in the US against the queer community that have been brought up in different states and talked about at the federal level that affect our rights, our way of living, affect your safety in school, you know, just being you. And teens need to hear that they are valued, that they can be themselves, that they are loved, that they have a future. And that's why this book is important.
- [01:29]
Eric Rosswood
Welcome to the Trufiction Project, a podcast series that explores the origins of fiction.
- [01:36]
Renita Hora
Every week we begin with an interview.
- [01:38]
Eric Rosswood
Nonfiction, followed by a creative piece, fiction.
- [01:41]
Renita Hora
Inspired by something from the interview. The idea is to demonstrate, of course.
- [01:46]
Eric Rosswood
That fiction is born out of our life experiences. Now, here's your host, storyteller, author, public speaker, health and wellness expert, Renita Hora.
- [02:00]
Renita Hora
Welcome to the True Fiction Project. I am your host, Renita Ahora, always in search of stories. And today I have with me two fabulous storytellers, a friend of mine, Jodi Anders, and a friend of hers, Eric Rosswood. Friends of friends of friends. Eric, I guess you're a friend of mine too.
- [02:20]
Jodi Anders
Hello.
- [02:21]
Eric Rosswood
Thank you for having us.
- [02:22]
Renita Hora
Thank you for being here. Jodi and Eric are both writers extraordinaire. They've written lots of things. Eric, various things that you've written have recently come out with a picture book called Strong about the first. You know what, I'm going to let you say it because you say it better than I do. And Jody, just to quickly introduce her, you of course are a screenwriter, a children's writer. This is a nonfiction book. We're going to be talking, of course, about Queer Cheer. But let's go to you First, Eric, tell us about your background about Strong, what that is, and all the awards it's won.
- [03:01]
Eric Rosswood
Yeah, sure. My name is Eric Rosswood. I write books for all ages, from picture books all the way to parenting books. And in between, my most recent one, before Queer Cheer, was a picture book called Strong, about the world's first and only openly gay strongman competitor, and he's broken American weightlifting records. And it's about all the different ways that we can all be strong. It's not just physical, but it could be what's inside as well. And that recently won the Stonewall honor from the American Library Association.
- [03:33]
Renita Hora
That is huge. The American Library Association. That is the highest degree, the highest pedigree, I should say.
- [03:39]
Eric Rosswood
It's a huge honor. Yes.
- [03:40]
Renita Hora
So congratulations.
- [03:41]
Eric Rosswood
Thank you.
- [03:42]
Renita Hora
Jody, tell us what you. I mean, I know what you've been writing somewhat, but tell our audiences.
- [03:48]
Jodi Anders
So I mostly write YA fantasy, and this was definitely a foray into nonfiction, But I've worked for over 20 years with youth nonprofits, and of course, just been involved in the queer community and love this project that basically marries all the things I love writing nonprofit queer teens like. It's. It's fantastic.
- [04:12]
Renita Hora
So how did you both come together on this particular project? How did it evolve?
- [04:18]
Eric Rosswood
The publisher of one of my parenting books actually approached me after there was the whole issue in Florida with the don't say gay bills. They were trying to punish teachers and librarians for having queer books in schools. They wanted to get rid of them. There were also a lot of other laws in other states that were targeting teens, specifically queer teens. And my publisher reached out to me because she knows that I write in that arena and said, we would love to do something to kind of help inspire them, let them know this is just a bump in the road. We can get through these things. Is there anything that you can do for words of wisdom? And I love the idea. And I immediately thought of Jodi, because I know that Jodi has all this background, working with teens and teaching them leadership skills and positivity. And I reached out to her and said, I think you'd be great for this project. Do you want to join with me on this? Let's do this together. It'd be great.
- [05:18]
Renita Hora
And I said, yes, that's great. That's fantastic. And so describe the project, because it's a different kind of book. Is it an anthology? Is that how you describe it? Because I know you've collected all these different stories.
- [05:33]
Jodi Anders
Well, it's actually more like a positivity book with various sections that teens might face in their life. And we actually sort of evolved from, you know, the affirmations and words of wisdom when we decided to interview teens all across the US and as we were interviewing these teens, we just really saw what was important and, you know, decided between the research that we had looked at how what affected teens the most and between what our teens were saying. We divided them into seven different categories and essentially had quotes married with the words of wisdom, married with questions, activities that could help someone just do some self reflection. And then it all kind of ties together in the end with some affirmations to, to give some self empowerment.
- [06:26]
Renita Hora
So I'm going to ask a really basic question. I think it's basic, but hopefully it gets to the crux of, you know, why you did this, why is this important?
- [06:37]
Jodi Anders
I think no matter what time we're in, it's important because, you know, queer teens deserve to feel valued, deserve to feel happy, deserve, you know, positive. But especially lately, especially over the last few years, and even as you know, we're facing possibly even more restrictions, there's been, I think last I saw it was over 500 laws in the US against the queer community that have been brought up in different states and talked about at the federal level that affect our rights, our way of living, affect your safety in school, you know, just being you. And teens need to hear that they are valued, that they can be themselves, that they are loved, that they have a future. And that's why this book is important.
- [07:26]
Eric Rosswood
And I think to add on that too, a little bit, if I could, I was just talking about how there's all these book bands going out and the book bans are at an all time high right now. And they're specifically targeting queer books and books that have people of color or people of color, authors or main characters. And one of the things that sends a message is that there's something wrong with that and there's not anything wrong with who you are as a person. And I think when we're getting that message of you can't tell your story, you can't be who you are, there's something wrong. I'm going to butcher this quote. I think it was from Sally Ride, who was first female astronaut from the United States. I think she said, you can't be what you can't see. So it's really important for us to be able to see other people like us and hear from other people like us that let you know that it's okay. And that's one of the reasons why Jodi and I wanted to interview the teams because we're not teams anymore. So we thought it was really important for teens to hear this from other teams as well. So like Jodi said, we interviewed them and said, you know, what are some issues that you deal with on a day to day basis? And we kind of collected all those and that's how it was broken down. And what we do is we introduce the topic and then we go immediately into the teens talking about the topic and they each bring in a different perspective of how they've dealt with that specific situation. And then we go through and we reinforce it with like exercises, they can do activities. And then we end, like what Jodi was saying with the affirmations on a positive note, and then it cycles through to the next topic. So the teens are a main voice in there because we really wanted them to hear it for themselves.
- [09:08]
Renita Hora
So, Eric, you mentioned, very relevant, the book bans.
- [09:12]
Eric Rosswood
Yes.
- [09:13]
Renita Hora
And the fact that banning books is on all time high or on a high right now.
- [09:19]
Eric Rosswood
Yes.
- [09:20]
Renita Hora
Why is that? And is that simply because of the state of our leadership right now? Is it something that will change? Why do you think this is happening?
- [09:32]
Eric Rosswood
For me, personally, I think we see cycles. I think everything is secular. I find that we're always taking two steps forward, one step back. So I also like to think of this in a positive mindset that, yes, even though we have these setbacks, we are still making progress. Because if you look back at the last few years, I mean, we have marriage equality now. We got rid of don't ask, don't tell, we've had new adoption laws to protect queer families. I mean, we are making a lot of progress even though we keep getting hit back. So I just want to make sure that we don't focus just on the negative because there are a lot of things that really we should be happy for. But yes, I think with the book bans, I think with the laws that are coming to attack the trans community, specifically with trans playing in sports or with gender affirming care, I think a lot of times people like to pick on what they think is the easiest. So like the smaller minorities, because it's not a large community that can stand up and voice back. And I think that's why allies are so important too. So our community is, I guess, an easy target. But when we band together and we stick together, we do see progress. That makes sense.
- [10:44]
Renita Hora
Yes. No, that makes a lot of sense. And you rightly mentioned, you know, let's not focus on the negativity. And yours is a positivity book. But I have to ask, one of the reasons that you wanted to put this project together, is it to see whether it would stand the test of possibly being banned or because others were being banned.
- [11:03]
Jodi Anders
Now we actually talked about the possibility of it being banned and things like that, but really it hurts it to be banned for us. We talked greatly about how can we get this book into teenagers hands because there are other obstacles such as them being able to afford it, them being in an area where it might be banned from the library, from their school, from wherever, and how can we get around those obstacles? So we definitely don't want the book to be banned and there was no desire in any way to get it banned. And you know, so we didn't want to test anything. Hopefully it never gets banned. That would be my hope.
- [11:42]
Eric Rosswood
I do want to say something really quick. If it does get banned, in case any of your readers are looking to read banned books, I believe the New York Public Library, I don't know if they're still doing it, but they were at a time are allowing their membership to anyone in the US that they can go and check out books electronically if they can't check them out in their own area. So if anyone out there is trying to get access to something, definitely check your local library or the New York Public Library if you can't get access on your own.
- [12:11]
Jodi Anders
Yeah, there's a couple of them that are doing that now. So it's pretty, pretty fantastic. Shout out to libraries. It's incredible the amount of care, love and support that they give, especially for queer teens, the resources that they can have. But access to banned books, you can probably ask any librarian how that could be possible for you and I'm sure they will help you.
- [12:33]
Renita Hora
Fantastic. So teens just going back to sort of that target group for a second. It's a difficult time of life anyway, right? They're questioning so much. I mean, certainly gender, sexuality, but identity issues, what's happening at home, independence, you know, other things. Do you think that sexuality and questioning it and questioning their place in, you know, where they fit. Is this exacerbated during the teenage years? Does it change later? Is it easier later?
- [13:07]
Jodi Anders
I feel like, I mean, it definitely depends on where you live. Which is one of the reasons that we interviewed teens all across the US because obviously a teen growing up here in Los Angeles is going to have a different time than, you know, maybe someone growing up in Oklahoma. But in general it does seem like teens are a little more accepting and open but there's still a lot of bullying, a lot of, you know, difficulty. And when you have something that's such a core part of who you are when you're pretty young, in most cases, that something's different and feeling different and wrestling with that and trying to look at your peers and see where you fit in differently than the normal teen issues is definitely something that's exasperated, you know, definitely something that will turn to books or media or something to try to find someone that's like, you try to find a way to feel normal, basically, to feel accepted, and that's very rough.
- [14:12]
Eric Rosswood
And I think that's something that goes beyond your teenage years, too, because do we ever truly know who we are? Right. I mean, we can be more confident in our own skin, but our surroundings are constantly changing. Right. We may move to a different location. And now you're in a community of people that are different than you. And so one of the things that we really talk about in length in the beginning of the book is not just your own identity, but, like, intersectionality as well. And that there's so many things that make you who you are. We talk about your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, your religion, you know, your heritage. Some people, their identity is part of their profession. So someone who went to school and is a doctor, being a doctor is part of who they are, right? So we talk about, like, there's so many things that make up who you are, and they could change. Just because you are one thing now doesn't mean that's who you are the rest of your life. And also, it's okay to still figure out who you are. You're not on a specific timeline. And we really have people do introspective questioning. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but do deep dives and look into themselves to see how their different identities interact with each other and how they may interact with other people based on those identity groups. So, like, for example, when you're at church, do you present yourself the same way as you present yourself at school or at your home with your parents or when you're in a sport or something? Are you the same person all the time? Are you the same person as you present yourself on social media, or are you presenting some other way? So we do a deep, deep dive in identity and intersectionality and how you interact with others. I did a presentation with a bunch of teachers and educators who saw the book, and they're like, we would love to use this with our GSAs and Pride clubs. At our school, and they asked me to come in and talk about it, and I did the identity activity. We spent over an hour, and they were, like, blown away. And these are other adults, and these are educators, and they were like, I never thought of my identity in this way, and I never thought how this part of my identity would make me interact with this person at my table differently than this other person at this other table. So it's kind of an eye opener.
- [16:35]
Renita Hora
Amazing. The identity activity. I love that. I love the idea of that. Do we get that in the book? Is that one of the exercises or part of it?
- [16:42]
Eric Rosswood
A piece of it. We expanded on it for. For a session. Jodi and I have talked about going and doing presentations with GSAs and Pride Clubs and kind of doing deep dives into these parts of the group, and we've done a couple, and they've been received pretty well. So great.
- [16:58]
Renita Hora
Fantastic. And so I know that, Jodi, you're going to read us something from the book, so give us a little bit of a setup as to what that's going to be. What are you going to read?
- [17:08]
Jodi Anders
Yeah, absolutely. So this actually fits in nicely with our conversation about the book bans. It's kind of fun. I don't know if I can show it maybe on the camera just a little bit, but we created a fake news article, but it's actually a 100% true story, and it's based on the interview of two of our teens who started a organization after they worked to fight a book ban in their school system. And I won't reveal too much more than that.
- [17:39]
Renita Hora
Okay, we're gonna learn in the fake story. So before we segue into that, Eric, let our listeners know where they can find your work online or anywhere offline.
- [17:49]
Eric Rosswood
Sure. We have a joint website called queercheerbook.com and then I have a personal website. It's ericrosswood.com. it's R O S S W O O D that has my other books on there, and then also links to my social media on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, if anyone's still on Twitter. I don't know if anyone is, but great.
- [18:10]
Renita Hora
Jodi, would you like to add to that?
- [18:12]
Jodi Anders
Yeah. And I'll also add that our socials are also on the queercheerbook.com website. But you can also find me@jodianders.com that's jo d I e a n d e r s.com and most of my socials are just od.
- [18:29]
Renita Hora
So much to dig into, dive into, and look forward to. Thank you so much for joining us today on the True Fiction Project.
- [18:37]
Jodi Anders
Our pleasure.
- [18:38]
Eric Rosswood
Thank you for having us.
- [18:39]
Renita Hora
That was Jody Anders and Eric Rosswood, both of them writers and co authors of Queer Cheer, joining us today on the True Fiction Project. And I am your host, Renita Hora.
- [18:53]
As humans, we're naturally driven by the search for better, but when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search Match with Indeed. When I was looking to hire someone, it was so slow and overwhelming. I wish I had used Indeed. If you need to hire, you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to INDEED Data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busywork, use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent INDEED survey. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [19:55]
And now to the premise of the True Fiction Podcast project, which of course is to create fiction out of non fiction.
- [20:21]
Jodi Anders
Clear Student Needs Students Protecting the Power of Youth Activism when sophomores Jill and Luke learned people were trying to ban books from their school library, they gathered friends from the Racial Equality Alliance Club and attended the next board meeting to speak out. You could see from their list that they had an agenda, explained Luke. Every single book they were trying to get rid of had to do with either race, sexuality, gender identity, or sexism. It was really upsetting. Teachers, parents and other community members joined to speak out, and in the end, they won. After successfully fighting against the book ban, Jill and Luke founded Students Protecting Education to promote diversity and inclusion. They soon discovered there was more work to do. When they learned that the book banners were running for the local school board elections, they jumped back into action. Jill and Luke identified and supported three candidates running on a pro student platform. Despite not being old enough to vote, the members of Students Protecting Education made a difference by phone, banking, posting on social media, and appearing on the news. Their efforts paid off because all three candidates they supported won the election. It's unusual for people our age to speak up, at least in our area, said Jill. So for the board to see students and say they actually care about this, maybe we should listen for once, I think was very eye opening. Students Protecting Education also campaigned for a proposition allowing a student to serve on the school board. That proposition passed by a 3 to 1 margin. Jill and Luke have had a lot of success. Students Protecting Education now has student members in 22 states. These teams prove that youth activism can be a powerful force for change and that young people can make a difference in the world. And I'll also share at the bottom of this lovely fake but real newspaper their actual organization's website, which is www. Studentsproed.org so studentsproed.org.
- [22:51]
Renita Hora
Here at the True Fiction Project, we're always looking for great stories that make for compelling fiction. So if you have a great story, you know someone who does, or if you're a writer who'd like to be featured on the show, then please do get in touch with us@renita.com contact and if you haven't signed up for our newsletter, then you can do so by visiting substack.com/rent slash rinitahora all spelled out one word. That's substack.com@r r E E N I T A H O R A I'll be offering paid subscribers something a little extra special each time, including a video version of this podcast.