IOOW 2023 weekly themes and readings appear below. Click the week to get reading packets.
- June 15-19 | Memory
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Required: Joe Brainard, I Remember (excerpts)
Optional/supplemental: David Trinidad, "For Joe Brainard"; Savannah Sipple, "A List of Times I Thought I Was Gay"; Brett Josef Grubisic, "Fifteen (Lies from My Adolescent Mouth, a Selection)" - June 22-26 | Family
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Required: Jubi Arriola-Headley, Daddy (excerpts); Nickole Brown, "For My Grandmother's Perfume, Norell"; Kevin Bertolero, "It's not in what you do, more in what you say"; Natalie Diaz, "No More Cake Here"
Optional/supplemental: Joseph Legaspi, "My Mother's Suitors"; Joy Ladin, "You Will Never See Me as Your Mother"; Danez Smith, "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar" - June 29-July 3 | Coming Out
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Required: Bryan Borland, "Flawed Families in Biblical Times"; Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, "Birthday Suits"; Julie Marie Wade, "Yentl"; Frank Bidart, "Queer"
Optional/supplemental: Rachel Mennies, "September 23, 2016"; Darrel Alejandro Holnes, "Black Parade"; Robin Becker, "A History of Sexual Preference" - July 6-10 | Body
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Required: Joan Larkin, "My Body"; Timothy Liu, "The Size of It"; Eric Tran, "Portraits of Hand-washing"; Lesléa Newman, "I Feel Good About My Neck"
Optional/supplemental: Kay Ulanday Barrett, "On departure & how to say goodbye to your chest"; Ellen Bass, "Ode to Fat"; torrin a. greathouse, "Sick4Sick" - July 20-24 | Intimacy
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Required: Liz Ahl, "When She Comes Home From Camp"; Tim Doody, "My Fourth Boyfriend"; Marilyn Hacker, "[Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?]"; Jeffery Conway, "Hangover"
Optional/supplemental: Carl Phillips, "Domestic"; Terry Wolverton, "Black Slip"; Joseph O. Legaspi, "[a subway ride]"; Pat Parker, "My Lover Is a Woman" - July 27-31 | HIV/AIDS
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Required: Paul Monette, "The Worrying"; Stefania Gomez, "At the New York City AIDS Memorial"; John D'Amico, "Tony Vito Anthony Gramaglia" (from The AIDS Memorial project); Kat Moore, "Catch: A Memory in Three Fragments"
Optional/supplemental: Melvin Dixon, "Heartbeats"; Rafael Campo, "The Distant Moon"; Mark Doty, "The Embrace" - Aug. 3-7 | Divas
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Required: Rachel McKibbens, "Minneapolipstick"; Michael Montlack, "Is Richard Simmons missing? Or is he just dearly missed?"; Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, "Think Back"; Eloise Klein Healy, "Louganis"
Optional/supplemental: Aaron Smith, "Brad Pitt"; Maureen Seaton, "Sally Field" - Aug. 10-14 | Pride
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Required: Jenny Johnson, "In the Dream"; Charles Jensen, "Weeks After the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, I Hold Miguel’s Hand in Los Angeles"; Mark Doty, "Homo Will Not Inherit"
Optional/supplemental: Audre Lorde, "A Litany for Survival"; Brenda Shaughnessy, "Gay Pride Weekend, S.F., 1992"; Kay Ulanday Barrett, "song for the kicked out"