I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it, I’m about to lose control, and I think I like it!

The Pointer sisters couldn’t have been more excited about their music than I am about my new book, Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home, which is now available for pre-orders on Amazon and should be released in early December!

Four years ago next month I went to the Guild Christmas Party and had a good visit with one of my favorite people, Harriet Hancock. We sipped our cocktails and talked about the importance of preserving stories like hers for future generations – the more we talked, the more convinced we became that the idea was worth exploring. We decided to get together after the holidays to talk about it again.

During that same holiday season in 2013 Teresa and I had Christmas at Dick Hubbard and Curtis Rogers’s farm in Hopkins with our friends Dave and Saskia and their son Finn. I mentioned the idea to Dave of an oral history book with the stories of some of the organizers of the lgbtq movement in South Carolina – told him about my conversation with Harriet the night before. Dave, who is an American History scholar at the University of South Carolina, said such a book could be very helpful to the literature. Later on, Dave introduced me to one of the acquisitions editors, Alex Moore, at the University of South Carolina Press.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Through personal interviews, fabulous storytelling, laughter, tears, shared memories – I had the privilege of getting to understand why these ordinary people did extraordinary work that changed the environment for lgbtq issues in a rural conservative southern state. Amazing. Awesome. Truly a must-read.

Jim Blanton, Candace Chellew-Hodge, Matt Chisling, Michael Haigler, Harriet Hancock, Deborah Hawkins, Dick Hubbard, Linda Ketner, Alvin McEwen, Ed Madden and Bert Easter, Sheila Morris, Pat Patterson, Jim and Warren Redman-Gress, Nekki Shutt, Tony Snell, Carole Stoneking, Tom Summers, Matt Tischler, and Teresa Williams.

“In Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement, Sheila Morris has curated a gallery of queer activists’ stories. If the SC Historical Commission ever casts around for some new figures for all the surplus bronze, this book has a hero for every platform.”–Kate Clinton, feminist humorist, contributor to the Progressive and the Huffington Post

I have a special page that will be on this site permanently at the top of my blog – please read it for reviews and other important information about events, signings, the official book launch.

Stay tuned.