Still Loud, Still Proud

Queer authors have Pride in their words

In a recent installment of his “Art Fag” column in Xtra West magazine, Billeh Nickerson wrote about Vancouver’s Pride becoming all about the pay-for-gay muscle boys on floats and lamenting the lack of cultural events at Pride time. Thankfully, Nickerson is returning to Victoria this week to again be a part of Victoria Pride Society’s annual culture-rich Pride and the Word readings.

Nickerson has can’t remember how many Pride and the Word events he’s been a part of. “I’ve lost count,” Nickerson says. “I have so much Pride and so much Word in me that it’s Pride and the Word Infinity, I guess.”

Nickerson says he can remember the days it was held in a coffee shop with bongos and there was a person who juggled scarves. Funny memories aside, Nickerson is proud to be a part of what he calls, by far, the largest Pride and the Word event in Canada. “Victoria is known for supporting its literary endeavours, gay, straight or whatever,” he says. “This is bigger than Vancouver, bigger than stuff in Toronto, so that’s a feather in the cap for Victoria Pride Society. David Tillson is a major reason behind that, as he says as long as he’s involved with Pride, there will be a Pride and the Word event.”

Vancouver’s Amber Dawn is also returning this year to read alongside Nickerson, Hiromi Goto, Arlene Pare, Sean Horlor and Mette Bach. Dawn was just named Xtra West’s Community Hero of the Year for not only her creative endeavours as a writer and neo-burlesque performer, but for advocacy and fundraising for trans folks to help offset costs of gender reassignment surgeries.

Thinking back to last year, Dawn says, “The audience was a little larger than I imagined. With readings, you never know what kind of audience you’ll get out. It was a roomful of good folks.”

Dawn feels that Pride and the Word is a vital event for queer writers. “It’s good to carve out a space where queer writers can just be and they can read whatever they’ve been working on, queer content or not,” Dawn says. “But definitely know that queer content has a place where people are going to say ‘this isn’t some ghettoized writing, this is our writing, our stories, our poetry; appreciate it and get it.’”

Since many folks view Pride as a glitzy and fun time of the year, Nickerson says “It’s so easy to forget that there’s more than shaking your moneymaker or glowstick. So many of the Pride events when they first started, the arts were integral to that and the people who were actually making a statement were the artists. When we forget about that, we become just like everybody else.”

Dawn says some of the party/bar scene has lost appeal. “What I want to do with my nights off, which are getting fewer and fewer, is that I want to go and be touched by something creative,” she says.

However, it’s not just the abundant creativity at this year’s event that has Nickerson chuffed. “We’re excited because the venue this year is licensed,” Nickerson says. “I’m hoping the audience will play drinking games. It’ll be a little trickier though, because everytime a guy onstage says ‘cock’ people should have to drink or everytime a woman says ‘potluck’. We’ll have a lot of fun there. It’s a little dangerous though, as it’s the gays and the writers getting together having to drink, you can’t go wrong.”

Pride and the Word

8pm Saturday, July 5

Victoria Arts Connection, 2750 Quadra

Tickets $10

victoriapridesociety.org