In this online CLGS Lavender Lunch authors Dwayne Ratleff and William Martin read from their autobiographical novels Dancing To The Lyrics and The Runaway Bus.
Join in the conversation with these seasoned authors as they reflect upon – and dialogue about – the importance of sharing stories from their queer growing-up years. Also, discover how the telling of our stories can lead us to that “opposite other” we have always wanted to meet and yearned to know.
Dwayne Ratleff was born to an unwed mother and is a product of the segregated Baltimore school system. Placed in Special Education classes as a child, he did not learn to read or write until the age of 11. “If anyone had told me as a child that I would write an award-winning book,” Dwayne says, “I wouldn’t have believed them.”
William Martin, a recent graduate (Master of Theological Studies) of Pacific School of Religion, finds his ministry in memoir writing and in creating a “table of memory” that all can gather around to rethread intersectionality. His book The Runaway Bus is a 1960’s “suburban memoir” that describes his experiences growing up as a Gender Fluid, white child amidst the Cold War Era and The Flower Children’s Cultural Revolution.