Shining a Spotlight on PRME: A Captivating Interview with the Creators of Pride Month Reading Event

We had the pleasure of interviewing the creators behind #Pride Month Reading Event! Join us as we unravel what PRME is while celebrating the intersection of LGBTQ+ pride and literary brilliance!

Q: Can you tell us about Pride Month Reading event?

A: Pride Month Reading Event highlights books with LGBTQIA+ characters all year round, with a focus on June Pride Month. We have a variety of mini-events planned to run during June 2023’s event that we can’t wait to share with you!

Q: What are your goals for this event?

A: Our goal for this event is to create a space where readers and authors can easily connect and find each other. Readers and allies in the LGBTQIA+ community are always looking for their next read, but it’s not always easy to find the Perfect Book, so we’re hoping that through an event like this, finding independently published and traditionally published books will be streamlined for more people! Plus, we get to participate in fun mini-events in the process, and raise money for charity, what’s not to like!

Q: What can followers expect to see during Pride Month?

A: During Pride Month, participants can expect to see a multitude of mini-events all throughout June, these include our month-long Readathon, Fundraisers, Pride Month Book Bingos, Giveaways, Reading Parties, and more! Readers and creators will also have year round access to our Pride Book/Comic Database: a database of books and comics which feature LGBTQ+ Rep across their main cast! Creators will be free to submit their works to this database any time, we’re hoping to expand it as much as possible, so that readers will always have a place to find new and upcoming reads!

Paired with this database will be our Reviewer-To-Book/Comic Matchmaking that we also hope to run all year round!

#PMRE2023 meaning Pride Month Reading Event will be our general hashtag for the June events and other activities associated with PMRE year round!

Finally, we have our weekly and monthly events, #PrideRecs and #PridePit! #PrideRecs is a weekly Wednesday event, where readers are invited to share their favorite books and comics with LGBTQIA+ characters on social media every Wednesday in June! (It’s also going to be a very cheeky prank, as creators unaware of our event will mysteriously receive new sales and support on Wednesdays without knowing why, please feel free to join us in surprising our favorite creators with bouts of mysterious support! ;)

#PridePit is a positivity pitch event for creators, centred around sharing comics and books with LGBTQIA+ characters, it will be hosted from June 23rd - June 25th on social media!

Thank you so much to Ashish Rastogi for creating this graphic!

Q: What type of creators can we expect to see featured?

A: We hope to feature both comic and book creators during this event!! :)

Q: Tell us about the volunteer program.

A: The volunteer program is made up of a team of fellow authors and artists who have kindly offered to lend their time and skills during this event, we are so grateful to our amazing volunteer team and highly encourage you to check out their works on our website: https://pmrevent.carrd.co Please go show them some love, they worked really hard on making this event what it is today!

Q: Where can people support this event?

A: People can support PMRE2023 by participating in our mini-events and using the #PMRE2023 hashtag on social media! Simply letting others know about the event is always a big help, too! You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest updates on @pridemonthread Thank you so much for your support!

Thank you so much to Ashish Rastogi for creating this graphic!

Q: What are your plans for this event in the future?

A: It’s a secret (for now), but… we definitely have a few things in mind, stay tuned. ;)

Q: What does pride mean to you?

Audrey: To me, pride is a time where we can concentrate on community building and community support, in all its forms. It’s here to raise awareness to what’s happening to queer people all over the world, but also to celebrate how far we’ve come, and look at a better future we might one day have.

Beau: I think the way Pride brings people together to support one another is really wholesome. I hope that we will be able to recreate the same type of energy through this event and foster a sense of community for creators and readers!

Quinn: I think pride is about celebration and recognition and for me as a reader and writer, it definitely can come in the form of creating! Like Beau said, bringing people together is so important and can really help people, and we can find others like ourselves close by.

Q: Tell our readers something fun! Can be anything!

Quinn: Here’s a random fact: cake mix boxes used to come with a substitute for eggs, so you didn’t have to add them. But then hardly anyone bought these! Then they decided to take it out and added eggs to the instructions, therefore making it feel more DIY, and now look at how many people use premade mix!

Audrey: The words dog and hound used to have each other’s meaning, in the sense that dog used to mean a specific type of dog and hound used to mean any kind of dog, and then the meaning of hound narrowed and the meaning of dog broadened, and now hound is a specific dog and dog means all of them!

Beau: I spent an hour trying to think of something fun. As you can see, it didn’t go very well.

Q: What was the inspiration behind this event?

Beau: There is a huge pressure for queer authors to out themselves & use their identity to market their book. It’s often difficult to find calls for books or events that don’t ask authors to self-identify in order to participate, this can lead to authors having to out themselves before they feel ready, or in some cases, to authors being outed against their wills.

Uplifting marginalised voices shouldn’t have to come with the cost of those voices owing us a piece of their history or identity in exchange: by creating this event, I hope this will create a more inclusive, safer space for creators writing LGBTQ+ works!

(I also wanted to include comics, as there are a lot of cool comics with LGBTQ+ rep out there, so I figured, why not! The more the merrier! :)

Quinn: I really want to spend my time raising the valuable voices of marginalised creators including those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. There can always be more done for writers and comic artists who are under-represented, so why not have a fun community event that anyone can participate in at any level? Even if you don’t want to be public about it, you can still read as many books with LGBTQ+ major characters as you can during June, just like how on the other end you can be recommending lists of books, hosting reading parties and completing our bingos! Hopefully there is something for everyone to share their pride or support others

Audrey: I joined the organizers’ team only recently, but I like what Beau and Quinn have created, especially how freeform it can be. Every participant can decide on their own how they want to celebrate and which events they want to participate in, or even how they want to participate in them. From fundraisers to introducing favourite books to reading challenges, queer books can be celebrated in a myriad of forms, and I’m excited to see how the event’s gonna develop!

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Be sure to stay tuned with BLU as we have MANY amazing interviews coming out this Pride Month!