17th Annual Queer in Appalachia COMING SOON

Spring 2019

The LGBT Faculty & Staff Caucus Executive Committee is saddened and shocked to hear about the alleged misappropriation of funds by Mamone, who was the featured speaker at the Virginia Tech Queer in Appalachia event in 2019. In no way did we nor the QIA planning team know this was occurring at the time of their presence during QIA 2019. Furthermore, since the Washington Post article published their expose in August 2020, Mamone has been removed from all affiliations with the Queer Appalachia organization and social media accounts. We will continue to advocate for queer and trans* folx living and working in Appalachia and work to ensure that all representatives enlisted by the Caucus represent our mission and values.

The information presented below is for historical record. We believe that is important to keep queer identity in Appalachia as public as possible and feel that removing it would cause further erasure of our historically marginalized group. We wanted to provide the event as it occurred while also being clear about recent events.

"When mainstream media writes about Appalachia—stories about the declining coal economy, for instance, or the opioid crisis, it regularly uses language that conjures regional stereotypes of white, straight, rural, and patriarchal people and culture. This framing and stereotyping, while business as usual, ignores so much else in Appalachia: drag queens reading stories at the local library, a zine-maker who combines art and environmentalism, writers and poets traveling the region to share their art, students standing up against pipelines, a long history of labor organizing, queer farmers, and so much more. The collective known as Queer Appalachia is highlighting these stories; promoting art, activism, and culture in the region; building community; and changing how the rest of America thinks about Appalachia and the South."

-Introduction to an article by Kristina Gaddy on bitchmedia