Something Queer at the Library – Author Talk with Kay Vinson

Something Queer at the Library
Safe harbor to explore LGBTQ+ literature

Memoir Reading and Q&A with Kay Vinson

Kay Vinson will be reading from and discussing her memoir detailing her life as a tomboy growing up along the borderland of south Texas; her work as a high profile TV news investigative reporter in Dallas during the Second Wave of Feminism that defined the 1970s; and her metamorphosis to politically active lesbian who owned a lesbian/feminist bookstore in the city’s gayborhood during the raucous and tragic 1980s when gay men were decimated by AIDS and national protests in Washington, D.C., called on all gays and lesbians to come out of the closet.

Bio: Born in Dallas in the early years of the post-World War II baby boom, I spent my childhood in Brownsville, just across the Rio Grande from Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. My mother remarried when I was 11 and we moved to Salina, Kansas, which felt like a foreign country to me. I left Salina after high school graduation and headed to Dallas and Southern Methodist University. After graduating with a degree in journalism I accepted a job in television news at WFAA-TV in Dallas. I retired recently after teaching at Capital High School for 8 years and am now teaching a writing class in the Continuing Ed program at Santa Fe Community College. I am currently writing some of the final chapters of my memoir, the working title of which is “Tits to the Wind!” I have published more than 20 segments of the book on Substack during the past year and a half.