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Portland-based Vinnie Kinsella is an author and publications consultant with a long history of making books. It all began for him in the second grade, when he worked with his fellow students to write and illustrate a story about the adventures of an ice-cream-loving giraffe. Since then he has worked as a writer, editor, book designer, publisher, workshop presenter, and college instructor. He currently uses his broad knowledge of the publishing industry to assist and educate self-published authors and small presses. He is the author of A Little Bit of Advice for Self-Publishers.

His latest book, Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men Who Came Out Later in Life, is an anthology offering an insightful look into the triumphs and struggles of coming out as gay, bi, or trans after years of living with a straight or cisgender identity.

EB: Welcome. Vinnie. Tell us about Fashionably Late.

VK: Thanks for having me! Fashionably Late is a nonfiction anthology that examines the lives of gay, bisexual, and transgender men who came out well into adulthood. It offers an honest look at both the triumphs and struggles men face when they choose to come out after decades of hiding their true sexual and gender identities. The stories in this collection explore a wide range of topics, including dating members of the same sex for the first time, conversion therapy, divorce, coming out to aging parents, and transitioning from female to male during middle age.

EB: What prompted you to take on this project?

VK: This book is rooted in my experience as a gay man who came out at thirty-four. At the time, I thought I was an anomaly, as most of my peers came out in their late teens or early twenties. After starting a social-support group for others like me, I discovered that I wasn’t as much of an anomaly as I thought I was. Since starting the group, I’ve met hundreds of men who came out well into adulthood, some even as late as their seventies. I was always on the lookout for resources for these men. As someone who takes comfort in books, I found it frustrating how few there were that spoke to the experiences of men like me and the ones in my group. I wanted to create a book that offers these men a chorus of voices to let them know they aren’t alone and to offer them affirmation. Essentially, I decided to create the book I wanted to read when I came out.

EB: What did you learn in the course of compiling and editing the material? What stood out for you?

VK: What stood out to me was how universal the emotional journey of coming out is. No matter what the circumstances are that lead a man to come out, and no matter what he is coming out as, it always boils down to him rejecting a narrative that says his otherness is something to be ashamed of. What I found fascinating in each story was learning what it was that brought the author to that point. No two men get to that point the same way, and an anthology underscores that reality more than a solo memoir does. It shows that there is no right way to come out—there’s just your way.

Another thing this anthology did for me was challenge my own concept of what in means to be out of the closet. Like most people, I saw it as an event. I had this idea that once I came out to everyone on my list of people I wanted to come out to, I was officially out. But it’s not that cut and dry. You can be out to family but not to coworkers, or out to friends and not to family. I also didn’t consider that you can come out of one type of closet and enter into another type of closet. This is addressed in some of the trans stories, where a trans man who is seen and treated as male now questions whether or not to disclose he was raised female. Through examining the concept of coming out from so many angles, I have concluded that coming out is a lifestyle, not an event. Every new person I meet, every new social group I become a part of, I am given the choice to come out or to keep my identity as a gay man hidden.

EB: How did you select the contributors?

VK: I did two rounds of submission calls. The first round was broad and resulted in a good base for the anthology. For the second round, I specified what topics I was looking for. There were topics I knew needed to be covered in the anthology that didn’t get covered in the first round, such as stories about men who found a way to remain friends with their wives after coming out. In addition to the two submission rounds, I also solicited a few stories directly from the authors.

EB: Fashionably Late is about men’s coming out stories? Do you have a sequel planned on women’s stories?

VK: Yes! It has been my intention from the start to approach this as a series. However, I won’t start work on a women’s edition until I find the right editor to work with, and that editor must be a woman. To do the book justice, I feel it’s important for me to take a behind-the-scenes role as series editor and let a woman step in as the volume’s editor.

EB: As an editor and book designer yourself, how did you like the process of putting the book together. Were that any issue that stood out for you?

VK: I always enjoy the process of making a book. If I didn’t, I would be in a lot of trouble career-wise! The editing and design processes didn’t differ all that much for me as when I work on someone else’s book. Since I try to approach each book I work on with the same care as I would my own, I didn’t really do anything different from what I normally do. That said, this was the most emotionally challenging book I’ve ever had to edit because I was so close to the content. There were several times I had to take a break from editing because an author’s experience resonated so deeply with my own that I had to just stop and process my feelings before I could move on. There was a bit of therapy through editing going on.

The part of the process that challenged me most was working to promote the book. I’m used to just handing a finished book off to the author or publisher and letting them do their own promotional work. Having to spend so much time coming up with strategies to promote the book and then doing the actual work of making the book visible pushed me out of my comfort zone. Like most authors, I would prefer to skip the promotional work and just hope the book will magically find its way to readers. But I know from years of working in the industry that it never happens that way. When it got to be too much for me, I would just step back and say, “Somewhere out there is a man who needs this book. He can’t find it if he’s never heard of it. I have to do all I can to make sure he hears about it.” When I could flip the switch from thinking of promotion as something that is self-centered (“Hey, look at me and my book!”) to something that is audience-centered (“Hey, here’s the book you are looking for!”), that put me in the right headspace to keep doing the work I needed to do.

EB: Were all of the contributors writers?

VK: Most of them were. And if you look at their bios, they have pretty impressive credentials. There was only one contributor who doesn’t call himself a writer, but he’s still a great storyteller. His was one of the stories I solicited. I heard him share it at two separate LGBTQ storytelling events, and I wanted it. I worked with him to take what he had written as a spoken story and tweak it for print.

EB: What was your role as an editor?

VK: My role as the editor was to first shape the anthology itself. I had to review every submission and decide which ones fit and which ones didn’t. After that, I went through each accepted story and performed a standard line edit, cleaning up any issues with the language and flagging areas where some added clarity from the author would be helpful. This was mostly asking authors to add a line or two that would define for readers a lesser-known term he used or to clarify his connection to another character in the story. After that, I passed the collection on to the proofreaders.

One editorial decision I made that was a bit different was to intentionally work with proofreaders who didn’t share any of the authors’ gender or sexual identities. I worked with straight, cisgender women whom I knew to be LGBTQ allies. In particular, I asked the lead proofreader to act as a stand-in for the book’s secondary audience: straight and cisgender friends and family of men coming out later in life. I gave her freedom to ask any questions she might have about the content as she worked. This is a bit abnormal, as proofreaders generally don’t focus on content. But I figured if she didn’t know what the content was saying, than it was a safe bet that others in my secondary audience wouldn’t either. Fortunately, she didn’t have many questions, but it was helpful to find out where things could be clarified a bit more for the sake of readers seeking to better understand a group of people they aren’t a part of. It was important for me from the onset that this book also serve as an educational tool for people wanting to be allies to their loved ones, so I took care to keep that audience in mind during the editing process.

EB: I know you recently had a launch. What has been the reaction to the book?

VK: The response has been amazing! I’ve already begun to receive emails and Facebook messages from recently out older men who discovered the book and wanted to share with me the impact it has had on them. I’ve also been thanked by straight readers who found it helpful for building empathy for these men. And as weird as it sounds to consider this as praise, I’ve had people tell me they had to stop reading the book in public because the content was moving them to tears. I understand that those tears are coming from a place of finding their own struggles reflected on the page, but it’s still a bit odd to have someone say, “This book made me cry,” and know it’s a complement. However, the feedback that has meant the most to me has been people saying that the book offers hope. That’s what I wanted it to do from the start.

EB: Thanks for talking with us. Good luck with Fashionably Late.

VK: Thanks for having me! I hope your readers who choose the pick up the book enjoy it!

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L L Templar is the author of fantasy novels. She is a manga artist, a teacher and a master’s degree student, who lives in the northern California.

EB: Tell us about your collaboration on Rafer Thorne.

LT: There were a lot of us that merged our skills together to create Rafer. Eight of us were on the main team, but there many other students, parents and professionals that were involved. Our goal was to create the ultimate YA fantasy novel. So Young adults needed to be part of its creation. It also meant that it needed great illustrations and lots of them.

I was the main writer and artist, but the crafting of the story and additional art all came out of various imaginations, including high school kids. It was amazing how the illustrations and story grew with the different perspectives and talents.

Eliah, my co-author, was a graphic illustrator in the corporate world and added professional polish to the art, and she also used her zany imagination to write back stories, poetry and sequences to the manuscript. Some sections of the story we wrote together, sitting at the computer side by side. My husband, Gary, also an art student at SOU, illustrated creepy things like Blahtchuuk the Netherworld Imp, and imaginary animals like the enchanted mice, Eek and Tisk. Seventeen-year-old Victoria did the cover illustration and Fifteen-year-old Emily created a Manga, graphic novel sequence showing Kiyah the Elf’s battle with Gluuk the Goblin.

With all of us imagining the story and art together there was no limit to the depth of our story world. For example, we had long discussions on goblin insults. We wanted gross and morbid and brainstormed ideas together. The one I especially liked was, “Moldy pile of ogre vomit!” We created flying ships based on real engineering principles, and we dug into ancient Celtic mythology and dredged up Nahg the shapeshifter. Together we created imaginary beings, gnomes, goblins wizards, dryads and naiads, but also a very real world of teens struggling to survive as foster kids in a big city.

EB: How did the project get started?

LT: I began writing the story when I was a teenager, because I loved the fantasy genre. Years later when I was a language arts teacher for the Beaverton school district, my students motivated me to keep working on it. As part of a creative writing project, I asked my students, who were 13 and 14, what their ideal novel would be like. This is what they told me:

1. They liked Goblins, Elves. Dragons, wizards and magic. 2. But they also liked to have someone in the story that was a teenager that they could relate to, somebody like themselves so that they could imagine themselves in the story. 3. They liked an epic adventure— super heroes saving the world from dire evil. 4. They also liked pictures, lots of pictures. They especially loved Manga. (Manga is a style of illustration originating from Japan)

I could not find any one book like what they described, so I thought, “I can do this.”

EB: It’s a sci-fi fantasy set in 1976 San Francisco. Is that period interesting to young adult readers?

LT: What I found in talking to my students is that currently there is the same nostalgic fascination with the 1960s and 70s as there was in my generation with the 50s, which created the popularity of “Back to the Future” and “Happy Days.” The “Hippy era” is rich with culture – the flower children, the mingling of ethnic groups, the birth of rock ‘n roll, and the revival of a belief in magic. It was also a world in which teens were beginning to face the same issues that they are facing today; gangs, drugs, dysfunctional families and abandonment. It was the perfect setting for a magical adventure, but it was also where I grew up. I have been told by great writers, “write what you know.”

EB: What was the most challenging aspect of the project? And the most rewarding?

LT: The most challenging aspect was integrating the talents of various individuals, including teens. Being able to work together in a cohesive group and merge our abilities, while keeping conflict to a minimum was not easy.
However, the most rewarding aspect was the exact same thing. We did it! We accomplished something greater than any one of us could individually. Cooperative learning worked! A collaborative project model worked! The feeling of accomplishment for all of us when the first printed copy of the book arrived from the publisher was so exciting it’s hard to describe. I’ll never forget the reaction of 15-year-old Emily when she saw her art in print in a real book. She danced around the living room saying, “I’m a real artist!”

EB: What’s next in the series?

LT: Next is the second book in the series, Rafer Thorne II, The Staggering World, in which a group of teenage Halflings (half Fey and half human) including our hero Rafer travel through a porthole into the fairy world of Kynmahnduu. In this otherworld they continual the battle against the forces of the Void and their nemesis Sharh the Dragon Queen, who is seeking to invade Earth with her army of Goblins, Dragons and netherworld beings. We are also working on a series of extended edition e-books that are fully illustrated, in color, with interactive maps and animations.

EB: Tell us about some of your influences as a writer.

LT: My greatest influence was my dad, Tom Albright. He was a best-selling author and art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. Because of him I was immersed in both creative writing and art from my earliest memories. I also spent a lot of time in the studio of his best friend, Bill Snyder a professor of art at UC Berkeley and a Disney artist. Consequently, I fell in love with the art of Disney. I started college in graphic design when I was just 14. Which meant I was only 17 when I got my first job as a graphic illustrator. I also published my first creative writing piece at that time. A gothic horror serial called The Chains of Evil.

Then I switched gears and went back to school to become a teacher. Here I would have to say that my greatest influences were my students. But it’s when I teamed up with Eliah Brave, a mom to three of my best and brightest students that I really begin to fly. She was a graphic illustrator and a book producer. We merged our talents to create a cooperative project that also included the talents of her teenaged kids, and Rafer Thorne was born. Since then other teens and students from the University have joined the team, like Zach Pearson who is an animator at SOU, and my husband Gary.

EB: Rafer is a 15-year-old boy. How did you go about capturing that voice?

LT: I began writing the book when I was a teen and although Rafer is the main character, the story is actually told by Grace, who was me when I was seventeen. I was very close to my brother Greg growing up and there is a lot of Greg in Rafer. That’s the main story line, however we also have a student author, Steven Trujillo, a Hispanic young adult, who is writing Rafer’s Journal. Excerpts from the Journal are scattered throughout the novel in Rafer’s voice. Steven approached me one day with a Rafer’s Journal page that he had written and said, “I am Rafer.” When I read what he had written and it so brilliantly fit the character, I said, “Wow, you really are!”

EB: What’s been the response to the book so far?

LT: Great. We have five stars on Amazon, we have book signings in local bookstores coming up, we’ve been on local TV, and we’ll be on a creative arts radio show in San Francisco. A major book store chain has also expressed an interest, which I’m working on right now. Getting seen by more people and in the bookstores is the next step in the process.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

LT: Thanks for having me on your blog.

You can see more of Rafer Thorne the authors’ blog here or website templarbrave.com on the Rafer Thorne Facebook page on Twitter (@LLTemplar1) and Instagram (Rafer Thorne). Bookstore can order copies wholesale by emailing leenah144@outlook.com.

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Dante Fumagalli is a senior at Southern Oregon University studying English and Art History. He is passionate about education, the arts, and accessibility.

EB: Tell us a little bit about your internship at MoMA.

DF: I interned with the education department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from June 8 to August 12. My time was specifically split between Community and Access Programs; School and Teacher Programs; and Interpretation, Research, and Digital Learning.

EB: What sort of things did you do?

DF: Being split between three different departments, I ended up doing a lot of varying tasks. With Community and Access, I mostly helped facilitate programs. MoMA offers a wide variety of programs for people with disabilities and it was great to see the extent of how MoMA serves these populations. I also got to attend and help facilitate a professional development conference for teachers called Connecting Collections which is hosted by MoMA, The Met, and The Guggenheim. It was amazing being able to meet people from all of these different museums, in addition to teachers from around the world who came to New York to learn more about arts education. I got to develop a lesson plan for a gallery session centered on the essential question: How did artists in the 1960s make use of everyday objects to explore political, personal, and conceptual themes?

EB: What did you learn?

DF: I learned a lot about best practices in museum pedagogy. At Southern Oregon University, I’m a staff member and a docent at the Schneider Museum of Art. My general teaching style when leading groups through the museum was friendly, but also primarily didactic. At MoMA, they stress the importance of inquiry-based teaching strategies. Watching professional museum educators and going through the many training resources that the museum offers really has changed the way that I approach teaching in these spaces.

EB: How did the work complement or expand on your academic studies?

DF: When I was working on my lesson plan, I made use of a lot of the theory that I’ve learned in both my art history and literature classes. One piece in particular that I used was Black Girl’s Window by Betye Saar. I first was exposed to Saar’s work in a class I took called Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Art with SOU professor Jennifer Longshore. We discussed how her assemblage piece, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima used found objects to compose a comment on racist imagery in the United States. This was a great foundation for my work with Black Girl’s Window, which similarly uses found objects.

EB: What was the most interesting aspect of the internship? Any surprises or revelations?

DF: For me, the most interesting part was helping out with the program Meet Me at MoMA. It’s designed for people with Alzheimer’s and their caretakers. The framework for the program is hugely influential in Museum access worldwide, so it was incredible to see the program happen. Educators at MoMA are very patient and for this program they really extend their inquiry-based methods and bring out discussion amongst participants. At one point during the program, we visited a Roy Lichtenstein painting and one man who had been mostly silent the whole time became visibly excited and told us a story of how he had gone to school with Lichtenstein. It was really moving.

EB: How did you like New York?

DF: I loved New York, though it was very overwhelming at first. The day I arrived, after I picked up my bag, I just remember stepping outside of the terminal at La Guardia and trying to make sense of all the chaos that was going on ahead of me. And that was only in Queens! I lived in Belmont, a neighborhood in the Bronx right across from Fordham University which was nice but also meant that I had quite a commute. If anything, though, that commute motivated me to go out and see the city much more than I probably would have otherwise. I made a concerted effort to go see all sorts of sights after work. My MoMA ID also allowed me to attend other New York cultural institutions for free so I definitely tried to make the best of that. During my time I visited The Met, The Met Breur, The Studio Museum at Harlem, The Bronx Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. It’s crazy to me that with all of that, I still missed out on so many other things in such a crazy city.

I definitely want to come back after I graduate. I’ve been doing research on year-long museum education positions in the city and I’ve found that The Met, MoMA and The Brooklyn Museum all offer paid 12-month internships I’m going to be applying for. I found that once you get used to getting around this city, it’s easy to become attached. So many of the other interns I met shared this feeling with me; it definitely brought us closer.

EB: Any advice for other students thinking about internships?

DF: Don’t sell yourself short. You don’t have to be at a school like Harvard, Yale, or Columbia to get one a coveted internship in the professional world. While I was filling out my application, I nearly talked myself out of it. I thought there was no way that they were going to accept me, a student from a small school in Oregon who isn’t even an art history major, at one of the most well-known museums in the world. Even my first day, I still could hardly believe it. It didn’t help that the first person I met was working on his PhD in art history and here I was still in school. But I was able to contextualize the experiences I have had and relate them to the mission of MoMA in my application and in my interview. And I think that’s the most important thing when applying for jobs. You have to give yourself credit for what you have already done and see how that fits in where you’re applying.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

DF: Thank you! I appreciate getting the chance to reflect on and talk about my experience.