HOW I LEARNED TO SNAP
A Small-town Coming-of-Age and Coming-Out Story
Kirk Read | Author
- $22.95 hardcover
- 224 pages
- 1-58818-039-5
- Gay Studies | Memoir
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“Kirk Read kicks ass.”—Genre
the book
Kirk Read's youth in the Shenandoah Valley had the outward signs of a comfortable adolescence in the Reagan-era South. Dad: career military. Mom: a homemaker. Son: Little League/soccer player, Baptist youth group member, a straight-jawed boy from a long line of VMI men. One would expect that a young gay man growing up in such a way would lead a tortured teen life. But early on, Read began to show the surety and openness that has marked his later life and career as a young, queer journalist.
Passing through the tough terrain of Bible Belt guilt and culturally ingrained sexual hypocrisy, Read acknowledged his difference first to those closest to him—with expected doses of fag-baiting—and with acceptance from surprising corners. Read's skewed and skewered version of the holy trinity of American adolescence—sex, drugs, and rock and roll—is described in his unique voice: he became sexually active at a time when we were only just learning that sex can kill, began saying yes to drugs when Nancy Reagan was just saying no; and when underground music was still buried. It is a story of bold strokes (premiering a play about coming-out in high school while still in high school) and ironic misfires (he expected to ignite a firestorm by demanding that he take his same-sex date to the senior prom; instead his request was calmly okayed). Read's story is neither victim-based nor intended as a survival guide. It is not a radical call to action but a call to acceptance, with a Southern accent: "So much of gay Southern memoir has been so veiled in the shroud of first fiction that it's lost its sense of urgency. Or it's been so literary that the queer content has been erased or relegated to the back in service to Gothic, poetically indirect costuming of hard realities," Read says. Ultimately, Read's is finally the story of every coming-of-age—heartbreaking, comic, tragic, and redemptive—and will be appreciated by everyone who, to quote Paul Goodman, grew up absurd in the 1980s.
the author
Kirk Read grew up in Lexington, Virginia, the birthplace of Pat Robertson and home to Virginia Military Institute, which schooled three generations of his family. He began writing at age 13 and had his first play staged at 16. Three of his plays were professionally produced while he was in high school, and he was an apprentice and later a playwright-in-residence at the Shenandoah International Playwrights Retreat.
Read graduated from the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar and wrote his senior thesis on themes of rescue and salvation in Horatio Alger novels, contemporary gay porn, and the children's television show Pee Wee's Playhouse. He delivered the paper to his professor in a brown paper bag, and upon graduation, moved to Washington, D.C. and then New York. In New York, he studied at Playwrights Horizons, was a literary intern at off-Broadway's American Place Theater, and was a cocktail waiter at several bars he hopes have gone out of business.
He moved back to Virginia to pursue a very ill-advised relationship and wound up as editor of the state's monthly gay and lesbian newspaper, Our Own Community Press, where he spent two years. He spent three summers teaching playwriting to high school students at Theatre Virginia and worked as a computer tech in inner city kindergarten classrooms. He began syndicating a humorous op-ed column, which appeared in over 70 print and web outlets, including The Washington Blade, Southern Voice, Frontiers, and Philadelphia Gay News. The column has won four Vice Versa gay press awards.
In 1998, Read moved to San Francisco to pursue writing and activism. He spent a year washing dishes at a Castro homeless shelter and worked as an intake counselor at the St. James Infirmary, a free health care clinic for sex workers. He is part of the collective that produces the annual Gay Men's Health Summits in Boulder, Colorado, a conference which has given birth to over a dozen regional health conferences around the country.
As a freelance writer, his work has appeared in Out, Genre, Christopher Street, QSF, and a host of alt-weeklies, websites, and LGBT newspapers.
Read currently lives in San Francisco, where he is working on his second book.
the praise
"Kirk Read kicks ass."—Genre
"Funny, provocative, and sometimes harrowing...If I had read something like this as a teenager, I'd have had a much easier time. Read's story...offers hope and the promise of community."—Marshall Moore, Lambda Book Report
"Provocative, moving, and extremely funny...A smart, sharp début by an accomplished new writer."—Greg Johnson, Sticky Kisses and Pagan Babies
"This book once again reminds us that high school is American glue—we are forever stuck to our classmates."—Rita Mae Brown
"Read navigates his adolescent minefield of snap queens, rednecks, love, sex, family, booze, and punk rock with an astute eye for detail and a stunning capacity for compassion."—D. Travers Scott, Execution, Texas: 1987
"Witty, honest, true to the bone, How I Learned to Snap is an important addition to a new wave of young gay Southern writing.—Patricia Nell Warren
"Read's high octane irony, bluster, brag and brilliance is something only a Southern queer writer could carry off with such winning charm. Read speaks with a contemporary voice-past gender and beyond a narrow regionality while never being disloyal to either." —Jay Quinn, editor, Rebel Yell
"Kirk Read delivers a sly, poignant, comic left-hook to the psyche! How I Learned to Snap is the next best thing to a kiss."—Greg Walloch, star of "Keeping It Real"
"A real life coming out story that is anything but typical"—XY Magazine
"Witty. Irreverent. Poignant. A must-read for queer youth and those who work with them. How I Learned to Snap belongs on the shelves of every school library."—James T. Sears, Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education
"Poignant, winning, and true, Read's book should be required reading for gay youth the world over."—Simon Sheppard, Hotter Than Hell
"Read crackles with smarts and heart. Read is a soulful, naughty, queer Huck Finn rafting down that big river of growing-up in America!"—Tim Miller, Shirts & Skin
"Funny, touching, moving and important. Kirk Read is a splendid storyteller, with an enormous heart."—Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis and 1968
Are you interested in inviting Kirk Read to speak to your group or organization? CLICK HERE
also of interest: www.kirkread.com