As a commuter, Julie is an especially avid devourer of audiobooks, and just submitted her first review for AudioFile Magazine! Like any librarian who knows her stuff, she lives for books and “actively advocate for the power that they have to expand and change lives.” Keep reading to hear about Julie’s experiences reading 50s lesbian pulp fiction, Annie On My Mind, and how knowing about so many of the queer books coming out these days can be a little overwhelming. She also has a queer book blog, Omnivore Bibliosaur, where she writes a few posts a month (I LOVE the name of her blog, much cleverer than mine) and she also contributes to the fabulous Lesbrary. She likes historical fiction, contemporary romance, hard science fiction, and a wide swath of nonfiction subject areas. If I had to say how I felt (and still feel) about my sexuality is that it’s…well, complicated.” She says: “I remember feeling excited when Willow and Tara smiled at each other before joining hands to fend off The Gentlemen in ‘Hush’ and flushed when I saw “Gia”. But her first exposure to anything LGBT came from TV: namely, Willow and Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as free HBO weekend showings of the movie Gia. For Julie, who was “a quiet kid who loved sports and studied hard, but didn’t really have many close friends,” books were her gateway to other worlds and experiences. As many queer people know, that is one thing to be appreciated when you’re young. She was lucky that, despite living in an evangelical Christian household (among other things), books, movies, and TV shows that she borrowed were never restricted. July’s queer reader of the month is Julie Thompson, who describes herself as a “thirty-something, Jane-of-all-trades, bisexual/queer librarian in the Pacific Northwest (US).” She grew up in small towns in the Pacific Northwest and always enjoyed weekly trips to the local library.

Hear Us Out! by Nancy Garden