Queer Appalachian author and teacher interview

[u/NonchalantoAnathema]

https://queernecks.captivate.fm/listen

Our episode with special guest Willie Edward Taylor Carver is live! Willie Carver Jr. is a big gay hillbilly, an LGBTQ+ youth advocate, KY Teacher of the Year, and the author of Gay Poems for Red States, a Stonewall, World Pride, American Library Association, Whippoorwill Honor, Read Appalachia, and Book Riot-award winning collection. His novel in stories and poems, Tore All to Pieces, arrives March 2026. Willie has published in many places; he writes poetry and fiction from Appalachia and believes everyone deserves to feel that they matter.

We had such fun talking about queer life in Kentucky and Appalachia in general and we know you'll enjoy hearing it. Willie has a way of articulating things you had been thinking but didn't know how to say yourself and listening to him talk is so validating and inspiring.