Sylvia’s Place, part of Metropolitan Community Church of New York (MCCNY), is an emergency night shelter and daytime community space for homeless LGBTQ youth, 16-24, in New York City. I stopped by there three times in the past four weeks and met with several of the youth there, talked to them about my site and asked if any of them would be interested in sharing their stories.
Every Tuesday, Geer Austin volunteers his time to manage a writing workshop at Sylvia’s Place and I thought that would be a great time for some of the interested youth to write their stories. It exceeded my expectations.
In only about half an hour, four of the youth and Geer himself hand wrote compelling, emotional, inspiring, well-written true tales from their lives. Just like all the stories on IFD, I didn’t give the authors a topic, they just wrote about any story involving them being LGBTQ. Every story this week will be by someone from Sylvia’s Place. It was a real pleasure meeting all the youth and hearing their stories read aloud for the first time, and I hope they’re as meaningful to you all as they are to me.
NOTE: Geer Austin volunteers through NY Writers Coalition, a not-for-profit organization that provides free creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of a voice in our society. If you’re in NYC and want to volunteer, they’d love to hear from you.
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