by Bobbi Dykema

I’m from Strasburg, North Dakota, hometown of Lawrence Welk. They played polka at my senior prom. A very homogenous, provincial, rural backwater of a place. I got picked on as a...

by Kevin Tengesdal

Why am I gay? I grew up during the ’70s and ’80s on a farm in rural North Dakota to loving, committed heterosexual parents in a Lutheran based home. I am the youngest of nine....

by Roxanne Moore

My name is RoxAnne Moore. I live in Grand Forks. I’ve lived here most of my life. We have two kids. Cory is an FTM transgender, was born Michelle Lynn Moore, approximately five ...

After I began to come out to myself in my mid-30’s, I realized that I had always been gay. The rural community in which I grew up gave me all kinds of social messages: from the ...

by Zack Petrick

Today’s Video Story was collected on the 50-state Story Tour. Check out the blog where you can follow us on our adventure. We met Zack Petrick in Grand Forks, North Dakota.I’m Zack Patrick. I am from Grand Forks, North Dakota. And right before my 21st birthday North Dakota was going through Senate Bill 2278 which would have banned discrimination i...

by Michael N.

I was raised in Fargo, North Dakota. I always knew I was different, but not sure how. I wanted to fit in and date girls in high school and actually dated some very attractive ones...

by Rod Wright

I swear the waitress worked there since the buffalo roamed freely. I had disliked her since we moved to Killdeer a few years earlier. I was in shock over the little town and just ...

by Joshua Schwab

I guess I always thought of my life as one long story. The first person to know I was gay was my grandma, and by first I mean she knew before me. For the most part I didn’t seem...

by Kelley Halvorson

FEATURED ARTIST – Brian Ness STORY by Kelley Halvorson It was 1976, the year I won a Soprano spot in the North Dakota State Honors Choir. A small-town gal, I was thrilled to ha...