Join writers Ed Madden and Alexis Stratton for a reading and discussion at Queer Haven Books on July 26! Alexis from their collection of trans and queer travel essays, Eating Turtle (2025), and Ed will sharing work from his new hybrid poetry and essay collection, Arkansas Luggage (2025).
ABOUT EATING TURTLE AND ALEXIS STRATTON
In "Eating Turtle," Alexis Stratton invites us to join them as they trace the intersections of identity, grief, and belonging across four continents. Burned out by years of LGBTQ+ activism, at age 32, Stratton embarks on a multiyear journey through a dozen countries—from the stark Australian desert to the winding streets of Taipei—yearning to find healing in the movement between worlds. They revisit loved ones in South Korea, where they taught English in their twenties, and they summon the courage to come out. They talk of philosophy and loneliness with a New Delhi hotelier and share Taiwanese delicacies with a queer local who greets them like a long-lost friend. In Eating Turtle, Stratton finds, home is not a place but the body you carry, the stories you tell, and the people who welcome you in.
Alexis wanted to be a writer since they wowed their third-grade teacher with a plot twist in a story they wrote about a knight in shining armor. In the story, the knight escapes certain death with the help of a magical friend. After finishing grad school at USC, Alexis tried to be that knight in shining armor, and they criss-crossed South Carolina providing education around LGBTQ+ communities and violence prevention. Plot twist: They got super burned out, and to escape certain death, they quit their job, sold their stuff, traveled the globe, and launched a blog about traveling as an LGBTQ+ person. They have since put down their pack, but they haven’t stopped writing: In the past year, they’ve published two books, Trans Kids, Our Kids: Stories and Resources from the Frontlines of the Movement for Transgender Youth (2024) and Eating Turtle (2025). Today, they live in Richmond, VA, with their partner, stepkiddo, grumpy old cat, and two kittens. www.alexisstratton.com
ABOUT ARKANSAS LUGGAGE AND ED MADDEN
In “Arkansas Luggage,” a heady mixture of essay and poetry, Ed Madden travels between his native Arkansas and Ireland while examining the baggage of his own upbringing as a gay man.
Ed Madden is a professor of English at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches Irish literature, LGBTQ+ studies, and creative writing. He is the author of six books of poetry, most recently A pooka in Arkansas (2023), which won the Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize, and A Story of the City (2023), a collection of poems from his work as the first poet laureate for the City of Columbia, 2015-2022. He is currently working on a history of LGBTQ Columbia.
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